President Washington’s Andalusians
Posted by: Loren Coleman on February 16th, 2009
George Washington fox hunting in Virginia.
Happy President’s Day.
George Washington’s birthday is upcoming and the USA’s first President was involved in at least one mildly weird animal story:
In 1785, when King Charles III of Spain heard that General Washington, at home in Mount Vernon, was looking for the finest jackasses in the world to mate with his mares to create “super mules,” he sent Washington two of his best Andalusian donkeys. Only one survived the cross-Atlantic journey, landing safely in Boston. With meticulous care, Washington personally planned its arrival at Mount Vernon, making sure that his mares had lived a celibate existence so that they would warmly welcome their “foreign affair.” The regal jackass—Washington named him Royal Gift—was not at all pleased with the proffered country bumpkins and made no attempt to seal the deal. As frustrated as the poor mares, the creative Mr. Washington decided to trick Royal Gift. He used a female donkey to capture the attention of the Spanish jackass, then, at just the right moment, pulled a switch substituting the femme fatale donkey with one of his Virginian mares. The ploy worked and by 1799 there were fifty-seven new mules at Mount Vernon. Washington farmed them out across the country to improve the nation’s stock and as a result many of the best mules today can trace their lineage back to old Royal Gift and George Washington’s mares.Source
All donkeys in America today perhaps may be traced back to Washington’s attempts at creating a “Super Mule.” There are no longer any real populations of true donkey breeds in the United States. The registries are bound by size, not breed type. A few small populations of endangered or “rebred” breeds survive worldwide.
The Andalusian
This donkey was the drafty, heavy-boned, dappled animal. Most of the original animals imported into the U.S. (even up into the 1900’s) were dappled gray-roan (sometimes called blue roan) or red roan. The average height of the Andalusian was 14.2-15hh. Many of the heavy sorrel jacks used in draft mule breeding resemble the purebred Andalusian quite closely. The head should be in proportion, but this is the breed most likely to have a thick jaw, and Roman-type nose. The bone was heavy especially through the leg, and breeders wishing for a heavier type of jack should look to this type to add substance in both jackstock and mules. Most jacks today that exhibit the Andalusian characteristics are sorrel or dappled red roan, with little or no visible cross being preferred.Source
If interested in the early types of dogs (shown at top and below) bred by President Washington and President Thomas Jefferson, read “Lafayette’s Dogs.”
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
And so began a steady stream of jackasses into the DC area…
Excellent story.
tropicalwolf says: “And so began a steady stream of jackasses into the DC area…”
LOL, XD
HA! Jackasses in DC… excellent. I have nothing more to contribute.
Greetings All,
Mules are sterile. There is something like a one-in-a-million chance of fertility, but basically they’re sterile. So sending the 57 mules out to “improve the stock” would not have worked. Something tells me this is a bit apocryphal. Like the cherry tree, the dollar across the Potomac, and the wooden teeth.
It is rare, but a mule can have a foal. See here.
I’ve been reading some of the writings of Thomas Jefferson. He firmly believed in the possibility that wooly mammoths may still exist in the far northwest of this continent. I don’t have the reference handy but, he wrote of his reasoning behind such a possibility and his interest in interviewing Indians who may have seen them or knew of people who may have seen them.
Mules (and hinnies) are not always sterile. The males almost always are sterile, but female mules (and female hinnies) are sometimes fertile.
There is no available proof of what breed the jack was sent to Washington from King Charles III. The source cited has been changed. The jack may have been Catalan or Andalusian. The source has also changed the sending of mules out and about to create more mules. “Royal Gift” actually arrived on the ship Ranger in Gloucester and was then walked by his Spanish groom to Boston. In researching the mule to 350 BC, I have not found one piece of documentation regarding a male mule impregnating anything. There have been four documented (in writing) cases of molly mules getting pregnant by a horse stallion or donkey jack in the US since 1832. There are some recognized breeds of donkeys in the US – American Mammoth Jackstock and the Poitou’s who have been imported. The AMJ is registered with the American Mammoth Jackstock Registry or the American Donkey and Mule Society. In addition to Royal Gift, Washington received a jack from Malta (Knight of Malta) along with two jennets from Lafayette. He then acquired another jennet from Suriname, trading 25 barrels of “fine flour” for her. The “Gift” was bred to one of the Maltese jennets and she had a jack colt that Washington adored and he named him, “Compound”. These large jacks were NOT the first imported into the country, but were probably the finest available at the time and were the foundation for the large breed we call American Mammoth Jackstock today. Washington is sometimes called “The Father of the American Mule” and is also credited with being the “first” person to breed mules in the colonies and “the first to bring a mule to North America”. None of this is accurate. He was most certainly the biggest advocate for the breeding of mules, a breeder of qulity mules and a farmer with vision. If he is going to be given a moniker regarding mules, it might be “Champion of the American Mule”.