How Were Native Societies in America Affected by the Introduction of the Horse - Essay Example

? How were native (first nation) societies in America affected by the introduction of the horse? History and Political Sciences 12/04/2011 Introduction The term “Native Americans” is used to represent indigenous people of the America, who had been living there prior to European colonization. The term encompasses a multitude of distinct tribes, ethnic groups and states of which many are still persisting as political communities.1 Throughout their history prior to European contact, Native Americans have been dynamically instituting change in their lives through development of inventive and creative culture. Native Americans always adjusted according to postulating and diverse environments and they also remolded the natural environments to fulfill with their needs. After the arrival of Europeans, many different societies emerged having different languages, ethnical conventions, and history. Europeans had an extremely devastating impact on the New World environment as they cleared vast piece of ground of woodlands and unwittingly introduced a huge variety of Old World weeds. They introduced domesticated animals who transubstantiated the ecology for grazing animals which consumed many indigenous plants to survive.2 Despite all the certain differences, Native Americans also benefitted by the European contact which eternally changed the livings and cultures of the Native Americans. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the profound impact of introduction of horse on Native American societies. Former horse species were eradicated by climatic alterations and disappeared entirely from North America. For the first time around 3000 years ago, horses were domesticated in European regions and used for conveyance of both humans and freight.3 The horse had been extinct in the America for 10,000 years before European colonists arrived and it was reintroduced when the Spaniards, inhabitants of Spain, brought their higher-up breed of Arab horses to North America in the 1600s, transforming the culture of the Native Americans nearly infinitely.4 Impact of Horse Introduction on Native Americans Culture The horse held particular attraction and brought the best acknowledged and most spectacular change.5 Clark Wissler (1927, p. 154 cited in Ewers 2001) has called the time period from 1540 to 1880 in the history of the Native Americans "the horse culture period." The arrival of horses produced a cultural revolution among Native Americans and radically remolded the livings of the Americans by transmutation of transportation, hunting and warfare. Some groups called horses as elk dogs, because initially Native Americans did not know the use of these huge animals.6 Before the early 1700s the Native Americans depended on human beings or dogs for transporting their loads. Some famous groups of Native Americans such as Sioux, Kiowa and Cheyenne shortly determined that the horse could become crucial element of their lives, and its usage diffused to other tribes. Horses were being traded and sometimes allowed to wander away and even got stolen from a tribe. They were used to pull heavy loads, faster and farther than a human or a dog, through merely bounded poles made from young trees which were primitively designed for dogs and easily adapted to horses subsequently.7 Many Natives exchanged their goods for the horses which helped them get released from the particular area of the Plains and agricultural environment of their villages. Horses altered Native’s culture and way of life to become nomadic and mounted hunters as with horses, people can carry heavy loads, travel across long distances and hunt for their food and other needs. They searched for game particularly for hunting the thundery, roaming herds of bison.8 The vast herds of bison, which departed seasonally big distances from place to place, could move much faster than a man on foot and there was small cover on the vast plains for hunters to hide themselves for stalking which made it exceedingly hard for them to hunt. Only adept hunters managed to kill bovid using techniques like approaching them with cover of wolf hides or forcing the herds to move over a precipice, but this did not proved to be a much effective and efficient method for hunting. The Native Americans impressively used horses for more efficient hunting of bison as with riding on an adept horse a hunter could outrun a bison. They got a tremendous advantage through use of horse in hunting as this was the basic of life in the vast region.9 Those bovine were hunted not only for their meat but also for their hides which were processed into rugs to export them to east and Europe. Horses evidently flourished Native trade with adding new particulars into their lives through a far more prosperous approach to conventional trade with other tribes. Native Peoples of the Plains to the Columbia plateau lived in far greater teepees and lodges and they could move and relocate with the aid of horses. They could buy a range of items from New England including small-arms, English mantles, carpets, coffee mills, etc. Those commodities were a great evidence of how the Native Americans were connected to a worldwide economy through the horse. With the benefits of expanding trade, Natives enjoyed benefits of transportation and travelling with the help of horse which can be viewed as an unprecedented affluence. The observed trade invigoration resulted in increased travelling of people as Natives could travel so much faster and farther than before.10 A native group could walk on foot for few miles a day, whereas riding on the horse back a camp could move approx 30 miles or more a day, and a warrior group on horseback could travel more than 100 miles in one or two days.11 Horses could also be used for military purposes. They were used to make flash forays into enemy villages at significant distances. Sometimes the horses got stolen which induced interminable animosities. Hunting areas were divided among different tribes and most of the time when game inclined to turn out less plenteous around tribal centers, Natives entered other tribes’ hunting areas which inflamed furious wars among rivals.12 Much of the West is one of the planet’s huge grassland where the horse culture first arose. Domesticated animals such as deer, bison, elk, prong bucks, or other grazers eat up the plants and grasses for survival due to which Natives had to delay their activities of hunting and wait for animals to grow up. Horses are herbivores and get their energy by eating grasses. Native Peoples as a matter of fact had acquired extra energy in terms of force and power by jumping onto the back of an adept domesticated horse and instructing it to act for their purposes such as hunting or trading or inducing war. Because of that, people abruptly multiplied their energy ten times over by having direct approach to the power of grasses. That was the heart and soul of the horse culture and swept across different tribes. Effectively it transmuted people from groups like Comanche or Sioux or Nez Perce mounted on horseback into a new creature which had the brainpower and imagination of a human being and the speed, grass-fed power, and beautify of a horse. According to Momaday, such a person had turned to be one of those mythical creatures that are a centaur, half-man and half-stallion. Almost all the tribes such as Blackfeet, Cheyennes, Comanches, Crows, Kiowas, Lakota Sioux and many others, that whites discovered on the Great Plains, transmigrated there throughout the era of horse culture, drawn by the novel approach to power and energy.13 Some tribes gave up a comparatively passive life style to turn horse nomads in less than a generation. People got to have more frequent contact with remote tribes which ultimately enhanced the likeliness of rivalry and warfare. Ultimately, a person's wealth got to be evaluated in horses in most tribes, and those who could gain control of a horse from an enemy were being given great honors.14 One of the outstanding sagas of human contact with the animal world is the adventure story of the relationship of Native Americans and horses. Traditionally, Native Americans have considered the animals in human lives as fellow creatures associated with them sharing a common destiny. American Indians, which some tribes call the Horse Nation, found horses as a friend, cheering and useful in times of peace, and audacious in times of war. Through the 1800s, Native Americans horsemanship was fabled and the endurance of many Native peoples, particularly on the Great Plains of North America, depended upon horses. Incorporating horses into the cultural and spiritual lives of Native Americans, and producing prestigious artwork of the bravery and beauty of the horse, reflects paying homage to horses. The horse culture brought brilliant but tragically brief glory days of horsemen, lasting merely over a century.15 This has been just a memory today as with the destruction of the bison herds, military defeat and white colonization, the beautiful culture of these wonderful majestic nomadic hunters and warriors was tattered.16 However, the adhesion between Native Americans and the horses has stayed potent and substantive through the generations.17 Works Cited CliffsNotes.com. European Contact. Retrieved 25 Nov 2011 From: . Ewers, John C., and Candace S. Greene. 2001. The horse in Blackfoot Indian culture with comparative materials from other western tribes. Washington, D.C. Retrieved 25 Nov 2011 From: Fox, Bayard. 2005. Indian Horse Culture, NATIVE AMERICAN LEGENDS. Retrieved 25 Nov 2011 From: Johansen, Bruce E., and Barry Pritzker. 2008. Encyclopedia of American Indian history. Retrieved 25 Nov 2011 From: Mintz, S. (2007). Native American Voices. Digital History. Retrieved 25 Nov 2011 From: Native Americans, The Plains Culture, United States History. Retrieved 25 Nov 2011 From: Sage, Henry J. 2006. Native American Cultures. Retrieved 25 Nov 2011 From: West, Elliott. 2011. The Impact of Horse Culture, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Retrieved 25 Nov 2011 From: Endnotes Read More