Were there horses in Pre-Columbian times?

The survival of American horses into Book of Mormon times finds support in native American lore and linguistic evidence which point to a knowledge of this animal before the Fifteenth Century. Efforts to clarify the history of animals remains present significant challenges to the archaeologist, but new discoveries increasingly lend support to the view of limited survival of the horse and other animals. Another possibility is that Lehi’s family, following well established practice, applied terms like horse and other familiar names to New World species which they encountered in the land of promise.