Horse: How the Horse Has Shaped Civilizations by J. Edward Chamberlain. BlueBridge, 2006; $24.95; 288 pages, including 25 black and white illustrations.

FROM THE DUST JACKET:

Ever since the dawn of human history, horses have held a mystical sway over our imagination: we respect and revere them like no other animal. We have conceived them as both domesticated and free, both belonging to our civilization and to the wild. At first, it was an encounter of death, as prehistoric humans hunted horses, all across the steppes of Asia and throughout Europe. But they also painted horses full of grace and beauty on the walls of their caves, and gave them a central place in their songs and sacred rituals. Long before the invention of writing and the wheel, horses began to shape the way humans lived.Drawing on archaeology, biology, art, literature, and ethnography, Horse illuminates the relationship between humans and horses throughout history -- from Alexander the Great to Genghis Khan, from the Moors in Spain and the knights in France to the great horse cultures of native America. From the Ice Age to the Industrial Age, horses provided sustenance, transportation, status, companionship, and the ability to establish and expand empires.

Horse is the utterly fascinating and marvelously enlightening story of horses and humans.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

From Blogcritics.org: Few creatures have had an impact upon the human psyche like the horse. In today's urban and technological cocoon it is often difficult to truly grasp the value of something as seemingly archaic as a horse. Even as the "wild west" was gasping for breath beneath the advancing hordes of settlers, there were those who chose to label the horses of the Native Americans as little more than "worthless" beasts. And today there are many who fail to see any real point in the often lavish attention and expense associated with horses, from the cult of the cowboy to the pomp and circumstance of dressage and other forms of horsemanship. But as J. Edward Chamberlain eloquently articulates in his new book, for many centuries the horse shaped and often defined human culture. Horses constituted critical components of both the nomadic culture and the "settlement" society. They became an integral component of human warfare. And they often featured prominently in myths, legends, dreams, and nightmares.

Chamberlain, a professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Toronto, draws extensively upon an eclectic array of archaeology, biology, art, and literature to illustrate the enduring relationship between man and horse throughout recorded history. Horses may have first been a source of food, but they quickly became something more. Over time, the relationship evolved, and horses offered man everything from transportation, status, companionship, and the mechanism for dominance in combat.

More of a playful exploration than a painstaking historical work, Horse has several fanciful departures in which Chamberlain muses about such things as what horses might have been able to tell man and what the first encounters between horses and Native Americans might have been. He explores the role of the horse as more than a material possession and as a spiritual or metaphysical image. He recounts tales of horses in a variety of contexts, be it work or play and in a variety of artistic manifestations. He notes the ways in which horses have been harnessed, as well as the perceptions associated with them, including the idea that in many ancient cultures it was deemed the hallmark of a barbarian to ride upon a horse. Civilized men, it seems, rode behind their horses, in chariots, carts, or the like.

Horse is a clever book fueled largely by Chamberlain's clear passion for his subject. As the grandson of an Alberta rancher, he has bred horses and been fascinated by them for much of his life. Here he translates that love and knowledge into an interesting book that is less a recounting of history than it is an introspective reflection upon it. From the nuances of training techniques, both ancient and modern, to the cultural variances associated with color and breeding of animals, there is much to learn from Chamberlain's book. Not the least of which is the enduring value and power of the horse as one of the defining aspects of human history.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

J. Edward Chamberlain is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto and visiting professor at the University of Michigan. He was the Senior Research Associate with the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples in Canada and has worked extensively on native land claims around the world. His books include If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?, The Harrowing of Eden, White Attitudes Toward Native Americans., and Come Back to Me My Language: Poetry and the West Indies. The grandson of an Alberta rancher, Chamberlain has bred horses and collected stories about them for much of his life. He divides his time between Toronto, Half Moon Bay, and Ann Arbor.

A CONVERSATION WITH THE AUTHOR:

We meet at the Old Town bar on 17th Street in Manhattan. It's an ancient saloon, with varnished wooden booths displaying buttons that once summoned waiters, urinals the size of telephone booths, and food you can drive nails with. And booze. Not the kind of place you comfortably order wine. Also not a joint with an inch of spare space on a balmy Friday evening. We back out and retire to a sidewalk table at a restaurant at the corner of Park Avenue, overlooking the rush hour traffic.Ted Chamberlain is in town talking up his new book, Horse.

"I take it your grandfather's ranch is long gone."

Ted looks resigned. "Grandfather's ranch is long gone. Yeah, it is. There are so many changes in that area down in southern Alberta. He'd gone there in the 1880s. But then settlement of the area forced the ranches to move to bigger feed lots. He ran a very large ranch: about 15,000 head."

"Were subsequent generations involved as well?" I want to know.

"No, they weren't. For a stretch, Grandfather had a partner who had been a mounted policeman. But the family hasn't been involved in that sort of ranching since Granddad's time."

"Your book talks about the relationship between horses and humans as being very long-standing. What is this love affair about? How sensitive a creature is a horse?"

"That's probably the oldest and toughest question there is. A horse is extraordinarily sensitive -- literally speaking, because it's a prairie animal who has survived over millennia. It's got a kind of intelligence and certainly a sensitivity, partly through its feet and, some folks say, through its teeth. The horse is alert for enemies. How sensitive to humans? People who spend a lot of time with horses would say very. I mean, they're animals and will do what they're instructed or forced to do. But they will do way beyond that if there is a bond between the rider, or driver, and the horse. Horses have come to me in ways that seem to respond directly to my moods, more than humans even."

I pause to let an ambulance blast by, siren blaring. Then I continue: "About their jealousy. I was taken aback one summer, when we took a place across from a farm that had some show horses. I was curious to see that the farmer would not give them treats of carrots or apples or anything. And one day I saw why. Someone accidentally or unknowingly, unwittingly, gave one of the horses a single apple. The other horses took out after it out of jealousy and pounded the bejesus out of it for having one-upped them. For having received more favorable treatment. I was amazed by this behavior."

Ted brushes back his white mane of hair. "Horses can be fiercely territorial too," he says. "There's an old mare that I had -- a wonderful mother. She had some lovely foals. On her own, though, she was a piece of work. In the summertime and into the fall, I'd let her loose with the younger horses and with other horses in big fields. And you could see her spend enormous amounts of time -- just all afternoon -- carefully cornering one of the younger horses, moving in ways that made the younger horse graze over toward a corner of the fenced-in field. Just hours of this."

"Like a boxer cutting off a ring."

"Yes. With a real patience, the kind that defies any sort of understanding or expectation. It was her entertainment for the day. Otherwise she'd get bored just grazing. She'd box in the younger horse and kick the heck out of it."

"How...human. For sport."

"When she had a foal on, she wouldn't. Then she was such a good mother, looking after the foal with diligence and attention, as if there were nothing else. Perhaps that mean streak showed one of the reasons why she was such a good mother. So focused and single-minded."

"You write such wonderful descriptions of horses 'drinking the wind.' How do you explain the nearly universal response to the beauty of the horse? It seems to cut across all cultures. People are so taken with them."

Ted Chamberlain stirs his drink. "Yes, even early cave painters had a sense of their wonderful beauty, of the astonishing grace of horses, especially when they're moving. And horses are sort of their most horsy when they're in motion. That is what they do best. All of us who observe them have a sense of this unearthly elegance. Are they off the ground, flying almost, though they are clearly earthbound? In many of our myths, horses fly. They are in a special category no other animal occupies. In early times, the skin of a horse was hung over an extended pole, forming a kind of sacred scarecrow. The head bones, tail, and feet were left in the carcass to give it the shape of a horse suspended between the sky and earth."

"Yet humans hunted horses at one time, for food."

He nods. "They did and, indeed, they still do. Or at least, people still eat them. There isn't much hunting these days because there are no more wild herds. Feral, yes, but no true wild herds. Horses were prey once and we were the predators. Probably we weren't that good stalking horses until we figured out to herd them and cull them in the same way we do with cattle and sheep and other animals. But, yes, we hunted them. There is evidence of Ice Age hunters taking horses. Just north of the U.S./Canadian border, along the Milk River, they've found bones of such hunters going back 10,000 years. They were also hunted in France and certainly in Central Asia. Horse meat was a staple all through Asia and Europe for thousands of years."

"Contrary to popular belief, you say that mares led the herds, and not the stallions."

"Yeah, mares definitely led the herds. The stallions followed, kind of keeping watch, bringing up the rear."

"How did the mares keep the stallions in line?" I ask.

"Well," he smiles, "I guess in the same way mares always keep us stallions in line. But there was only one stallion in a herd of mares and foals. The others would be out in bachelor groups."

"These bachelors followed?"

"At a distance. And they would do the things bachelors do. You know, getting into fights every now and then, trying to break in on the old stallion leader, challenging him, probably getting bashed by him. And at some stage, the old guy would get tired and another one would move in to displace him."

"In many cultures, you write, great leaders were sent to the next world with their horse."

"Yes. Chinese did so. The Central Asian cultures. Kazakhs. The Scythians. Native American tribes on the plains. The sacrifice of horses accompanied the death of Blackfoot chiefs, for instance. Before the horse was put down, they would paint him with pictographs. The tail was braided and tied in a ball, the mane ornamented with feathers. The Nez Perce actually skinned and stuffed horses and placed these as grave monuments. Some tribes hung their skins at the gravesite."

"And some of this goes on to this day."

"Yes. To this day, in Kazakhstan, an owner's horse is ceremonially slaughtered a year after its master's death. Then races are held so that the deceased can hear the thunder of hooves. Great leaders went to the afterlife with their favorite horses. Muhammad was a great lover of horses and ascended to heaven on his horse."

"Were horses otherwise sacrificed too?"

"They were. This was widespread. Drinking and bathing in the blood of horses also. In 732, the pope actually outlawed the eating of horse meat. Buddhism forbade it as well. Some believe there were concerns about its competing with religious rituals. Eating horse flesh seemed a threat to and competitive with some religious ceremonies -- Christianity being the obvious example -- where eating and drinking is central to ritual."

"So horses were held in high regard. In Assyria, you note, a horse was worth 30 slaves. Or 500 sheep."

"Quite so."

"Is it true horses don't sleep much?"

"They don't sleep much, no. They get by on three or four hours, and they sleep in very short snatches."

"And they drink quite a lot each day."

"Nearly ten gallons. Some breeds can go remarkably long without water, but normally horses drink a surprising amount."

"And, like my cat, they don't throw up."

"I don't know about your cat, but that's correct. Horses don't throw up. They can't physiologically."

I squint against the sun sinking into New Jersey at the other end of 17th Street. "How fast do they run?"

"Forty miles an hour, certainly. And they have great endurance. They'll run ten miles an hour for a hundred miles."

"You make a provocative statement, saying that horses really invented war as we know it."

"I do. They provided humans with a way of waging war en masse, and of waging a kind of guerrilla warfare. They were the single most important vehicle of war. Alexander the Great was probably the first great horse warrior. His horse died at 30. Alexander named a city after him."

"I'm quoting from your book: 'It was on horseback that the warriors from the Scythians to the Huns, from Alexander the Great to Genghis Khan, and from the Muslim colonizers and the Christian crusaders to the Spanish conquistadors and the Indians of the plains, conquered and controlled the empires they created and caught the imagination of the world.' Wow. Do you think the invention of the stirrup is on a par with the invention of the wheel?"

"Yes, I do. And Attila the Hun is credited with popularizing it. Though riders in India used big-toe stirrups nearly a thousand years earlier."

"In my youth," I say, "the godfather of my friend's girlfriend was a Mexican bullfighter. And when he retired as a matador, he took up bull fighting on horseback, rejoindre. He never touched the reins, as he was busy doing whatever to the bull. Yet he had total control. He demonstrated this on film once. To dry an arena after rain, they would douse the sand with gasoline and light it. He actually rode his horse into the burning ring to show his control. He maneuvered the stallion around the arena as flames leapt all around them, and never once touched the reins."

"Those kinds of examples are wonderful," Ted enthuses, "and they do remind everybody that you don't need all the paraphernalia in many circumstances. Some of the greatest riders are able to do all kinds of things with horses that don't involve bits or reins or bridles."

"You're a professor of English and Comparative Lit at the University of Toronto, and you also teach at the University of Michigan. I happen to know that you have also gotten involved in Indian land claims, native land claims. How did this happen?"

"Back in the early '70s, partly by accident. I wrote a book on the attitudes of early settlers to aboriginal people, the Indians and Eskimos in North America."

"The Harrowing of Eden."

"That's right. And it involved my interest in stories and story telling, and the literature of native peoples, much of it performed rather than written down, telling about who they are, where they belong, how they came there, how long they've been there. A judge named Thomas Berger read my book and asked me to take part in the inquiry. And I did that. I took a leave and was there for a year or two. I did the same kind of thing in Alaska."

"I will horse-trade you my copy of Horse for a copy of The Harrowing of Eden.

"I don't think so."