The Horse, a Sacred Being:
At the Heart of the Great Mystery

To understand why the Native American nations of the Great Plains maintained a relationship with the horse so radically different from that of the West, you first have to understand their worldview. In Lakota cosmology, nothing is inert. Everything that exists (rocks, rivers, animals, wind) is filled with one and the same life force: wakan. Sacred. Mysterious. Alive.

Wakȟáŋ Tȟáŋka (the Great Mystery) is not a god in the Western sense of the word. It is the sacredness that dwells in all things, a diffuse and omnipresent power of which every living being is an expression. Within this framework, the horse cannot be a mere tool. Like every being, it is a manifestation of the Great Mystery, endowed with a soul, with emotions, and with a role in the order of the world.

It is this vision (not sentimental, but cosmological) that underlies the Indigenous relationship with the horse.

The Horse and the Wakíŋyaŋ: The Echo of Thunder

In Lakota cosmology, the Wakíŋyaŋ are the Thunder Beings, immense spiritual creatures that dwell in the west, above the clouds. Their voice is the thunder, their eyes the lightning. They embody the raw power of the forces of nature.

The bond between the horse and the Wakíŋyaŋ is deep and well documented. The book American Indian Horse Masks (Prairie Edge Publications) puts it this way: "For the Lakota, there is a very strong connection between horses and the terrifying powers of the Thunder Beings. Perhaps suggested by the low rumble of a herd of galloping horses, or by the beauty of horses' tails streaming in the wind like rain from an angry sky."

This association is not metaphorical: it is ritual and spiritual. Horses were fitted with elaborate ceremonial masks, decorated with symbols meant to honor this bond with the powers of the sky. To wear a horse mask was to invoke the power of the Wakíŋyaŋ themselves.

Black Elk Speaks: The Testimony of a Medicine Man

No primary source better illustrates this spiritual centrality than Black Elk Speaks, the testimony of Heȟáka Sápa (Black Elk), an Oglala Lakota medicine man and heyoka, recorded by the poet John G. Neihardt (met in 1930, interviewed in 1931) and published in 1932.

The book received favorable reviews on its release, then fell into obscurity for two decades. It was rediscovered in the 1950s when Carl Jung referred to it in a footnote and pressed for a German translation, published in 1955 as Ich rufe mein Volk (I Call My People). Jungian psychoanalysts found in it a striking illustration of the theory of archetypes. The book is today regarded as the most widely read Native American spiritual testimony in the world.

In this Great Vision (received at the age of nine during a twelve-day coma), Black Elk was carried into the spirit world and given sacred powers. Horses stood at the very center of it. He saw horses of the four directions, bearers of the powers of the world. When he reached adulthood, the medicine man Black Road instructed him to reenact his vision before his people, a ceremony he himself called the Horse Dance. At the close of that ceremony, Black Elk was recognized as a healer and medicine man by his people.

Black Elk was a heyoka, a Thunder Dreamer, one who has dreamed of the Wakíŋyaŋ. His spiritual power and his relationship with the horse were inseparable from each other. The horse was not the backdrop of his vision. It was its axis.

The Horse in the Vision Quest

One of the most important spiritual practices of the Plains nations is the Hanbleceya, in Lakota, "crying for a vision": a solitary four-day retreat in the wild, fasting and praying, to make contact with the spirit world.

The horse appears here as one of the most powerful spiritual beings. The National Museum of the American Indian (Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.) confirms it: horse visions are still reported today by traditional believers who seek knowledge and strength through fasting. To see the horse in a vision is not a dream: it is a spiritual alliance that grants the seeker a particular power, one that can then be passed on through song and ceremony.

The Diné and the Turquoise Horse: Another Equestrian Cosmology

The Lakota vision is not an isolated one. Hundreds of miles to the southwest, the Diné (the Navajo people) developed their own equestrian cosmology, every bit as rich and deep.

According to Navajo tradition, it was the god Begochiddy who created the horse for the Diné. The Sun God Johano-ai owns herds of horses in the four directions: horses of white shell in the east (dawn), horses of turquoise in the south (midday), horses of yellow abalone in the west (sunset), and spotted horses in the north (night). These horses are not mere mounts: they embody the four directions of the world and the colors of the cosmos.

A 19th-century Navajo ceremonial chant evokes the turquoise horse: "Lightning flashes from the turquoise horse. He stands upon the upper circle of the rainbow. The sunbeam is in his mouth for a bridle."

Before every gathering, the owner of a herd would scatter sacred pollen over his horses while singing for their protection. This ritual gesture sealed an alliance between human, horse, and the spirit world. In Navajo ceremonies, notably the Hózhóójí (Blessingway), one of the most central, devoted to harmony and well-being, the horse appears as a symbol of strength, beauty, and spiritual guidance.

For the Diné as for the Lakota, the horse did not come into this world by chance. It was created, given, and entrusted.

The Comanche Puha: The Sacred Power of the Warrior Bond

Among the Comanche (undisputed lords of the southern Great Plains), the spiritual vision of the horse turns on a central concept: puha. The spiritual force that dwells in all things.

Animist in their cosmology, the Comanche saw in every animal a potential bearer of puha, and in the horse, one of the most powerful. The Comanche horse was named, sung to, painted with sacred symbols, adorned with feathers, and treated with a devotion that few other equestrian cultures in the world have ever matched.

The bond between a warrior and his war horse was sealed by ritual and prayer. It was experienced as an extension of his own spirit. Before battle, the warrior sang to his horse, sharing his breath, asking for its strength.

To lose one's war horse was not merely a material loss. It was a spiritual wound. When the U.S. Army confiscated and slaughtered their herds in the 1870s, it destroyed more than their mobility: it broke a sacred bond between beings and their world.

Wamaka Nagi: The Soul of the Horse

In Lakota metaphysics, every living being possesses a soul (nagi). Wamaka Nagi refers specifically to the soul of animals, and first among them, that of the horse and the dog, humankind's closest companions.

Tradition teaches that when a warrior died, his soul did not set out alone on the journey to the Wanagi Makoce, the Spirit World. It followed the Wanagi Tacanku (the Spirit Path, which the Lakota see in the Milky Way) and it was glad if the Wamaka Nagi of his horse traveled with it. The bond between rider and mount, then, did not end at death. It carried on into the afterlife. Some warriors were buried with their horse, not out of ostentation, but out of a deep conviction that this alliance was eternal.

The Medicine Hat Horse: A Coat of Power

Among all horses, some carried a spiritual power immediately recognizable by their coat. The horse known as the medicine hat (whose crown and ears are colored while the face and the rest of the body are white, giving the impression of a hat set upon the head) was regarded by many Plains nations as a being between two worlds. It was believed that its rider could never be wounded, and that the horse would warn its master of danger before it appeared. The most prized among them also bore a shield (a colored marking on the chest) and often blue eyes, further signs of their supernatural power.

To lose a medicine hat horse was an ill omen for the entire tribe. Its protective power radiated across the whole community. Its white coat, a perfect blank canvas, was painted with ritual symbols to amplify its spiritual qualities still further.

War Paint: A Sacred Act

Before any battle or important hunt, the horse was painted with as much care as its rider. This was not decoration. It was a ritual act, often performed by a medicine man, meant to confer a combined spiritual protection on horse and warrior alike.

Zigzags evoked the lightning of the Wakíŋyaŋ. Circles around the eyes sharpened the animal's senses. Hoofprints tallied victorious raids. Each mark was a prayer painted on a living body.

The Horse Nation: A Cosmic Alliance

Beyond the individual relationship, the Native American nations conceived of the horse as a collective entity: the Horse Nation. Not a herd, but a non-human people with whom the peoples of the Plains entered into a reciprocal and sacred alliance.

Lakota, Navajo, Comanche: three nations, three distinct cosmologies. But one shared conviction: the horse did not enter their world as a resource to be exploited. It entered as an allied people, bearing its own power, its own spirit, its own place in the order of the world.