Reservation Blues #4

In the beginning of the book, I didn't understand the significance of the horses in the book. Throughout the novel, the horses kept coming up, along with their "screaming" songs and the story of their passing. I never understood Alexi's reasoning behind until the very end of the last chapter of the book, when Thomas, Chess, and Checkers leave the Spokane Reservation for good. The horses are a symbol of the dreams and culture of Native Americans throughout the nation and how over the years, those dreams and that rich culture was slowly chipped away at by white men until there was nothing left but the ghosts of the past. The horses are now those ghosts and all that Thomas, Chess, and Checkers can  do now is hold,"tightly to the manes of those shadow horses," (Alexie 306) while they leave behind their former poverty in hopes of a new and brighter future.