Winner of the 2017 Virginia Marie Folkins Award, Association of King
County Historical Organizations (AKCHO)
Winner of the 2017 Hal K. Rothman Book Prize, Western History
Association
Seattle would not exist without animals. Animals have played a vital
role in shaping the city from its founding amid existing indigenous
towns in the mid-nineteenth century to the livestock-friendly town of
the late nineteenth century to the pet-friendly, livestock-averse modern
city.
When newcomers first arrived in the 1850s, they hastened to assemble the
familiar cohort of cattle, horses, pigs, chickens, and other animals
that defined European agriculture. This, in turn, contributed to the
dispossession of the Native residents of the area. However, just as
various animals were used to create a Euro-American city, the
elimination of these same animals from Seattle was key to the creation
of the new middle-class neighborhoods of the twentieth century. As dogs
and cats came to symbolize home and family, Seattleites' relationship
with livestock became distant and exploitative, demonstrating the deep
social contradictions that characterize the modern American metropolis.
Throughout Seattle's history, people have sorted animals into categories
and into places as a way of asserting power over animals, other people,
and property. In The City Is More Than Human, Frederick Brown explores
the dynamic, troubled relationship humans have with animals. In so doing
he challenges us to acknowledge the role of animals of all sorts in the
making and remaking of cities.
