What A Horse Was On The Southern Plains

A horse on the Southern Plains in 1874 was not primarily a luxury or a symbol of status, though it was both of those things as well.

A horse was infrastructure.

It was the mechanism by which everything else was possible.

Consider what horses actually did:

A horse moved a family camp.

The tipi poles, the lodge covers, the food stores, the cooking equipment, the personal possessions — all of this had to be transported when a camp relocated.

Without horses, that transportation was drastically limited.