Dutch colonial promissory note to a former slaveholder, Suriname, 1863. Rijksmuseum.

Freedom

Volume XV, Number 1 | spring 2023

Miscellany

One of the earliest known instances of wild carnivores being held in captivity in Meso­america dates to around the second century in Teotihuacán; excavations starting in the late 1990s uncovered the remains of almost two hundred animals—including wolves, eagles, and jaguars—in the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon. The skeletons showed bone breaks, bone fusion, and abnormal growths, as well as indications of a human-controlled diet.

If the bird does like its cage, and does like its sugar, and will not leave it, why keep the door so very carefully shut?

—Olive Schreiner, 1883