The Chicken or the Iegue : Human-Animal Relationships and the Columbian Exchange MARCY NORTON Nhama ´cachi: Animals who come tame before them, whom they believe belong to their Gods, and whom they dare not kill. 1 IN 1543, A TA ´ INO MAN HAD BEEN living in the mountains in the central southern part of Hispaniola for twelve years. Though fluent in Spanish and familiar with Spanish ways, he had fled to escape the oppressive exploitation of the encomienda. The man survived in the wilderness through a special relationship with three formerly feral pigs, two males and a female. The man and his pigs would go hunting for “wild” pigs, in the same way Europeans hunted prey with dogs—one pig tracking, one seizing, and one assisting, with the Indian giving the final thrust of death with a make-do spear. Once the prey was killed, the man would preside over the ritual distribution of the carcass, as was done in traditional hunts in Europe with dogs, “giving the interior parts to his companions,” while he made a barbecue for himself and salted the flesh for several days’ consumption. When prey was not readily available, the man also foraged for roots and plants, which he ate and shared with his porcine company. “At night,” wrote the conquistador-turned-chronicler Gonzalo Ferna ´ndez de Oviedo, “the said Indian went to bed among that bestial company, petting for hours one and then the other, devoted to the swine [la porcesa].” Tragedy ensued, however, when the pigs were spotted by several Spanish soldiers who were in the mountains looking for runaway slaves after a recent rebellion. Assuming that these were feral pigs who roamed the countryside rather than the property of an individual, the sol- diers slaughtered them. Bereft over their loss, the man told the three soldiers, “Those pigs gave me life and maintained me as I maintained them; they were my friends and good company; one I gave this name, and the other was called so-and-so, and the female pig was called so-and-so.” Oviedo reported that “the deaths of these three Funding for this project, as well as opportunities to share it, was provided by George Washington Uni- versity, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the John Carter Brown and Huntington Li- braries. I am grateful for the useful feedback I received from readers and audiences at Columbia Uni- versity, Georgetown University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of California, Davis, and New York University, as well as the annual meeting of the American Society for Environmental History. I also wish to express my enormous appreciation for those who read drafts of this article and offered insightful critiques and suggestions: Luiz Costa, Ben Cowan, Lauren (Robin) Derby, Carlos Fausto, Lynn Hunt, Maya Koretsky, Rita Norton, Istvan Praet, David Sartorius, and Zeb Tortorici, as well as the editors of and the anonymous readers for the AHR . I am also thankful for the research assistance of Robert B. Stoner. And special thanks to Claudia Verhoeven for being such a good reader of so many drafts, and to Paul and Lilly (“Shmaug”) for helping me think about intersubjectivity. 1 Raymond Breton, Dictionaire franc ¸ois-caraibe (Auxerre, 1666), 20. 28