AHG Seminar - 28 January: The Horse Ground

The Horse Ground: Equine-Human Relationships in early Kentucky, 1760-1790

Catriona M. Paul, University of Limerick

The proposed paper would explore equine-human relationships in the colonial and revolutionary world of the American backcountry at the end of the eighteenth century. In this period, Kentucky was riven by conflict between Indigenous Americans and settler-colonists, and by the violence that played out between Loyalist and Patriot. Presenting evidence of the co-dependency of humans and horses in this war-torn era, the paper argues that horses and humans were shaped by their interactions with each other, and that these relationships informed the history and identity of the state of Kentucky through the nineteenth century and beyond.

A principal source for this paper are the interviews with settler-colonists carried out by the Reverend John Dabney Shane in the 1840s. In a recent article for Animal Studies Journal, Fiona Probyn-Rapsey and Lynette Russell argue for a ‘triadic’ approach to Human-Animal Studies – ‘always involving at least three sides; Settler-Coloniser, Indigene and Animal'. Careful interpretation of the Shane interviews and the horse stories and equine behaviours therein described, presents the opportunity to identify colonisation – of space, of non-human animals, of Indigenous people – in action, whilst also unpicking those attitudes, ‘disarming colonial logics’ and recognising the agency of non-human actors.

References:
Fiona Probyn-Rapsey and Lynette Russell, ‘Indigenous, Settler, Animal; a Triadic Approach’, Animal Studies Journal, 11(2), 2022, 38-68.
Dinesh Joseph Wadiwel, ‘Foreword’ in Kelly Struthers Montford and Chloë Taylor, Colonialism and Animality: Anti-Colonial Perspectives in Critical Animal Studies (Routledge, 2020).