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No matter where you travel on the vast Navajo Nation horses run wild. There are old ones, young ones, big ones, and small ones, but almost never are there fat, healthy-looking animals on the range.
I have often wondered how they survive in this difficult environment, where there seems precious little feed and even less water.
But somehow they persist. Despite the heat, the cold, the brutal wind, and even the pounding dust, and regardless of their apparent neglect, there they are, ever-present.
For many reasons, horses have become a permanent fixture of the Navajo environment and its people.
Historic Spanish records suggest horses spread throughout the area after the Pueblo Revolt in 1680, when local tribes forced Spanish colonizers out of what would later become New Mexico.
Recently discovered evidence, however, suggests the animals had been introduced into the American West by the early 1600s, well before Indigenous peoples encountered Europeans.
Interestingly, this information tracks closely with oral traditions of Southwest tribes, which frequently describe the importance of this new development in Native American autonomy.
In the Ethnologic Dictionary of the Navajo Language dated 1929, the Franciscan Fathers mention Navajo people keeping horses for breeding, riding, and herding purposes.
The fathers go on to say these Navajo horses were rarely fed, instead they were discharged to roam the seemingly barren landscape and turn up whatever they could find to eat.
Since modern horses are not indigenous to the Southwest, their arrival brought new lifeways, and they came to symbolize speed, wealth, and power.
Horses had a profound impact on Navajo people, enlarging their range of travel and increasing their connections both inside and outside the tribe.
Navajo horse owners became free to attend distant ceremonies and interact with otherwise unknown people. That altered social relations and allowed ancient rites to take on a whole new character. Horses brought an era of liberation, change, and prosperity to the Navajo.
Many argue horses are the most important symbol of the unconquerable spirit of Navajo people, and that they have come to define the American West.
As a result, horses play a significant role in the legends and stories of Navajo people.
Some say the god Begochiddy created horses for the Navajo people, others say it was Mother Earth and Father Sky. Either way, according to age-old legends, horses were created and gifted to Navajo people by the gods and therefore occupy a unique place in Navajo lives and lore.
Early Southwest commerce also relied on horses to sustain their model. It is said that trading posts were established to capture the business associated with people living within one day’s ride.
Until the end of World War II, trading post operators might be the only contact Navajo people had with non-Navajos. Therefore, they became the post office, bank, credit agency, news provider, and community center for their patrons.
Consequently, trading posts often maintained guest hogans and horse corrals for Navajo people who traveled long distances to barter, sell, purchase, or trade goods.
After the war soldiers returned to the Reservation and things began to change: roads were built and automobiles chugged along the newly paved paths; hard currency became available, altering the well-developed barter economy; refrigeration arrived, allowing new products and longer storage times; people became mobile and traveled in earnest.
Pickup trucks proliferated and horses went unused. On the Navajo Nation change came hard and fast, but those sturdy equines endured and remained part of the landscape and an integral part of Navajo culture.
As John F. Kennedy said before he met his tragic end in Dallas, TX, “Change is the law of life, and those who look only to the past are certain to miss the future.”
When I drive the Reservation, as I often do, and see Navajo horses grazing off in the distance, I am reminded of their challenging history and am confident that they, like Navajo people themselves, are sturdy enough to hold their place as an important ingredient in the future of the Southwest, and America in general. No matter how thin the resources, and no matter how badly they are neglected, they prosper.
In this “post-pandemic” world where nearly everything has turned upside down, it can be difficult to fully comprehend the transformation. Bob Dylan said it best when he stated, “There is nothing so stable as change.”
Speaking of Navajo horses, the Franciscan Fathers of the early 1900s concluded, “Yet they thrive where other of their kind might starve, and in addition give remarkable tests of endurance.”
That seems true for Navajo horses as well as Navajo people in general. To paraphrase the feminists of the 1960s, nevertheless, they persist.