Native American Horsemanship

One of the things that I read in that articall kind of stuck me funny is this. Now bear in mind I am NOT a native american expert but I do know a thing or two about histroy. But anyway what kinda caught me was he is Cherokee from NC. Now when I think of Native american horseman I don't really thing Cherokee. I think more of the horse cultures of the Lakota soiux, Cheyenne, Comanche, arapahoe, Nez perz. The Eastern Cherokee were pretty much living as the white man by the early 1800's until the Jacksonian age when Andrew Jackson and his constituantes moved them to the indian territoy in what is now Oklahoma( trail of tears). That is why they had the monicor of the civilized tribe. Just some thoughts. Maybe someone here knows more about it.

I about sprayed water all over my computer screen when I read that. I can just picture someone clogging around the horse with those ribbon wand things while it stands there munching grass.

I'm the daughter of two Cherokee who hail from the NC band, known as the Eastern Band Cherokee Indians, or EBCI. You are right, horses were not used by the Cherokee, as they were by the Western Plain tribes. They adopted a Constitution similar to the US Constitution and lived as the white man in vain hopes of being deemed "civilized" yet we still had copper skin. When the govenor of Georgia heard that gold was found on Cherokee land, he thought that the white man should mine it and that is what started the whole Trail of Tears debacle.

You don't really choose your own name. It really depends on the tribe and tradition.

For instance, there was a Lakota man named "Young Man Afraid Of His Horses". I doubt he would have chosen that name for himself. A person was usually renamed through life, depending on different situations. Birth, a formal name, a name given during an illness, a name given after puberty and so on are just a couple examples of when another name was declared.

An elder would usually give the name, or someone else of equal importance where the name giver would hold ceremony and name an inidividual through a vision, or what Spirit suggested.

Many individuals would be known as one name in one tribe, and be called something totally different in another.

Of course every tribe had their traditions on names, so what I said may or may not qualify as truth depending on the tradition.

Pony Boy may or may not have chosen his own name. Or maybe he did. Who knows?

As for Native American Horsemanship, its a "form" of natural horsemanship that requires money in order to be learned. Just like everything else. I like Pony Boy's techniques, but only because I learned that they were similar to what I was taught. Same tree, different branch. Much like a lot of correct training is.

I teach a natural way of riding by using and riding with the horses rhythm. I'm looking for others who use this technique to share experience and get feed back. I can not find any information on this subject. I live in Costa Rica and use no bits or shoes.
Thank you,
Bruce