Native American Horse Racing in the
Amelia-Roisin Seifert – 3rd Year PhD – Social Anthropology
Thesis Title : Contemporary Native American Horse Culture
Introduction
“We’ve been racing horses as long as we’ve had
them”
Historically, the nature of Indian competitiveness and the ubiquity of
horses in Native culture after their initial introduction meant that
horse racing was a standard feature of any large native gathering in
the plateau culture area, and often a cause for a gathering in its own
right. Native American horse racing today has consolidated into
what can be typologized into three distinct but related forms:
mountain, flat track and indian relay racing.
The relationship between traditional native horse culture and the
wider horse racing sports-cape is complex. The evolution of these
three forms of equestrian sport shows three responses to global
modernity. Mountain racing is a preserved ‘pure’ autochthonous
tradition, flat track racing - an ‘anglo’ format, is actively
appropriated by native racers, and is in keeping with traditional
cultural priorities and relay racing is a creative modern
syncretisation of elements of track racing and traditional native
horse culture, which is harnessed to a powerful movement towards
native self-determination.
Mountain Racing – Hills that Make a Man
“The Elders always taught me was, when you come to race
something like this, it’s a changing of your life, you’re saying you’re
becoming a man, it’s a step forward in your life, you’re becoming a
man, and moving up into your peoples’ structure. ”
A glance into the past would find what is now referred to as mountain racing
the default among native people. Mountain races, sometimes referred to as
‘warrior’ races, are classically raced down – and sometimes also up and across
– the rocky ridges prevalent in the northwest, sometimes including a water
crossing at the bottom of the slope. These races are mostly run with saddles,
but it is not unheard of for an occasional traditionalist to compete bareback.
They are a test of bravery in which horse and rider compete against the
landscape.
The most famous mountain race is the world famous Omak Suicide Race,
pictured below. Typical of this extreme race form, this race is more a rite of
passage than an athletic event. These are powerful displays of traditionally
valued warrior attributes, and are almost exclusively male. These races also
remain relatively unchanged from their original form.
21 st Century
The Research
My research area (pictured left), was the North-western tri-
state area of Oregon, Washington and Idaho. In traditional
Native American anthropology, this area is referred to as the
plateau culture area. People here adopted the horse
extensively around 1700. I had the honour of living with and
studying horse people with native racing people from the
Confederated Colville Tribes and the Confederated Tribes of
the Umatilla Reservation (marked with a star on the map).
I spent two summers (2013 and 2014) on the backstage of the
three overlapping racing circuits with the Umatilla Express
Relay team, and a Colville flat racing family. The racing season
runs from May to October. Competitors drive hundreds of
miles to compete with each other across the northwest. I
tagged along to dusty race tracks and rodeos across the West,
as well as spending months watching and sometimes
participating in training sessions back at the ranches. My data
is a combination of interview material, observation, and
Tribes with whom I
peripheral participation.
conducted research
The Research Area
Flat Track Racing Indian Relay
Indian relay, the third and most prevalent pan-tribal racing form, is the result of
The fringe of the flat track racing sphere is a contact zone, a shared space inhabited
the very recent formal sportization of traditional Native horsemanship. Exclusive
by both native and non-native racing people. Flat track racing is the standardised,
to native people, and created recently out of a creolisation of flat track practices
international form of horse racing familiar to most lay people the world over. Now
almost exclusive to thoroughbred race horses, flat track races take place on a
and technologies infused with the native equestrian ‘warrior’ ethos, Indian relay
is both modern and traditional, illustrating how these concepts need not be
groomed oval track, with horses wearing light racing tack, and jockeys perching
mutually exclusive.
above their backs in colourful ‘silks’. The flat track world includes both the official
government regulated tracks, and small, unsanctioned ‘bush-track’ races which are
As with the consolidation of other national folk sports, Indian relay came to the
carried out in the image of the official model.
fore in a political climate of cultural self-determination. The rise of Indian relay
Native Americans participate as owners, trainers and jockeys. Native people often
as a serious Native American heritage sport only really began in the early 1990s,
a time of wider cultural renaissance within the Native American community. It
constitute an ethnic majority at bush track ‘meets’, which can take place at rodeos,
continues to gain momentum as a sport, recently culminating in the
agricultural fairs or on private tracks, but are in a minority on official tracks.
establishment in 2013 of an official national governing body (the Professional
Participation in the flat-track world entails native racers entering into the peripheries
Indian Horse Racing Association) and championship league.
of the globalized racing sport-scape. Through adapting to and participating in
standard track racing, native people have selectively appropriated this equestrian
Involving a team of three or four horses, a jockey, and three holders, Indian relay
cultural form. However, racing fine horses have long been a valued pursuit in native
is a unique multi-species team sport. Ridden bareback, as this is seen as more
culture, and expanding on this interest is generally regarded as a respectable
‘culturally appropriate’, relay races take place on oval dirt tracks, usually around
development of a native equestrian career, rather than external cultural
half a mile long, and are based on one rider making dramatic vaulting changes
contamination.
between horses, aided by his team of holders. Relay takes place at fairs, rodeos,
pow wows, reservation tracks and occasionally as an exhibition event on national
level tracks.
CONCLUSION
Despite their fairly recent introduction to the North American continent, Native Americans and horses,
as the Indian saying goes, ‘took to each other like long lost relatives’. Horses diffused northwards across
the American continent, reaching north-westerntribes around 100 years before their first contact with
white men. Horses extended rather than changed the lives of the indigenous hunter-gatherers of the
American Northwest. In the period of American Indian history known by some as the ‘equestrian nomad
era’, Native Americans followed their usual annual round, but were able to range further, hunt more
easily, and transport belongings and food with ease. Horses soon became the default token of wealth. To
be rich in horses accorded one social status, and equestrian skill was a vital form of embodied social
capital. While horses are no longer a pragmatic form of wealth, equestrian skill and owning fine horses is
still a form of ‘native capital’: social capital specifically deriving from living an admirable, culturally
valued native American lifestyle.
The equine participants in the native racing world are not merely equipment; they are part of the eque-
cultural social sphere. In the Indian horse racing world, we see an example of the ways in which horses,
while no longer materially relied upon, continue to be central to native cultural identity and
fundamentally implicated in native projects of cultural self-determination. Indian relay in particular
provides an example of a new tradition that is entirely in keeping with a heritage of human-animal
interrelationship, and represents a powerful public gesture of survival, vitality and ingenuity in the face
of acculturation.