Читать книгу American Environmental History - Группа авторов - Страница 58

This 1830s painting by George Catlin (Figure 2.2) depicts a herd of wild horses on the Great Plains. It might be perceived as an illustration of raw, frontier nature. But how does the environmental history of the horse shape your understanding of this image? A painting that at first seems to suggest untouched American nature at some level portrays Eurasian organisms transforming their adopted homeland. Are these wild horses in some measure the side effects of colonialism? Or is the image even more complicated? Some of these animals may have escaped from Indian camps. Might their physical characteristics, their coloring, and even their size have been shaped by the influence of Indian horse breeders? Is the nature in this image, the Great Plains and its horses, more Eurasian or more American? Both? Neither?

Figure 2.2 Wild horses at play.

Source: From George Catlin, Wild Horses at Play (1834–7), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. Public Domain.