Sam Houston Rode a Gray Horse

by Kameron K. Searle

Note: Beginning on June 12, 2009, the article, Sam Houston Rode a Gray Horse, will be on loan for several months to the Texas Heritage Society's brand new web site.

Click here to read the article:

 Sam Houston Rode a Gray Horse.

Just about every history that mentions Sam Houston's horse at the Battle of San Jacinto mistakenly describes the horse as a white stallion. 

The author, Marquis James, appears to be the culprit who started this myth. James describes Houston's horse as a "white stallion" on pages 246, 250 and 251 of his 1929 Pulitzer Prize winning biography of Sam Houston, The Raven.

Writers and historians have mistakenly copied Marquis James' mistake hundreds of times since 1929. In the 2004 Disney movie, The Alamo, the historians and advisors who assisted in making the movie historically accurate blew this detail. They placed Dennis Quaid as Sam Houston up on a white stallion yet again!

Its very romantic and heroic, it is just not true! 

We hope you enjoy reading about this great bit of Texas trivia.