Zitidar

Zitidar are large Martian animals used as mounts and, in the Warhoon games, as combatants. The account places them within a system that treats animals as both practical resources and disposable spectacles, while contrasting that violence with John Carter’s attempt to earn the trust of the thoats under his care.

Use and Handling

In the Thark encampment, zitidars appear among the herd kept in a courtyard with thoats. The animals are held indoors during daylight and move through the paddock at night; as John Carter enters the grounds to retrieve his mounts for an escape, their grunts join the thoats’ calls and the herd grows restless at his approach. The scene establishes the zitidars as part of the community’s substantial livestock, even though Carter’s immediate purpose is to reach his own animals.

Carter’s account of Thark animal handling emphasizes force. Riders try to make thoats respond to telepathic commands by striking them, and an animal that resists may throw its rider, turning the encounter into a deadly contest. This description concerns thoats rather than zitidars specifically, but it frames the broader treatment of riding animals in the encampment: mastery is imposed through violence, and failure can mean death for either rider or beast.

The Warhoon Games

During the Warhoon games, zitidars are among the prisoners held in cages beneath an enormous amphitheater. The crowded enclosures also contain calots, thoats, green warriors, women captured from other hordes, and unfamiliar wild animals. The captive creatures are not merely kept as mounts or supplies; they are incorporated into a public spectacle in which the Warhoons’ assembled population watches successive contests.

The games proceed through repeated matchups, with victors made to face one another until only one prisoner remains alive and is granted freedom. A mad zitidar is released against the remaining dogs during the day’s sequence of contests. Its appearance in the arena makes the animal part of the same lethal system imposed on human captives: its role is determined by the spectacle, not by any choice of its own. The account does not describe the outcome of that particular matchup, so the zitidar’s fate in it remains unspecified.

Animals, Force, and Trust

Zitidars recur in scenes that show how the Martian hordes organize animal life around confinement, riding, and combat. They share space with thoats in the Thark paddock and with other captives in the Warhoon arena, linking ordinary animal management to public violence. Across these settings, their presence marks the reach of a social order that subjects both people and beasts to force.

Carter’s treatment of his thoats supplies a counterpoint, not a claim about zitidars themselves. Having learned from his experience with Woola, he first establishes that the thoats cannot unseat him, then gradually wins their confidence through kindness. Within days they follow him and respond readily to his commands. The contrast suggests that successful command need not depend only on blows: trust can make animals more reliable companions and improve practical cooperation. Zitidars remain less individualized in the narrative, appearing chiefly as members of a herd or as combatants in a mass spectacle; that limited portrayal is itself part of the contrast between animals known through a relationship and animals encountered as instruments of the horde’s customs.