" Horses had opened new possibilities. They allowed men to hunt buffalo more productively than ever before, to range farther, to make devastating raids against other tribes. They relieved women of some onerous duties, such as lugging possessions from camp to camp. They tipped the balance, in population growth and territorial expansion, between hunting tribes and farming tribes, favoring the former. They also replaced the only previously domesticated animal in North America, the dog, which was much smaller and weaker and had to be fed meat. A horse could live off the land, eating what people and dogs didn’t want: grass. When drought or winter snows made grass unavailable, it could even survive on cottonwood bark.
The new animals were so prized that they began to fill a more abstract cultural role: as accrued wealth. If a man was savvy, ambitious, and lucky, he could amass a large herd; his excess horses could then be sold or traded or given away (in exchange for heightened prestige) or, if he let his guard down, stolen. Accrued wealth ushered in social stratification, and for the first time on the Plains there were rich Indians and poor Indians. Along with that novelty had come another: the acquisition of firearms from white traders, often in barter for beaver pelts, buffalo robes, or horses. These were momentous changes, bringing glorious highs and inglorious side effects, including the overharvest of buffalo even before market hunters arrived. Horsemanship also led to new severities of intertribal warfare as well as to resistance against white settlers and the Army, and eventually toward the sad endings at sites such as Palo Duro Canyon, the Bear Paw Mountains in Montana (where Chief Joseph’s Nez Perce were attacked as they tried to escape to Canada), and Wounded Knee in South Dakota.
The negative aspects of the horse revolution have passed into history, but horses remain vastly important to many Native Americans, especially the Plains tribes, as objects of pride, as tokens of tradition, and for the ancient values they help channel into a difficult present: pageantry, discipline, prowess, concern for other living creatures, and the passing of skills across generations.”
