Historicizing the Horse in Native American Cultures (IX). How the Crows Got Their First Horses (Crow)
Historicizing the Horse in Native American Cultures (IX). How the Crows Got Their First Horses (Crow)

Summary/Abstract: A Siouan-speaking tribe, the Crow traditionally occupied lands in the area of Yellowstone (where they still live today) and were renowned buffo hunters, whose nomadic lifestyle was profoundly transformed by the acquisition of the horse. Quick to capitalize on the new animal, the Crow became expert horsemen and soon got involved in horse raiding and trading, How the Crows Got Their First Horses relies on the pattern of mythicizing historical reality in the attempt to culturally internalize the acquisition of the horse. It acknowledges historical accuracy but cannot integrate it in a lucrative, collectively acceptable manner within the Crow system of knowledge. It was through myth, the repository of tribal knowledge and a “bearer of possible worlds” (Ricoeur 1991), that the horse could be ideologically repositioned and historically recontextualized – mandatory stages of a process that led to cultural embeddedness and historical functionality.

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