The Horse that Won the West was a Mule

Contrary to Hollywood's glorification of the horse it actually was the mule that won the West. Horses could never have withstood the rigors of pulling wagons and stagecoaches as portrayed by Hollywood. It was teams of mules that actually pulled those wagons and stagecoaches. Teams of Mules and oxen pulled the wagons in the wagon trains that left St. Louis for Oregon and California.
A matched pair of mules are known as a "span". A hitch of two or more spans is a team. Stagecoaches were usually pulled by a six-mule team hitch. Wagons, depending on the size and load, were pulled by four to twenty-team hitches. Mules were the pack-animals for the expeditions into the Southwest. They had greater endurance and were stronger and less excitable than a horse. They had more stamina and could carry more weight than a horse of equal size. They were more sure-footed on steep trails and could exist on less forage than a horse. Extra mules were often taken on long arduous expeditions to slaughter for a food supply. Cows were too slow, too difficult to herd, and required more forage. In spite of Ms. Bo Dereck's sympathies horse meat was often as not a staple when food supplies were bare bone.
When Butterfield established the first stage line from St. Louis to San Francisco it was competitive to win a U.S. Government mail hauling contract. If Butterfield could carry a dispatch from St. Louis to San Francisco in twenty-five days or less the government would award him a lucrative long-term contract to carry the U.S. Mail from East to West and from West to East. Why twenty-five days? Because it took twenty-six days for a ship to sail around the horn of South America to San Francisco carrying the mail, that is if everything went okay. Ships sometimes didn't make it. What did Butterfield use to pull his stagecoach? Teams of mules. He established way-stations about every twenty-five miles along the route to change teams. Butterfield completed the trip in twenty-four days and won the contract. The Chicago Tribune sent a reporter on the first East to West trip. He wrote daily dispatches which were sent back by dispatch riders for publication. His dispatches have since been published in a book. An interesting read on history of the American West.
The Union Cavalry in the West rode horses but teams of mules were employed to pull the supply wagons, artillery pieces, and ambulances to remove the wounded from the battlefields. Mules pulled ore buckets in the coal mines and copper and gold mines of the West. It was the twenty-mule team hitches that hauled borax from Death Valley. The mule was the major draft animal used in early American agriculture.
In the annals of American history the westward expansion was a remarkable and romantic time as well documented by numerous Hollywood movies. The horse was the primary mode of personal transportation used for riding and pulling light buggies. The mule was the draft animal. Some large breeds of horses such as the Clydesdales (of Budweiser fame) were draft animals, but they required a lot of feed and were overly sensitive to dire circumstances.
The mule is a cross between a donkey stallion (called a jack) and a mare horse. Mules (male and female) are sterile and cannot reproduce. The King of Spain presented George Washington with a large black jack in 1785. This animal, "Royal Gift", is considered the father of the mule industry in the United States.
Mules are often thought to be stubborn. They can seem to be lazy, but they will also not put themselves in danger. A horse can be worked until it drops, but no so with a mule. The "stubborn" streak is just the mule's way of telling humans things are not right. Mules are very intelligent and it is not a good idea to abuse a mule. Its not that a mule kicks any more than a horse, it is just that the mule is more accurate. There is an old saying: "You tell a horse what to do, you ask a donkey what to do, but you negotiate with a mule".
There is a trait mules have that horses don't, high-jumping. Mules only 50 inches high at the withers can clear jumps up to 72 inches. This stems from the raccoon hunters moving their mules through the woods and encountering fences. These jumps are not from a galloping approach, but from a standing start, a truly remarkable feat.
When I was a lad and lived on a farm we had mules that were used to pull the wagons and the plows and cultivators in the cotton and corn fields. I came to have a lot of respect for those animals. They knew the way home from town, just give them a loose rein and they would take you home. They knew just where to walk in the cotton row and exactly where and how to turn at the end of the row onto the next row without so much as a tug on the reins. They knew when it was time to stop and rest, and when it was time to stop and eat.
The mule never received its just and proper place in the annals of American history, or history anywhere for that matter. They pulled sleds in the early exploration expeditions to the Antarctic, they carry sightseers down and back up the walls of the Grand Canyon, and more recently they were used as pack animals during war time in the treacherous mountains of Afghanistan.