What type of horses were used to pull covered wagons?

Answer 1

Very few horses were used . . . the wagons were almost universally pulled by a team of oxen, or a team of mules.

Mules and horses needed grass or grain to stay healthy, but oxen could feed on pretty much anything. Mules and horses needed to eat constantly, but an ox could store food in any of four stomachs and could be fed at morning and evening and work all day.

Mules were especially difficult to control, and both horses and mules would wander from camp, but oxen stayed put and were easy to control.

Oxen were a third as much as mules and much less than that for horses. An entire team of oxen could be purchased for the cost of a horse.

Oxen were good in mud and slippery conditions, but horses and mules were not. On the other hand, oxen were not good in heat, so they tended to be used in the summer in the morning and evening with a siesta during the heat of the day. Mules could do a third again the number of miles that oxen could, but were not very strong, and had poor stamina.

Oxen could use a yoke and push their load, but horses and mules needed complicated harnesses to pull their load. Hooking up oxen in the morning took much less time than hooking up mules or horses.

Once you got to your location, oxen could plow and do other things and were considered good meat, but horses and mules were less useful at the destination and were considered poor meat.