A dramatic new interpretation of the encounter between Europe and the Americas reveals the crucial role of animals in the shaping of the modern world.
In The Tame and the Wild, Marcy Norton tells a new history of the colonization of the Americas, placing wildlife and livestock at the center of the story. Encounters between European and Indigenous beliefs about animal life transformed societies on both sides of the Atlantic.
Europeans' strategies and motives for conquest were inseparable from the horses that carried them in military campaigns and the dogs they deployed to terrorize Indigenous peoples. Even more crucial were the sheep, cattle, pigs, and chickens whose flesh became food and whose skins became valuable commodities.
Yet, as central as the domestication of animals was to European plans in the Americas, Native peoples' practices around animals proved just as crucial in shaping the world after 1492. In particular, cultures throughout the Caribbean, Amazonia, and Mexico were deeply invested in familiarization: the practice of capturing wild animals and turning some of them into "companion species." These taming practices not only affected the way Indigenous people responded to human and nonhuman intruders but also influenced European culture, paving the way for both zoological science and the modern pet.
