Historicizing the Horse (II). The Tale of the Wind Horse (Choctaw)
Historicizing the Horse (II). The Tale of the Wind Horse (Choctaw)

Summary/Abstract: This article continues the analysis of the process of historicizing the horse in Native American cultures by exploring its representation(s) in a Choctaw myth – The Tale of the Wind Horse. The horse’s role in transforming tribal life at all levels generated a need to incorporate it in the body of knowledge that provided distinguishable identity and helped set differences of representation between various tribes. And since myths and stories were the repository of tribal knowledge, the horse was submerged deep into the mythical realm - an approach that manifested throughout all horse cultures – in order to make it logically fit in with a tribe’s narrative. In creation myths the horse was tamed, in a cultural sense, and made a familiar presence, in a historical sense. The horse was a new historical reality for the Choctaw; embedding it in myth was a method used to internalize it in the tribe’s narrative and the denouement shows a symbolic transfer of the horse from the mythical realm to the historical one. The analysis focuses on how the process of enculturating the horse was conditioned by one of mythicization and historicization.

• Details
• Contents