The Comanche were one of the first tribes to acquire the horse from the Spanish, through trade and raiding. They considered the horse a relative and a great gift from the Creator.
Today the image of Indians on horseback is iconic. But Native Americans never set eyes on a horse before the 1400s when Europeans brought them to the New World as a weapon of conquest. The Comanche and other native peoples adapted the horse as a powerful ally in the fight to protect their land and way of life.
The Comanche consider the horse a relative and a gift from the Creator. With the horse, they became one of the greatest Native warrior cultures in North America and built one of the most extensive indigenous empires on the continent before their culture was nearly wiped out be white colonialism.
Watch this wonderful five-minute video (link below) about the Comanche and the horse, produced by PBS as part of their Native America series that first aired in 2018.
PRESS THIS LINK TO VIEW:
"The Comanche and The Horse" originally posted on Facebook and NotesfromtheFrontier.com on March 8, 2020
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If you to strip away the European European narrative and listen to the Native People's oral history then you learn that the Native People had horses long before the Europeans came to the America's. Native People had horses in the northeast of the US when Europeans came off the boats. When they crossed into Kentucky and Tennessee Native People had horses,gaited horses! The settlers coveted these horses and traded and bred them.
Thanks so much for your comment, Enor. Yes, that’s what my research indicates also. Lewis and Clark wrote in their journals of 1804-1806 that the Nez Perce’s horse husbandry techniques were far superior to whites & that their gelding techniques were far more efficient and the horses mended quickly and with no infection, compared to white techniques. They asked the Nez Perce to geld a number of their stallions.
The Indigenous people in the Americas were quite adept with horses from the moment they came in contact with them. That is what I gather from all I have read about them in North America and South America. I bought a book while I was in Argentina about the horse in South America after colonization. Natives seem to use the training methods that are more in line with how horses are handled these days