Patent, Dorothy Hinshaw. The Horse and the Plains Indians.

Patent, Dorothy Hinshaw.  The Horse and the Plains Indians.  Houghton Mifflin/Clarion     2012  98p   $17.99  978-0-547-12551-0  ms  Nonfiction  E-BN

America’s seminal vision of the Plains Indians always includes a horse.  However, before the Spanish came to this continent, there were none.  The horse became part of the great mystique of the Conquistadors and helped subdue the native tribes throughout Mexico and the Southwest.  When the Indians of the Plains tribes discovered how to catch and train wild horses, their lifestyles changed enormously. The book clearly explains how horses gave the Indians greatly increased hunting and raiding power and more freedom to expand their ranges.  When this new activity brought them into direct competition with white settlers, the Army forced them onto reservations and took away their horses.  Patent and Munoz have produced a wonderful book filled with lively, informative text and outstanding full-color and black-and-white photographs and period illustrations that demonstrate how strong the influence of the horse became in the lifestyles and cultures of the Plains Indians.  This beautiful book follows the path of the tribes into the present day and shows how important the horse still is in their daily lives.  The book begins with an author’s note that explains how improvements in the camera led to important photographic records of Plains culture, and it ends with a bibliography and an index.          

Indians of North America-Horses                       --Susan Ogintz