“Ride a man’s saddle:” Horses, Nuns, and Indigenous Horse Culture in Montana

In this paper, I demonstrate that the Sisters of Providence insisted upon riding sidesaddle because Native women rode astride. By framing this common and often necessary mode of travel in the U.S. West as a transgression, the nuns also convey their beliefs about their superiority relative to Indigenous women in particular. I am expanding my research to examine the nuns’ relationship with horses, in the context of the horse cultures of the tribes they lived among on the Flathead Indian Reservation, including the Bitterroot Salish, Kootenai, and Pend Oreille. Specifically, the paper examines how horses themselves, as well as the tribes’ long-established relationships with horses challenge and reorient the practices and ideas of the nuns described above.