In the high pastures, bells clang around the necks of sheep on the move. The noise comes from the bellwether, so called because the lead castrated male sheep (a wether) is equipped with a bell that shepherds can hear from far away. The bellwether leads the flock in search of better pasture. Thus, bellwether has also been picked up in a metaphorical sense to mean an indicator of trends. As such, animal historians Susan Nance and Jennifer Marks have opted to call their new edited volume Bellwether Histories, evoking the signals that these sheep on the hoof give to those who would listen. As Nance and Marks note in the introduction, the book “interrogates animal bellwethers who were ignored or discounted” (7) with the result that animal disasters ensued.
The editors frame this collection as an inquiry into the effects of American colonialism and capitalism and “how the myths...