“Skilful Jockies” and “Good Sadlers”
This chapter introduces and assesses the roles horses played in the economies and societies of eighteenth-century southeastern Indians. Villagers throughout the region found horses essential in hunting, trade, and war. If the future of borderlands history centers partly on issues of spatial mobility and ambiguities of power, then horses are especially relevant to borderlands scholarship. In the early South, horses facilitated cross-cultural and economic exchanges while undermining the structures of authority for both Indians and whites. A closer look at the interrelationship between Indians, horses, and the environment affords new insights into borderlands history by underscoring how human and animal mobility not only complicated territorial boundaries and cross-cultural interactions but also subtly modified the socioeconomic foundations and ecological landscape of southeastern Indians.