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Horses appear at key moments throughout the text as a reminder of the pain and injustice that American Indians have suffered over generations. Horses are linked to an episode in Big Mom’s memory, when hundreds of Indian horses were captured and slaughtered after a battle. Big Mom takes the bones of the most beautiful horse and makes a flute, on which she plays a song of despair and mourning that she adapts from the horses’ screams. These horses’ screams then haunt George Wright—who is mysteriously both a Cavalry Record executive and the historical general from the Indian Wars—and make him feel remorse for his role in the wars.
Horses also appear at the end of the novel, running in the night alongside the van as Chess, Checkers, and Thomas drive away from the reservation and into an unknown future. Here they represent the powerful spirit and vitality of Native American people, despite all the suffering and oppression they have faced throughout history. The wild horses, like the Native Americans themselves, have almost disappeared from the land that was once theirs, but those horses that remain still retain their fierce spirit and freedom. Their presence helps the tragic novel end on a brief note of hope, as the characters ride forward surrounded by the horses of their people.
Horses Quotes in Reservation Blues
The Reservation Blues quotes below all refer to the symbol of Horses. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 1
Quotes
The colt shivered as the officer put his pistol between its eyes and pulled the trigger. That colt fell to the grass of the clearing, to the sidewalk outside a reservation tavern, to the cold, hard coroner’s table in a Veterans Hospital.
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Chapter 8
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Victor roared against his whole life. If he could have been hooked up to a power line, he would have lit up Times Square. He had enough anger inside to guide every salmon over Grand Coulee Dam. He wanted to steal a New York cop’s horse and go on the warpath. He wanted to scalp stockbrokers and kidnap supermodels. He wanted to shoot flaming arrows into the Museum of Modern Art. He wanted to lay siege to Radio City Music Hall. Victor wanted to win. Victor wanted to get drunk.
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Chapter 10
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In the blue van, Thomas, Chess, and Checkers sang together. They were alive; they’d keep living. They sang together with the shadow horses: we are alive, we’ll keep living. Songs were waiting for them up there in the dark. Songs were waiting for them in the city.
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Get the entire Reservation Blues LitChart as a printable PDF.
Horses Symbol Timeline in Reservation Blues
The timeline below shows where the symbol Horses appears in Reservation Blues. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1
In the memory of Big Mom, 134 years earlier, the Indian horses scream. She thinks at first that they are singing, but knows this is unlike any...
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Chapter 2
...at night and listens to the faint voices that haunt the reservation, which sound like horses. Thomas opens and closes his empty refrigerator, hoping food will appear in it—an old childhood...
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Chapter 3
...where three cowboys confront the Sioux nation. They tell three Indians who dismount from their horses that they “come in friendship,” and then electrocute all three on the telegraph wire they...
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Chapter 4
...tells them they should kick Junior and Victor out of the band and leave. The horses scream.
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Chapter 5
...Chess is still awake, though, and she listens to the men’s nightmares. Junior dreams of horses, that he is leading warriors who try in vain to attack a steamship, and then...
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Chapter 6
...white chicks” in Seattle and then come back and pick up “the Indians.” Somewhere, the horses scream. Wright tells Sheridan he has always been a good soldier, as they drink from...
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Chapter 7
...she responds that all they can do is “sing songs and tell stories.” The Indian horses scream.
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Chapter 8
...make them money. Armstrong arrives, fat and powerful, and the band counts off as, somewhere, horses scream. At first, all is well, and then suddenly Victor’s guitar begins to rebel, bucking...
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Chapter 9
...will trade in exchange for this wish—Johnson remembers his slave ancestors, and responds “Freedom.” The horses scream. Thinking that this was just a mirage, Johnson returns to Robinsville and Son House,...
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...there speaks to his wife, who rises and comforts him as he weeps, remembering the horses screaming in the field while Big Mom watched.
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Chapter 10
...her students has died, and she feels a deep sadness—the bodies, of both musicians and horses, may finally have “been stacked too high inside her.” Robert Johnson tells her that they...
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...but nothing disastrous happens. Suddenly the shadows beside the van take shape, and becoming running horses. Chess and Checkers roll down the windows and reach out to touch them, hot and...
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