"horsing around" Topic

My prompt:

Let's talk about imagination, comparing the Comanche and the white 'western civilization" culture of the Texans, and we can narrow it by focusing on the horse. Western civ's appreciation of the horse goes back to the war horse in the book of Job, and of course chariot horses are named and lauded in THE ILIAD. Plenty of material there. But what do we know of the Comanche "vision thing" to quote President Bush? They measured wealth and status in terms of horse herds, but was it all pragmatic? any Comanche poets extolling their steeds? Were their favorite horses named? (Surely yes -- a very human thing.) When they painted horses for battle, that was an act of imagination? of worship?

GROK:

The comparison works especially well through the horse, because both cultures poured imagination into it, just in different media and registers.

On the Western side the record is literary and explicit. In Job 39:19–25 the war horse is not a tool but a creature of terrifying vitality: God asks Job whether he has given the horse strength, clothed its neck with thunder, made it paw the valley and rejoice, rush to meet the armed host, laugh at fear, stand unmoved when the trumpet sounds, and say "Ha, ha!" among the trumpets while scenting battle from afar. It is pure imaginative exaltation of the animal's spirit.

The Iliad names the horses and gives them inner life. Achilles' immortal team Balios (Dapple) and Xanthos (Roan Beauty) were sired by the West Wind on the harpy Podarge; a mortal third, Pedasos, runs with them. They mourn Patroclus so deeply that their manes trail on the ground; Xanthos briefly speaks, prophesying Achilles' death. Patroclus anoints their manes with oil. The horses are characters, not equipment.

Texan Anglo culture inherited both of those traditions (the biblical war-horse image was common in nineteenth-century rhetoric) plus the practical cavalry and ranching traditions, but the poetic inheritance is still those ancient texts.

Comanche imagination around the horse is less written and more embodied, ritual, and visual, yet it is not merely pragmatic. They called the horse their "God Dog" (or a close equivalent), a gift of the Creator that transformed them from foot-bound Shoshonean people into the dominant power of the southern plains within a couple of generations. Wealth and status were measured in herds—often a dozen or more horses per warrior—but the relationship went well beyond counting.

Favorite war horses were treated with marked affection. Contemporary observers noted that a warrior would bring his best mounts inside the tipi in danger and send his wives outside. Each man had a special battle horse he rode only then and regarded with genuine attachment. The bond was sealed with ritual and prayer; a warrior might sing to his horse before combat, sharing spirit and asking for strength. When a man died, his best horse was sometimes killed at the grave so he could ride in the afterlife. Medicine-Hat / War-Bonnet pintos (the distinctive white-and-colored pattern) were considered especially powerful and were believed to make the rider invincible.

Naming almost certainly happened. Outsiders recorded the practice of giving horses individual names, and the depth of personal attachment makes it hard to imagine otherwise—human beings name what they care about. Specific historical Comanche horse names are scarce in the written record (an oral culture, limited ethnographic detail from outsiders), but the affection and individual recognition are well attested.

Painting the horse for battle was both imaginative and spiritual. Plains warriors (Comanche included) painted protective and empowering symbols: circles around the eyes for keen vision, lightning zigzags down the legs for speed and power, handprints, hoof marks recording raids, and so on. Feathers were tied into mane and tail. These were not mere decoration. They expressed a worldview in which the physical and the spiritual were continuous; the paint transferred or invoked puha (power/medicine). The painted horse became an extension of the warrior's own vision and protective medicine. Rock art and later ledger drawings preserve the same impulse—horses armored, feathered, and marked as partners in the action.

So the "vision thing" was real. The horse was kin, a source of power, and a partner whose excellence reflected and amplified the rider's own. The Comanche imagination lived in the training, the selective breeding, the songs, the paint, the refusal to walk when a horse could be brought to the tipi door, and the sense that on horseback a man became a different being—as Catlin observed, awkward on foot, suddenly graceful and handsome once mounted.

The Western literary tradition externalizes the praise into written poetry that still moves us. The Comanche tradition internalizes and enacts it: the horse is not primarily sung about; it is lived with, sung to, painted, and ridden as a sacred relative. Both are acts of imagination. One is archival; the other is performed and relational.

The Job war-horse (Job 39:19–25) was a staple of nineteenth-century Anglophone rhetoric, especially in sermons, biblical commentaries, literary essays, and moral oratory. It was repeatedly called the finest description of a horse in any literature—often ranked above Homer and Virgil—and was used both as a pure poetic marvel and as a ready-made image of courage, eagerness, and martial spirit.

Sermonic and homiletic use

Victorian and earlier nineteenth-century preachers regularly turned to it for illustrations of boldness. The Pulpit Commentary and similar works treat the passage as a picture of enthusiasm that laughs at fear and presses into the fight; they apply it to Christians facing spiritual "battles," to preachers who must "thunder," and to any vocation that requires energy rather than caution. Joseph Caryl's seventeenth-century exposition (still heavily cited and reprinted) had already framed the horse as an emblem of both the bold sinner and the faithful martyr or servant of God; nineteenth-century writers kept that dual use alive. The image of the horse that "goeth on to meet the armed men," "mocketh at fear," and says "Ha, ha!" among the trumpets was a standard call to whole-hearted engagement rather than half-hearted service.

Literary and critical praise

The passage was anthologized in school readers, zoological works, and essays on style. Writers routinely quoted "Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?" and the scenting of battle as models of sublime Hebrew poetry. Thomas Carlyle specifically defended the bold metaphor of the neck "clothed with thunder," calling the whole description an example of true vision for material as well as spiritual things. Magazines such as Blackwood's casually likened an energetic or combative character to the war-horse that "smelleth the battle afar off." The phrases traveled freely into secular rhetoric as shorthand for someone who anticipates conflict or opportunity with relish.

For Texans in the 1840s the dominant source was the King James Bible itself. Most English-speaking Protestant settlers—whether from the southern states, Scotch-Irish stock, or recent immigrants—would have heard or read Job 39:19–25 repeatedly in family worship, public reading, or sermons. The language was already part of the common stock.

The most familiar wording was therefore the Authorized Version:

Hast thou given the horse strength?
hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?
Canst thou make him afraid as a grasshopper?
the glory of his nostrils is terrible.
He paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his strength:
he goeth on to meet the armed men.
He mocketh at fear, and is not affrighted;
neither turneth he back from the sword.
The quiver rattleth against him,
the glittering spear and the shield.
He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage:
neither believeth he that it is the sound of the trumpet.
He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha;
and he smelleth the battle afar off,
the thunder of the captains, and the shouting.

These lines (especially "clothed his neck with thunder," "mocketh at fear," "smelleth the battle afar off," and the "Ha, ha") were the ones most often echoed.

Matthew Henry's commentary was the most widely owned and consulted non-biblical text among ministers and the better-read laity. Henry's remarks on the passage were standard and frequently drawn upon. Characteristic phrases a Texan preacher or educated settler might have absorbed include:

• The horse is "the horse that is prepared against the day of battle," a creature of strength and spirit that man did not give him.

• "He mocks at fear, and makes a jest of it"; he will not retreat from the sword or the rattling quiver.

• The description explains the character of "presumptuous sinners": "Every one turneth to his course, as the horse rusheth into the battle" (linking it to Jeremiah 8:6). When a man's heart is fully set on evil, "there is no making him afraid."

• God "delights not in the strength of the horse" (Psalm 147:10) and has said "a horse is a vain thing for safety" (Psalm 33:17)—a useful caution alongside the praise of the animal's courage.

Henry's language was more widely available in the American South and West than most literary criticism.

Carlyle by 1840?

Thomas Carlyle was already known among the American literary and intellectual elite, especially in New England. Emerson had promoted Sartor Resartus (American edition 1836) and The French Revolution (1837); by the late 1830s Carlyle had a serious following among educated readers in Boston and beyond. His later fame was still growing, but he was not obscure.

In the Texas of the 1840s, however, that knowledge was limited. The population was still small, heavily frontier, and more oriented toward practical concerns, revival religion, and the Bible than toward British literary fashion. A well-educated minister, lawyer, or newspaper editor in Houston, Austin, or San Antonio might have encountered Carlyle's name or a review, but the average settler, ranger, or planter would not. Carlyle's specific praise of the Job horse (the "neck with thunder" metaphor) was not yet part of common American rhetoric the way the KJV text and Henry were.

Summary for the period

A literate or church-going Texan in the 1840s was most likely to know the King James wording of Job 39:19–25 itself, and secondarily the moral and typological applications found in Matthew Henry (courage that mocks fear; the warning against trusting in horses; the parallel to the headlong sinner). More literary or Transcendentalist appropriations (Carlyle and the New England circles) existed but were peripheral on the Texas frontier.

DOC:

Okay, no Carlyle yet but a Methodist preacher among the militia would draw on Henry to show his erudition to his men who would probably know the KJV language themselves. Wonder if a Methodist minister, or even a lay preacher, ever served as a ranger or militia officer? Give me a rousing speech by a Texan leader to his men preparing to attack a Comanche force, drawing on that imagery.

GROK

Yes. Methodist circuit riders and local preachers on the Texas frontier routinely carried arms and sometimes held militia or ranging commissions. John Wesley Kenney, an early Methodist preacher in Texas, had already served as a militia captain in the Black Hawk War and later in the Texas army during the Revolution. Hugh Martin Childress ("the Bear Hunting Preacher") served as a first lieutenant in a volunteer militia company and in the Ranger Corps of Mounted Riflemen; he later rode circuits with a shotgun and revolver within reach. Andrew Jackson "Fightin' Jack" Potter, a Methodist circuit rider of the next generation, was an Indian fighter and scout who kept pistols handy even in the pulpit. On the 1840s frontier the line between preacher, settler, and militia officer was thin; a Methodist minister or licensed lay exhorter riding with a ranging company was not exceptional.

Here is a speech such a man might have given to a militia or ranger company preparing to strike a Comanche force. It uses the King James language the men already knew and the moral and martial applications found in Matthew Henry, delivered in the elevated yet practical style of a frontier Methodist.
________________________________________
Men of the company—
We have ridden far, and the tracks are fresh. Before the sun is high we will be among them. Some of you have seen what they leave behind—a cabin burned, horses taken, and worse. You know why we are here.

The Book of Job speaks of the war-horse. "Hast thou given the horse strength? hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?" The horse did not make himself. God gave him that neck, that strength, that terrible glory of the nostrils. And when the trumpet sounds he does not hang back. "He paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his strength: he goeth on to meet the armed men. He mocketh at fear, and is not affrighted; neither turneth he back from the sword." The quiver rattles, the spear glitters, and still he swallows the ground with fierceness. "He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha; and he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting."

That is the spirit the Lord has set before us. Not the spirit of the man who trusts in the strength of the horse alone—for the Scripture also says a horse is a vain thing for safety—but the spirit of those who know the strength is given, and who therefore go forward without flinching. Henry says of that horse that he mocks at fear and makes a jest of it; slash at him, rattle the quiver, and he will not retreat, but press on and even put courage into his rider. So let it be with us this day.
The Comanche is bold on the plain. He hangs off the side of his pony and shoots from under its neck. He has learned the horse as few men have. But he is still a man, and his horse is still a creature. We do not meet him with our own courage only. We meet him with the strength the Lord has given—in these horses that have carried us this far, in these rifles and pistols, and in the right of defending the people who look to us. Let every man keep his place. When the order comes, go as that horse goes: not driven, but willing; not looking back, but scenting the fight and rejoicing to meet it.

Remember also what the same Scripture warns. The horse that rushes headlong is the picture of the presumptuous sinner who will not be turned. Let none of us be that man. We fight because the settlements must stand, not because our hearts are set on blood for its own sake. Do your duty cleanly, spare the women and the little ones, and when the work is done we will give thanks to the God who clothes the neck with thunder and who has brought us safe thus far.

Look to your girths. Look to your loads. When I raise my hand, we ride.

God keep you. Now—mount.