All month long we will be featuring speaker’s abstracts for the upcoming Equine History Conference: Why Equine History Matters.

Where Equine History Matters: The Library and Archives of the Autry Museum of the American West
Marva Felchlin, Autry Museum

     Equine history is tightly interwoven with the history of the American West. Exploration, settlement, commerce, popular entertainment and tourism depended heavily on the equine, but horses, donkeys and mules were often the unseen players rather than the focus of historical inquiry. This can present a challenge when looking for resources in libraries and archives, and requires multidisciplinary thinking about the vital roles of equines in the region. Join me on a virtual tour of the collections of the Library and Archives of the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles. Highlights will feature unique, rare and significant items supporting research about equines in western history and mythology.

     Holdings related to the Battle of the Little Big Horn include the Keogh Family Papers and Photographs and the “Battle of the Little Big Horn” ledger painting, c.1898, by Kicking Bear (Oglala). Myles Keogh perished in the Battle, but his horse Comanche survived to be embraced by the public. Primary resources about the material culture of cowboy and ranch life contain more than 1,000 saddle catalogs dating from the late 19th c to the late 20th c. In the visual iconography of the West, the horse appears as a flying saddle with angel wings on a Polish film poster while donkeys and burros inhabit postcards. In text and image, equine history matters at the Autry.