As usual, a misconception about indigenous peoples is abolished after another week of class. I particularly enjoyed the presentation on the history of the horse and how it affected life for plainspeople. I had initially assumed that Indians acquired horses over time and merely used them to travel across the plains. I didn't realize that horses created such a burden for tribes, especially those in the northern plains regions. I also had never heard of the connection between horses and bison depletion. It seems that overhunting wasn't the only culprit in the decreased bison population; horses' huge appetites contributed to the starving bison.
The violence among tribes over possession of the horses was also a new concept to me. I learned about the raiding of horses, but I never realized they caused such immense tension between tribes and within tribes as well.
I suppose horses are yet another European commodity that helped and hurt indigenous peoples.
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I also thought the horse's contribution to the demise of the buffalo was interesting. I hadn't heard that as a reasong either. I found it interesting to hear that how the horse, along with other factors like over-hunting, caused the demise of the buffalo populations to happen so quickly. The quickness of the buffalo's demise certainly was something that the Indians had to be caught off guard by.
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