Web Extra: What the Slave Owns

PETER: But in the 18th century, the distinction between animals you owned for use and animals you doted on, your so-called favorites, is not always a clear one. It’s a continuum, isn’t it?

SARAH: That’s true. I like the phrase “casual pets.” And so boys might capture a bird for just a few days and let it go, or you might have a working animal — a cow or horse — that began to have more of a companionate relationship. But they still had dogs, in particular, and birds that had very similar sort of pet relationships to what we have now. They let their dogs sleep with them; they took their dogs to church with them; they took their dogs to college with them. So they did also have pets that are very similar to the pet relationships we have today.

BRIAN: How do you explain that degree of freedom, if you will?

SARAH: There were so many dogs on these plantations that, even when people like George Washington were trying to breed particular dogs, they just couldn’t stop what happened. And so these plantations become just overrun with dogs, and, every so often, they’d just have to have them culled. So it may just have been too much of a losing battle to try and prevent enslaved people from having dogs.

BRIAN: Well we haven’t asked what kinds of, if any, pets enslaved people have. Is that something you know?

SARAH: I was stunned to discover how many dogs enslaved men and women may have had. If you think about it, masters should not have allowed dogs. Dogs could be used to hunt the master’s fowl and sheep. Dogs bark to alert you of incoming people, so they could have alerted enslaved men and women of the approach of whites. I was stunned to discover that masters really did almost nothing to prevent enslaved men and women from having dogs. And it looks like enslaved men and women usually had about 2 dogs per household, and that they did use them to hunt at night.

PETER: Sarah, as you have written, there’s a big distinction between master’s dogs and slave’s dogs. Master’s dogs are, like masters themselves, well-bred, aren’t they?

SARAH: Precisely. They are often specially imported from France or England, with clear genealogies, and they had fancy collars with their names engraved or their owner’s names engraved. They’re so illustrious that elite men and women would recognize each other’s dogs. George Washington stopped, during the American Revolution, to return a dog to the enemy because he knew it was a gentleman’s dog. In contrast, enslaved people’s dogs were what we would call now “mutts.” Just any dog that came along.

PETER: And you suggest, Sarah, that there’s something about the institution of slavery, the ownership of human beings in the Chesapeake, that resonated with pet ownership, and that they really should be understood in connection with each other.

SARAH: Yes. One way that slavery changed from the 17th to the 18th century was that in the 18th century, we really go from an emphasis from patriarchy to paternalism. And so, paternalism was sort of patriarchy with a velvet glove. Right? Paternalism meant that the master pretended to be kind and the servant or enslaved person pretended to be grateful. And animals made this myth really live for the master. See, the master could feel like he wasn’t “enslaving” the animal or the person, but rather he was “assisting” the animal or person. So common birds would return to cages willingly. Squirrels would jump into the bosoms of their mistresses. And dogs would bark and jump with joy when their masters came home. So animals could be very, very good at presenting a sort of joyful acceptance of the master’s care.

BRIAN: Sarah, thanks so much for joining us on BackStory.

SARAH: Thank you so much for letting me talk about things besides squirrels …

BRIAN & PETER: [Laughs]

SARAH: … so i don’t go down [laugh] as “that crazy squirrel lady.”

BRIAN: When you return, we’ll let you talk about people next time.

SARAH: [Laughs] Thank you.

BRIAN & PETER: Bye-bye.

SARAH: Bye.