Historicizing the Horse (V). The Swift Blue One (Tejas)
Historicizing the Horse (V). The Swift Blue One (Tejas)

Summary/Abstract: This is the fifths study in a series dedicated to analyzing the process of historicizing the horse in Native American cultures and it focuses on its representation in The Swift Blue One, a Tejas/Caddo story. The blue horse in this story is drafted as a synergistic coalescence of history and myth (it manifests spiritual powers in a factual context) and this allows the narrative to historically legitimize and mythically dimensionalize it. As the horse transfers meaning(s) from Spanish to Tejas culture, it also ensures a cross-realm navigation of representation(s), an approach consistent with the usual myth-historical background in Native American stories. Rather than trying to explain the historicization of the horse in Tejas culture, the story narrates what can be considered a precursory stage, that of the emergence of the first herds of mustangs – the Spanish horses that became wild and ran in herds, which, in their turn, would set in motion the incipient phase of historicizing the horse.

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