ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on one of the four trajectories, namely, southern plantation life, an arena heretofore undocumented in animal studies work. It presents new primary material that points to how fighting dogs and dog fighting were instrumental in asserting the racial truths and consequences of white supremacy. The chapter overviews the importance of fighting dogs to rural frontier life, more generally, where settlers westward-bound shared some of the welfare and security concerns as those who were settling (or had already settled) the south, including plantation owners. Southern farmers and frontier folk used pit bulls for many similar reasons. White settlers that established ranches, farms, and homesteads in either context used the dogs to retrieve stray hogs and cattle and/or for protection. The ability of pit bulls to pursue and catch large animals attracted slaveholders, who began using the dogs to track runaway slaves or paid bounty hunters to do the same.
