What is the purpose of the collection, Wild Animals I Have Known?

Ernest Thompson Seton was an advocate of animal rights long before this issue became a popular cause. As Redruff struggles in the snare, for instance, Seton comments: Have the wild things no moral or legal rights? What right has man to inflict such long and fearful agony on a fellow-creature, simply because that creature does not speak his language?

Seton hunted and trapped for many years, and was highly skilled at both pursuits. He came to maturity when the buffalo herds of the West were being slaughtered and other game animals were becoming rare. After a moose hunt in 1884, he looked down on the animal's corpse and in remorse vowed "that so long as they are threatened with extermination, I will never again lift my rifle against any of America's big game."

Seton was very much a conservationist in 1898 when Wild Animals I Have Known was published, and the book reflects this attitude. One of Seton's lesser-known works is Natural History of the Ten Commandments, an argument that animals deserve protection in the Christian scheme of morality. Thus, although Wild Animals I Have Known depicts violence and death in the animal world, Seton handles his depictions of these incidents with grave sensitivity.