Event Title
Equines and Colonialism in the Ohio River Valley
Session
Session 6: Horses and Identity
Location
Mary Tefft White Cultural Center, University Library
Start Date
1-10-2023 9:00 AM
End Date
1-10-2023 10:30 AM
Description
Kentucky’s days as a borderland of Anglo-American settlement through its trying times as a border state during the American Civil War make the region a place unique from the rest of the United States. As the self-proclaimed Horse Capital of the World, it is fitting that the horse illustrates life in the First American West. My ongoing doctoral dissertation—the larger research project from which this paper stems—grapples with the extra-functional roles of the horse and examines the animal’s influence in Kentucky’s recurrent liminal position. More specifically, the dissertation argues that the horse influenced power dynamics with regards to race, class, and masculinity: factors that shaped Bluegrass identity.
European activity in the Ohio River Valley began in the late seventeenth century, and one of the first expeditions—that of Gabriel Arthur and James Needham in 1673—depended on the labor of enslaved Native Americans and horses. This paper situates Kentucky in a larger agricultural and equine economy that unfurled across Native land. Early European settlers observed the fertileness and abundance of Kentucky’s ecology and soon imported crops and livestock from the eastern colonies. Not surprisingly, this influx of Europeans and their ideas caused tension. The Bluegrass region, in particular, hosted the bloodiest conflicts between the English and the Native populations as settlers sought to establish new lives west of the Appalachians.
Recommended Citation
Krueger, Christian, "Equines and Colonialism in the Ohio River Valley" (2023). Equine History Collective Conference. 4.
https://docs.rwu.edu/equinehistory-conference/2023/sunday/4
Equines and Colonialism in the Ohio River Valley
Mary Tefft White Cultural Center, University Library
Kentucky’s days as a borderland of Anglo-American settlement through its trying times as a border state during the American Civil War make the region a place unique from the rest of the United States. As the self-proclaimed Horse Capital of the World, it is fitting that the horse illustrates life in the First American West. My ongoing doctoral dissertation—the larger research project from which this paper stems—grapples with the extra-functional roles of the horse and examines the animal’s influence in Kentucky’s recurrent liminal position. More specifically, the dissertation argues that the horse influenced power dynamics with regards to race, class, and masculinity: factors that shaped Bluegrass identity.
European activity in the Ohio River Valley began in the late seventeenth century, and one of the first expeditions—that of Gabriel Arthur and James Needham in 1673—depended on the labor of enslaved Native Americans and horses. This paper situates Kentucky in a larger agricultural and equine economy that unfurled across Native land. Early European settlers observed the fertileness and abundance of Kentucky’s ecology and soon imported crops and livestock from the eastern colonies. Not surprisingly, this influx of Europeans and their ideas caused tension. The Bluegrass region, in particular, hosted the bloodiest conflicts between the English and the Native populations as settlers sought to establish new lives west of the Appalachians.
