Honors Program: A pathway to excellence.

HON 201/401 Horse and Culture

Horse and Culture will study, explore, and contemplate the relationship between man and horse through history, and attempt to arrive at certain conclusions regarding the contemporary relationship of man and horse in America, and in particular, the influence of the horse has had recently on the University of Montana Western and Beaverhead County. The behavioral and cultural affect of man and horse on one another will be studied from the time the two species met on the savannahs of central Asia thousands of years ago. The rapid development of the Native Americans' relationship with the horse will be used as the model for the adaptability of man and horse to one another in the pre-industrial age. The many aspects of how man's partnership with the horse allowed for the change and expansion of human culture through history and pre-history will be researched, studied, and explored with the intent that this knowledge be applied to contemporary times to further our understanding and improve our relationship with the horse.

The scope of this honors class will encompass the co-evolution of man and horse--horse's influence on man, man's influence on the horse, both historically and contemporarily. The evolution of the horse will be studied from the origins of eohippus, or the dawn horse, 60 million years ago. This knowledge will be correlated to horse's eventual close association with man, and the class will attempt to better understand our relationship with horse based on science, history, and mythology. The horse has demonstrated itself as a survivor, and its latest evolutionary strategy to team up with man has been successful thus far, although during the honeymoon period of mechanized transit and transport in the mid 20th century the demise of the horse seemed possible, if not imminent.

It was not until man--in the leisure time created by this industrial age--rediscovered horses as partners for sports, competition, and recreational activities, and thus began the transition (and training) of horse from indentured servant to partner and companion. By the 1960s the dwindling horse population had rebounded dramatically, and today recreation is the current wave on which both horse and man are riding high. Gone are the days of conquest with the horse. This coin of growth has its flipside: Never before in the annals of man and horse have so many people with so little knowledge and experience in dealing with horses occupied themselves with the training and enjoyment of these majestic animals. This fact generated the development and has contributed greatly to the popularity and gravity of Equine Studies at the University of Montana Western.

Students will attempt to identify which characteristics of man and horse allowed the two species to become interdependent and develop the partnership they have today. Other questions posed will be: How did the horse shape human evolution? How did (does) man shape the horse's evolution and behavior? In what ways have man and horse shaped one another, and how are they shaping one another today, culturally, physically, and psychologically? Examples of specific topics could include: Why did the Blackfeet Tribe choose to allow over one third of its nation to starve to death rather than eat their horses after the buffalo were exterminated and the United States government failed to deliver their promised winter rations during the Starvation Winter of 1883-84? Why are the Japanese and French seeing a resurgence in the consumption of horsemeat? Why don't Americans eat horse?

Field Experiences: Horse behavior will be observed, documented, and analyzed in wild, domestic, and pastoral settings. Man-horse interactions will be observed in local and regional agricultural scenarios (ranches and farms), entertainment venues (rodeos and horse shows), recreational settings (dude ranches, trail rides, horsepacking trips), educational settings (horsetraining clinics and the University of Montana Western. experiential classrooms), and equine dominated geographic settings (Beaverhead County and rural and reservation Montana), and historical settings (Blackfeet starvation-winter locale, Big Hole and Bear's Paw Battlefields). Activities planned may include field trips utilizing horses (backcountry travel and camping), visits to historic settings (The Big Hole Battlefield where the non-treaty Nez Perce with a herd of 2000 horses were ambushed by the US Army only to evade the Army for a period of months on their horse-driven retreat to Canada, where they felt they might find freedom. Those few who made it to Canada were later returned to reservations in America. Likely service-learning projects will include a variety of subjective and objective assessments of the horse-industry effect on the local economy, culture, and environment. Students will compose papers and give presentations the experiential research and learning projects they explore in the honors course, and will make appropriate contributions to their chosen or assigned equine disciplines.
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HON 201/401 Horse and Culture is available for either lower or upper division credit.

Substitutions: Possible course substitutions (subject to departmental approval): EQST 454, Equine Behavior, EQST 101, Introduction to Equine Studies, and possibly the EQST 200 internship.

Instructor: Sid Gustafson D.V.M.

Time: Spring 2008 Stringer

Prerequisite: ENGL 102