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I don’t ordinarily watch television dramas but Yellowstone is an exception.  As a horse aficionado, I found a scene in the third episode of Yellowstone’s fifth season to be interesting and poignant.  It vividly portrays the reverence that Native American tribes like the Lakota and Apache have for equus caballus. 

Monica Dutton (played by Kelsey Asbille) – the pregnant daughter-in-law of ranch patriarch and Montana governor John Dutton (Kevin Costner) – is involved in a terrible car accident that takes the life of the boy she is carrying.  The baby is buried in his mother’s Native American tradition beside a horse that has been put down after suffering an injury.  The horse spirit will carry the baby’s soul to the afterlife.

The horses we humans variously ride, show, bet on, rope with, and breed in temporal pursuits have a long history in the spiritual realm.  Click here for an article that discusses the Yellowstone burial scene in more depth and explains the otherworldly role of horses in some cultures.

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