Native America Calling: Reassessing the history of horses

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Tuesday, April 11, 2023

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Reassessing the history of horses

A new study confirms many tribes’ oral histories that Native Americans utilized horses long before Europeans entered the picture.

Previous theories attributed Spanish settlers with introducing horses to the Indigenous people they encountered in North America. Today on Native America Calling, we dig into a new study, published in the journal Science, that finds anthropological evidence which suggests tribes domesticated and bred horses almost a century before the Spanish brought horses to tribes in New Mexico.

A horse rider during the June 25, 2015, opening of the “Royal Legacy: Honoring Miss Warm Springs Past and Present” exhibit at the Museum at Warm Springs on the Warm Springs Reservation in Oregon. Photo: Alyssa Macy / Spillyay Tymoo

Guests on Native America Calling

Chance Ward (Lakota from the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe), grad student at the University of Colorado Boulder and a graduate research assistant at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History

Carlton Shield Chief Gover (Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma), assistant professor of anthropology at Indiana University and curator of public archaeology at the Indiana University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

University of Colorado Boulder: Studying bones to uncover the history of horses in the West

For Native American cultures across the West, horses have been a fixture for ages. Indigenous histories, archeology & DNA show that role extends to the 1600s, a century before European records suggest. https://t.co/wXnUNr7tye

📷: Sacred Way Sanctuary#NSFfunded pic.twitter.com/rJQqCS3yPN
— U.S. National Science Foundation (@NSF) March 30, 2023

Sunday Read 📚
An international team of researchers, including several scientists from #CUBoulder, recently revealed what might be the most exhaustive history of horses in the American West to date.

Learn more about their findings here! ➡️ https://t.co/HFlLfltc4D pic.twitter.com/1EeF6qaq8x
— CU Boulder 🦬 (@CUBoulder) April 2, 2023