Excerpt from Riding Gear of the North American IndiansThe horse culture complex of the American Indian offers an excellent opportunity to study diffusion, because most of the essential facts are obtainable. The horse was introduced by Europeans at an early date and spread ahead of interior exploration.~ In particular, many of the tribes west of the Mississippi River became horsemen before their discovery by Europeans. The history of horse introduction is brie¿y outlined in the American Anthropologist, Vol. 16, N o. 1, pp. 1 - 25. The investigation here reported is the intensive study of collections of riding gear and horse-using appliances to be found in anthropological collections. The material avail able in the Museum gives us a representative series for each important tribe in the horse-using area so that we may proceed in confidence.A preliminary statement of the results attained in this study were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 1, p. 254. In the selection and comparison of specimens the writer has been aided by Mr. William A. Sabine, assistant in the Museum, whose great knowledge of specimens and their distribution was indispensable to the task. Other acknowledgments are due to Mr. S. Ichikawa for the illustrations and to my secretary, Miss Bella Weitzner, for gathering reference material.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.