Jamestown colonists brought donkeys, not just horses, to North America, old bones reveal

(Press-News.org) A new study published in Science Advances about centuries-old horse and donkey bones, unearthed in Jamestown, Virginia, is rewriting the story of how these animals first arrived in North America.

While written records from the earliest English explorers show that horses were among the animals brought to Virginia, the new zooarchaeological analysis of animal remains found at Jamestown is the first to show that colonists also brought donkeys to the New World.

The study also reveals a dark ending to these equids in the colony: The horses and donkeys were likely butchered and eaten during Jamestown’s infamous winter of starvation.

“There are no written records of donkeys on ship manifests and reports, yet evidence suggests they were valued as dependable work animals,” said John Krigbaum, Ph.D., professor and chair anthropology at the University of Florida. Krigbaum served as the senior author on this study alongside lead author William Taylor, Ph.D., at the University of Colorado Boulder.

The team’s work is a testament to the vast amount of information researchers can glean from just a small collection of centuries-old animal bones. With their preliminary tests, archaeologists linked the earliest parts of the settlement to the "Starving Time" winter of 1609-1610, a connection later confirmed by radiocarbon dating. The study provides an early glimpse into how and why horses and donkeys were transported and managed and how they were able to spread and establish wild populations across the continent.

Assisting Krigbaum with both the research and writing were George Kamenov, Ph.D., a senior associate in the Department of Geological Sciences, UF doctoral student Diana Quintero-Bisono and Nicolas Delsol, a former postdoctoral student at the Florida Museum of Natural History who currently works at Université Laval in Quebec.

With the species and timeframe confirmed, further tests unveiled new insights into how these animals once lived. Wear and tear on the bones showed evidence of bridling, suggesting their use as work animals. Ancient DNA and bone chemistry analysis of the isotopes in tooth enamel suggested that the donkey did not originate in Great Britain but was picked up by settlers along the route of their transatlantic journey.

“Ancient DNA points to Iberia or West Africa, which is consistent with its isotope signature, but the isotopic evidence is also consistent with Trinidad and Tobago, which is not far off the route sailed,” said Krigbaum. 

Examining the wear and tear on the samples also revealed a tragic end for many of these animals. Faced with hunger during the Starving Time and having soured their relationships with nearby indigenous people, settlers were forced to eat their animals and, in the direst situations, their dead. While we have records that horses were consumed during this time, this can also be observed with other samples, including donkey remains. “They show that adult horses were eaten, butchered and cooked or boiled, with most elements split open to extract even the minutest nutritional resources including dental pulp,” the team wrote in their study.

For Krigbaum and his colleagues, the Jamestown assemblage is just the beginning. Their next project will examine horse remains from the 16th century Spanish settlement of Puerto Real, in the Caribbean, to uncover further evidence of how horses and donkeys helped shape the earliest chapters of American history.

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