Episode Overview

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Dr. Miranda Melcher
Guest: Dr. Marcy Norton
Book: The Tame and the Wild: People and Animals after 1492 (Harvard UP, 2024)
Date: January 11, 2026

This episode explores Dr. Marcy Norton’s wide-ranging and revisionist new book, which investigates how encounters between Europeans and Indigenous Americans after 1492 reshaped human-animal relationships on both continents. Dr. Norton and Dr. Melcher discuss differing modes of interacting with animals, the concept of subjectivity in human-animal relations, and how these global entanglements continue to shape pet cultures, ecology, and scientific knowledge today.

Guest Introduction and Book Genesis

[02:05–05:36]

• Dr. Norton’s Background: Historian focused on the Atlantic World, especially interactions among European settlers and Indigenous peoples in Central Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean. Drawn to the project out of bewilderment about current animal relations—deep personal bonds with pets coexist with mass animal suffering caused by factory farming and environmental harm.
  • “When something baffles me, I put on my historian hat and say, like, well, how did we get here?” (Norton, 04:40)
• Research Spark: Encounters with surprising archival moments about Indigenous and European animal relationships during her earlier research into tobacco and chocolate.

Subjectivity and Human-Animal Relations: Reframing the Conversation

[05:52–09:42]

• Concept of Subjectivity: Dr. Norton adopts and recasts the idea of subjectivity—not as something animals “have,” but as something observable and constituted through interaction.
  • Influences: Philosophers Cora Diamond and Donna Haraway, who highlight that knowing animals arises from interaction rather than scientific distance.
  • “Interactions themselves produce what we can perceive about the subjectivity of another animal…The way that we interact with other animals is not something that any individual…has total control about, but…it’s something that we’re born into structures that…organize the way that we interact.” (Norton, 08:10)
• Methodological Turn: Rather than measuring animal subjectivity biologically (e.g., does it have language? empathy?), she explores how different cultures structure interactions and thus possibilities for perceiving animal subjectivity.

Aristocratic Hunting vs. Indigenous Predation: Differing Modes of Subjectivity

[09:42–16:14]

• European Practices:
  • Focus on two modes: Aristocratic hunting and livestock husbandry.
  • Hunting: Social hierarchy is mapped onto animal relationships—“vassal animals” (dogs, horses, raptors) play a vital role. Humans cherish the subjectivity of both vassal and prey animals.
    • “The meat that raptors would eat would be of better quality than those eaten, you know, by peasants, for instance.” (Norton, 13:23)
  • Livestock Husbandry: Contrasts sharply with hunting, structuring animals as consumable commodities.
• Indigenous Predation:
  • No intermediary ‘vassal’ animals; instead, hunters employ practices of mimesis—deeply understanding and even imitating animals and their habitats to attract or encounter prey.
  • Subjectivity is recognized through transformative practices; hunting often involves becoming “one with” the habitat or the animal.
  • “In predation…some of the ideas that appear in indigenous stories about humans turning…into animals are related to…practical…conditions of becoming close to the animals through forms of mimesis, through forms of imitation.” (Norton, 15:12)

Livestock Husbandry as Extractivism and Colonial Tool

[16:57-26:46]

• Transplantation Shock: European livestock husbandry fundamentally clashed with Indigenous norms.
  • “The essence of livestock husbandry…is that you feed another animal in order to eat it. Whereas…in South America, the act of feeding another animal…would make that animal into kin…and so the last thing you would do would [be to] eat it.” (Norton, 18:13)
• Extractive Transformation:
  • In Europe, all animal parts used; in the Americas, cows were often slaughtered only for profit-driving hides, leaving meat to rot: “A kind of exemplary…extractive mentality.” (Norton, 22:21)
  • Dispossession: Livestock destroyed Indigenous fields, forced labor away from food cultivation, and reduced resilience to disease. Lands were seized as “baldios” (commons) when not worked, accelerating dispossession.
• Challenge to Columbian Exchange Narratives: Norton links biopolitical and epidemiological consequences; livestock played a direct role in weakening Indigenous populations beyond the transmission of disease.

Familiarization: Indigenous Alternatives to Domestication

[26:46-33:14]

• Definition: ‘Familiarization’—taming and feeding an individual wild animal, making it a companion or kin, never for consumption.
  • “These animals, that once they were fed…would never be killed…if a tame animal arrived…they would consider them to belong to their gods and…wouldn’t kill them.” (Norton, 29:03)
• Overlooked by Europeans: Dominant Western belief in domestication as the “proper” human-animal relation made this practice nearly invisible and misunderstood.
• Structure and Agency: The widespread Indigenous practice shaped how new European species (e.g., chickens, dogs) were incorporated—via familiarization, not livestock husbandry.

Generative Subjectivity: Predation, Transformation, and Porosity

[33:14–38:31]

• Mimesis and Porosity: Predation and familiarization are intertwined; the process of hunting or eating animals can transfer aspects of animal subjectivity (strength, fierceness, beauty) to humans.
  • “In the process of hunting…consuming another animal…it's thought that the subjectivity of that animal can potentially become part of the subjectivity of the hunter.” (Norton, 34:30)
  • Examples: Wearing animal skins, ingesting symbolic animal parts, feathered ornaments.

European Religious Imaginaries and Animal Practices

[38:31–46:53]

• Demonology and Husbandry: European religious images of hell and depiction of demons reflect discomfort with animal subjectivity and livestock logics.
  • “Depictions of demons…have these sort of animalistic [features]…certain depictions of hell…look like an inversion of livestock husbandry operations where you have figures of death…herding together naked humans.” (Norton, 40:00)
• Missionaries and Indigenous Practices:
  • Spanish clergy imported witch-hunting mindsets; interpreted Indigenous animal transformations as devilish or idolatrous due to their own demonological frameworks.
  • At the same time, Christian dramas—especially those involving Saint Francis—could be adapted to fit Indigenous animal practices, showing Christianity’s flexibility:
    • “Christianity as a structure could be really malleable to accommodate these existing ideas of predation and familiarization.” (Norton, 46:32)

Pets, Companions, and Cultural Entanglement

[47:53–51:51]

• Origins of the ‘Pet’ in Europe: Norton challenges the view that modern pet-keeping is strictly a product of 18th/19th-century bourgeois culture.
  • Proposes pets emerged from the fusion of European vassal animal tradition and Indigenous familiarization practices—especially after new world monkeys, parrots, and other animals became part of European domestic life.
  • “The pet is sort of…born at the intersection of the vassal animal, the court animal and the [Indigenous] egg.” (Norton, 51:32)
  • Notable moment: Aristocrats posing with parrots and monkeys in the 16th century as a visible sign of the new entanglement.

Entanglement and Indigenous Influence on European Science

[51:51–56:26]

• Scientific Knowledge Production:
  • Highlights how Indigenous knowledge systems (documented in sources like the Florentine Codex) focused on predation and familiarization.
  • This approach inspired Spanish physicians—ex: Francisco Hernandez’s natural histories—which influenced European science and natural history, circulating into key works (even as far as Rome’s Lyncean Academy).
  • “In some ways, the origins of modern zoology…not…sufficiently appreciated, is…the way that predation and familiarization produce…detailed knowledge about these different animals.” (Norton, 56:13)

Future Directions

[57:11–59:58]

• Continuing Research: Norton aims to go deeper into Indigenous epistemologies—especially pre-Hispanic screenfold “books” made of deer skin that chart animal transformations and cosmological events, and how these ideas merged into colonial and European knowledge systems.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Interactions themselves produce what we can perceive about the subjectivity of another animal.” (Norton, 08:03)
• “The act of feeding another animal, human or otherwise, would make that other animal into kin, and so the last thing you would do would [be to] eat it.” (Norton, 18:13)
• "In both Europe and indigenous America, different forms of hunting help humans see the subjectivity of other kinds of animals. But they do so in very different ways." (Norton, 15:05)
• “In the process of hunting…it's thought that the subjectivity of that animal can potentially become part of the subjectivity of the hunter.” (Norton, 34:30)
• “Christianity as a structure could be really malleable to accommodate these existing ideas of predation and familiarization.” (Norton, 46:32)
• “The pet is…born at the intersection of the vassal animal, the court animal, and the Indigenous egg.” (Norton, 51:32)
• “The origins of modern zoology…not…sufficiently appreciated, is…the way that predation and familiarization produce…detailed knowledge about these different animals.” (Norton, 56:13)

Key Timestamps

• 02:05 – Introduction: Dr. Norton’s background and motivation for the book
• 06:32 – Subjectivity as central analytical concept
• 10:30 – European hunting vs. Indigenous predation: structures and meanings
• 17:36 – Livestock husbandry as cultural clash and extractive process
• 27:50 – Indigenous familiarization vs. Western domestication
• 33:14 – Generative/porous subjectivities in predation, transformation rituals
• 39:35 – European demonology, religion, and animal practices in the New World
• 47:53 – The birth of the “pet” as a hybrid practice
• 52:50 – Indigenous knowledge’s influence on European science
• 57:11 – Future research: deepening investigation of epistemologies and sources

Tone and Style

The conversation is deeply scholarly yet lively, rich in concrete historical and ethnographic detail. Dr. Norton offers careful distinctions, innovative conceptual frameworks, and vivid comparative examples throughout, while the host’s questions are insightful, nuanced, and engaged with the big theoretical stakes.

Summary Takeaway

Dr. Marcy Norton’s The Tame and the Wild shows that relations between people and animals after 1492 were sources of profound cultural clash, mutual transformation, and ecological change. By focusing on subjectivity, familiarization, extractivism, and entanglement, Norton reveals how both Indigenous and European practices shaped not only their own societies but also the ecological and cultural future of the Atlantic world—including the very ways we understand pets, animals, and even science itself today.