Introduction. Discordant Harmonies: Interspecies Relations in the United States

Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roamWhere the deer and the antelope play, Where never is heard a discouraging wordAnd the sky is not clouded all day.Brewster Higley, “Home on the Range” The lyrics to the popular folk song “Home on the Range,” first composed in 1873, depict a picturesque “utopia among pristine nature,” in which the promise of harmony between humans and animals forms the appeal of the American West as a place where one may want to set up house (“Home on the Range” 160). I...