The Horse and the Indian

The Horse and the Indian. . , The horse represented more than a new mode of transportation to the American Indian , it represented a new way of life. The animals began filtering north from Spanish settlements in the seventeenth century, and the once-impenetrable great Plains cane alive with complex cultures based on the buffalo hunt. With horses, the Indians were better able to get food, to protect territory, to fight, to trade; they became more prosperous and powerful than ever before. Indian warriors rode with dazzling skill and daring; formidable opponents in combat, they were among the world’s finest light cavalry fighters. Largely because of the horse, the Indian nations of the Plains successfully resisted white conquest until the eve of the twentieth century. , The horse has come. Almost overnight, it seems, he has captured the west; and by his coming the west has been awakened, transformed. , , H. R. Sass, Hoofs on the Prairie, 1936 , The Ute Indians, one of the first native peoples in North America to acquire the horse, may have obtained their first animals near here. Rounding up strays from Spanish settlements, the Utes amassed sizable herds by A.D. 1700. A powerful asset both in trade and in combat, the horse transformed the Utes from a scattered people into a dominant nation. Their vast realm stretched from the high prairies to the Green River, and from the Rio Grande basin to the steppes of Wyoming. The very image of American Indian might, the Utes successfully protected their homeland until the last third of the nineteenth century., [photo caption] Famed Ute leader, Piah, c. 1874