Every now and then, some invention, some innovation or some change in technology comes along and moves history forward with a momentum of its own — subtler perhaps but far more powerful than any political ideology. These innovations become the true engines of history.
Welcome to the new podcast The Engines of Texanity, the fifth season of A New History of Old Texas. The focus throughout this season will be the 10 engines that most meaningfully propelled Texas history forward, profoundly shaping our collective psychology, or “Texanity”. Think about how the cultivation of cotton, the discovery of oil and, later, of air conditioning had long-lasting consequences for Texas and you’ll get the idea of what this podcast will explore.
Here’s a preview:
We begin with the horse.
The history of the horse in Texas is closely linked to the Lipan Apaches. The power of the horse as both a physical and psychological weapon assisted the Spanish conquerors in pushing up through the central Mexican highlands and into North America where the Apaches lived.
The Spanish strictly regulated who could ride and even own horses in the Americas, but it was inevitable that some horses would escape back onto the plains. The Lipan Apaches and other natives were quick to take in these runaways. Imitating some of the horse-raising techniques they’d seen the Spanish use, the Lipans soon realized that the horse could be their great disruptor in fighting Anglo settlers.
For the next century and a half, Texas was a multifront battlefield whose lines were drawn around shifting alliances of Lipan, Comanche, Tejano, and later Anglo horsemen. In some way, it was these groups’ shared reliance on horses that set them against each other in their fight for Texas’ vast — but not unlimited — grazing land.
The domestication of the horse became an engine of human history, moving people forward in different directions that they would have gone otherwise, redrawing political boundaries, and bringing unprecedented wealth and power to many.
It is one of the clearest and the first recorded instances of a material change not only altering the course of Texas history but also the genuine psychology of Texans.
Click below to listen to Episode 1 of The Engines of Texanity.
