Although Europeans placed all nonhuman creatures into a generic category of animals, Indians may instead have conceived of animals only as distinct species without a generic term for “animals.” European cattle were often seen as wild animals and treated as such by the Indigenous population as described in this Colonial Society narrative. In 17th-century America, livestock were generally not fenced in as they are today. Back in England, grazing animals were guarded by herders. But in the New World, where labor was scarce, animals like sheep and cattle were turned loose to graze on common lands instead. Hogs and other farm animals were distinct from wild animals to the English but not necessarily to the Indigenous population who assigned spiritual powers to some animals and not others. The English brought domesticated animals like sheep with them as the Indigenous people never domesticated animals and only hunted them for food.
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