The Social Lives of Horses: Comanche Equestrianism in New Mexico

Summary

Over the past century, a great deal of scholarly attention has been paid to Plains horse culture, particularly focusing on how horses transformed the economic practices of nomadic people and the ecology of the Great Plains. As one of the most iconic equestrian cultures of the eighteenth century, the Comanche have been a common subject of these anthropological and historical investigations. Recent studies of the Comanche have focused on the role of horses in facilitating their rise from small-scale hunter-gatherers into major economic and political players. Although the impact of horse on Comanche culture was certainly profound, emphasizing the functional effects of horses glosses over other important elements of the human-animal relationship. Indigenous approaches to human-animal relations offer one alternative interpretive lens to these traditional lines of inquiry. Indigenous philosophy is holistic and places humans and animals on the same behavioral continuum, merging the distinction between nature and culture, the functional and the social. This paper draws on indigenous philosophy to interpret a growing body of Comanche rock art in the Northern Rio Grande region. Through a discussion of this material archive, I explore the social life of horses within Comanche culture and the material manifestations of this relationship.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20190