Of Wolves and Men

by Barry Lopez

  The modern controversy over wolf protection, wolf management, and wolf reintroduction, in other words, has stirred a discomfiting examination of both our romance with wild wolves and our nostalgia about the ranching life.

  Looking back over the twenty-five years since this book was first published and wondering where we’ve gotten in our dealings with these animals, I feel compelled to offer only a couple of thoughts. At the opening of the twenty-first century, the wolf is a much less demonized animal than it was when Stanley Young was writing. This is largely due to the wide dissemination of a body of scientific research on wolves and on a growing sophistication among lay people about ecology in general. The wolf, however, continues to generate more adamant positions and to trigger more powerful emotions than any other large predator in the northern hemisphere, especially if the question is about where wolves might fit in a landscape shared closely with humans. Some folklore about wolves, both that which attributes nobility to them and that which seizes upon them as an embodiment of evil, is so deeply entrenched that its adherents completely shut out the emerging insights of field biologists, historians, religion scholars, and other researchers in the social sciences and humanities. In their rigid stances they are impervious even to reason. Why this is so remains one of the most interesting questions in wolf research, partly because it’s so representative of large-scale political forces at work today in American culture.

  A second thought is that with the reintroduction of wolves, we’ve demonstrated that we’re more capable now of living in a give-and-take relationship with the natural world than we once were. This bodes well for all animals, ourselves included. It means we’re willing to consider biological information alongside economic data and human social needs in the development of public policy and management programs.

  Finally, if one strain of wolf research in recent decades would seem to call for clarifying comment, it would be the study and promotion of dominance hierarchies in wolf packs. While a sometimes convenient tool of analysis, the notion of sex and age hierarchies has led too many people to make specious assumptions about wolf behavior. Interpreting wolf interactions too strictly along these lines, like placing too strong an emphasis on the significance of a predator’s “territory,” requires many large mammals to carry the freight of human constructs, including “ownership” and “authority,” baggage no animal should be asked to bear.

  Many of us now seem to subscribe to the idea that wild animals are not mechanisms. They cannot be summed up, any more than Homo sapiens can be summed up. Wild animals are intricately fitted in the world, an intricacy that, many speculate, goes further and deeper than the catch nets of Homo sapiens’ neurological capacity to conceive.

  Reality is a mystery, to put it another way, and bound to remain so. And it may be as good an idea to live within the mystery as it is to stand outside it, possessed of the notion that it can be explained.

  We have been moving steadily in recent years toward another sort of reconciliation, that with our own ecology and biology. We wonder now whether our national and local politics should reflect, far better than they have, what we are learning about the kind of environment our bodies fundamentally require. The growth of much of this thinking, curiously, can be traced directly to the long-term, exacting, and thoughtful fieldwork being done by women and men studying animals in their natural habitats, a range of creatures, at some level, not so different from ourselves. Wild animals, living beyond fiscal economies, disinterested in the nation-state, requiring no technologies, no growth in their rates of consumption in order to abide and proliferate, yet able to experience emotional states somewhere in the realm of our own, remind us that we are rooted in an absolute need for good water, clean air, and unadulterated food. And, not incidentally, in a requirement for diversity. Diversity, many now suspect, is not merely a characteristic of life, either biological life or cultural life. It is a condition necessary for life.

  It would not be inappropriate or sentimental in the context of this book, considering the scope of what has happened in wolf studies in recent years, to thank this enduring creature, Canis lupus, for standing by while we continue to pursue a complex and difficult aspiration, the implementation of a universal justice that would include all we see living around us.

  Barry Lopez

  McKenzie River, Oregon

  2003

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  MANY PEOPLE WERE GENEROUS with their time, in interviews and correspondence, and generous with a bed and a meal when the situation arose. I would particularly like to thank Robert Stephenson of Fairbanks, Alaska, with whom I had the pleasure of weeks in the field, and Dave Mech, with whom I stayed in Minnesota and who directed me to a number of valuable people.

  I am deeply indebted to the Nunamiut hunters of Anaktuvuk Pass, Alaska, for their ideas; to John Fentress, Department of Psychology, Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, for his early encouragement in this project; and to the late Joseph Brown, Department of Religious Studies, University of Montana, for his direction and encouragement. To Pat Reynolds of the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory, Barrow, Alaska; Dick Coles of the Tyson Research Center, Saint Louis; and the staff of the wolf research facility, Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, for their hospitality. And to Dale Bush, D.V.M., for his assistance.

  The task of research was eased by various librarians and by the staffs of several state historical societies. I would particularly like to thank the interlibrary loan staff at the University of Oregon, Eugene; Minnie Paugh, special collections librarian at Montana State University; the staff of the Montana Historical Society, Helena; the staff of the South Dakota Historical Society, Pierre; and Marylyn Skaudis of Parkville, Minnesota.

  Portions of the manuscript were critically reviewed by Robert Stephenson, Joseph Brown, and Roger Peters, and I am grateful for their insights.

  Some of the ideas here first took shape in conversations with various people. In addition to those already named I would like to thank Dick Showalter, Jenny Ryon, Glynn Riley, Heather Parr, Tim Roper, Sandra Gray, and the late Dave Wallace.

  Laurie Graham, my editor at Scribners, and Peter Schults, my agent, were deeply committed to the ideas here and I hope their insistence on clear and elegant expression is evident on these pages.

  Sandy, my former wife, read this manuscript in progress. Her insights and the range of her vision are remarkable, and I am indebted.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  ONLY SELECTED BACKGROUND AND reference works are listed here. Several large bibliographies already exist for material in the first section. Sources for the second section are too diverse to list completely. Much of the most important research material for the third section is unpublished in theses and dissertations or stored in the files of historical societies. Research material for the fourth section is simply too voluminous to present economically. For a researcher with a specific inquiry directed through the publisher, I will do whatever I can to help locate a source.

  Books and articles sufficiently identified in the text are, for the most part, not mentioned below.

  I: Canis lupus Linnaeus

  The most recent, reliable collection of scientific papers on the wolf is L. D. Mech and L. Boitani, eds., Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), but see also two earlier collections edited by Harrington and Paquet (1982) and Carbyn (1995) cited in the bibliographic notes under “Afterword.” Mech (rhymes with “each”) also wrote The Wolf: The Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species (N.Y.: Natural History Press, 1970) and The Wolves of Isle Royale (Wash., D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior, Fauna of the National Parks of the United States, Fauna Series 7,1966), both works rich with field observations. The only criticism that might be made of Mech’s long-term, dedicated research is that his ideas now too thoroughly dominate the field.

  I have quoted several times from Adolph Murie, The Wolves of Mount McKinley (Wash., D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior, Fauna of the National Parks, Fauna Series
5, 1944). The book is more than thirty years old but still good science and pleasant reading. Other works I used as background for these chapters include Ecological Studies of the Timber Wolf in Northeastern Minnesota, edited by L. D. Mech and L. D. Frenzel (St. Paul, Minn.: U.S. Department of Agriculture, North Central Forest Experiment Station, Forest Service Research Paper NC-52, 1971); R. F. Ewer, The Carnivores (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1973); J. P. Scott and J. L. Fuller, Dog Behavior: The Genetic Basis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965); a collection of papers edited by Michael Fox, The Wild Canids: Their Systematics, Behavioral Ecology and Evolution (N.Y.: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1975); and several books on animals associated with the wolf, including John Kelsall, The Migratory Barren-Ground Caribou of Canada (Ottawa: Canadian Wildlife Series 3, Queen’s Printer, 1968) and books on convergent evolution, including Hans Kruuk, The Spotted Hyena (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972). While it was not originally available in book form, a collection of papers from a symposium on wolves in American Zoologist (7: 221–381, 1967) may be treated as such. A collection of papers published in 1979 to which I had early access is The Behavior and Ecology of Wolves (New York: Garland STPM Press), the proceedings of a symposium on wolves held at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, May 23–25, 1975, edited by E. Klinghammer.

  There are several popular treatments of wolves by writers with a background in wildlife biology, including Farley Mowat’s fictionalized account, Never Cry Wolf (Boston: Little, Brown, 1963) and Lois Crisler’s Arctic Wild (N.Y.: Curtis Books, 1958). Never Cry Wolf is dated but still a good introduction. Less adventuresome and personal is R. J. Rutter and D. H. Pimlott, The World of the Wolf (Phila.: Lippincott, 1968). The anecdotal and perhaps exaggerated accounts of Ernest Thompson Seton are still worth reading, both in Lives of Game Animals (Garden City: Doubleday, 1929) and Life Histories of Northern Animals (N.Y.: Scribners, 1909). The works of Stanley Young so earnestly mix fact and fiction that, taken strictly for science, they are problematic, and I have therefore cited them below with materials for Section III.

  Young’s bibliography in The Wolves of North America (Wash., D.C.: American Wildlife Institute, 1944; and Dover reprint, 1964) is enormous but undisciplined and, at points, inaccurate. More valuable are Mech’s and Boitani’s bibliography in Wolves and Fox’s in The Wild Canids.

  Several books that treat the wolf in Russia and Asia have been translated for the National Science Foundation by the Israel Program for Scientific Translations (IPST), Jerusalem. They include G. A. Novikov, Carnivorous Mammals of the Fauna of the USSR (Moscow, 1956, and Jerusalem, IPST, 1962); S. I. Ognev, Mammals of Eastern Europe and Northern Asia (Leningrad, 1931, and Jerusalem, IPST, 1962); and S. U. Stroganov’s Carnivorous Mammals of Siberia (Moscow, 1962, and Jerusalem, IPST, 1969). They suffer slightly from the inclusion of popular opinion and in Ognev’s case an avowed hatred of wolves.

  There are a number of excellent papers on wolf ecology and behavior. Several that one might enjoy reading in full, which I have touched on only briefly, are: R. O. Stephenson and R. T. Ahgook, “The Eskimo Hunter’s View of Wolf Ecology and Behavior” in The Wild Canids (pp. 286–91); R. Henshaw, L. Underwood, and T. Casey, “Peripheral Thermoregulation: Foot Temperature in Two Arctic Canines” (Science 175: 988–90, March 3, 1972); C. A. Nielsen, Wolf Necropsy Report: preliminary pathological observations (Juneau: Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Special Report, Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration, July 1977); R. Schenkel, “Expression Studies of Wolves” (Behaviour 1: 81–129, 1947); R. P. Peters and L. D. Mech, “Scent-Marking in Wolves” (American Scientist 63 (6): 628–37, 1975); H. Kruuk, “Surplus Killing by Carnivores” (Journal of Zoology, London 166: 233–44, 1972); E. Zimen, “Social Dynamics of the Wolf Pack” in The Wild Canids (pp. 336–62); W. O. Pruitt, “A Flight Releaser in Wolf-Caribou Relations” (Journal of Mammalogy 46: 350–51, 1965); P. Marhenke, “An Observation of Four Wolves Killing Another Wolf (Journal of Mammalogy 52:630–31, 1971); R. G. Bromley, “Fishing Behavior of a Wolf on the Taltson River, Northwest Territories” (The Canadian Field-Naturalist 87 (3): 301–3, 1973). Robert Stephenson’s papers, which offer both the results of field work and comments on Nunamiut wolf observations, include a series of annual Wolf Reports (Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975) and Characteristics of Wolf Den Sites (Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration, 1974), all published by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Juneau.

  For background on the red wolf (Canis rufus), see G. A. Riley and R. McBride, A Survey of the Red Wolf (Wash., D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, Special Scientific Report No. 162, 1972); J. L. Paradiso and R. M. Nowak, A Report on the Taxonomic Status and Distribution of the Red Wolf (Wash., D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, Special Scientific Report No. 145, 1971); and J. H. Shaw and P. Jordan, “The Wolf That Lost Its Genes” (Natural History 86 (10): 80–88, December 1977).

  C. H. D. Clarke, “The Beast of Gévaudan” (Natural History 80 (4): 44–51, 66–73, April 1971) and Vilhjaimer Stefansson’s Adventures in Error (N.Y.: Robert M. McBride, 1936, and Gale Research Company reprint, Detroit, 1970) provide a good survey of the question of wolf predation on humans, but see the papers by McNay under “Afterword.”

  Articles on the ecology and behavior of the wolf are produced regularly and will no doubt refine or even refute points in this section in the future. Wildlife Index and Biological Abstracts are continually updated sources of the most recent information and are available at most large libraries with scientific holdings.

  II: And a Cloud Passes Overhead

  Several pertinent observations on the Nunamiut are contained in the series of papers by Stephenson mentioned above. For information of a more general nature see R. Rausch, “Notes on the Nunamiut Eskimo and Mammals of the Anaktuvuk Pass Region, Brooks Range, Alaska” (Arctic 4 (3): 147–95, 1951) and Nicholas Gubser, The Nunamiut Eskimo: Hunters of Caribou (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965). I used several books as general background in chapter 4, among them Richard Nelson, Hunters of the Northern Ice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969). Edmund Carpenter, Eskimo Realities (N.Y.: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973) provides insight into the Eskimo’s different way of seeing, as does James Gibson, The Perception of the Visual World (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950). For some specific information, see J. Kleinfeld, “Visual Memory in Village Eskimo and Urban Caucasian Children” (Arctic 24 (2): 132–38, 1971).

  For background on the Naskapi I relied on Georg Henriksen, Hunters in the Barrens: The Naskapi on the Edge of the White Man’s World (St. John’s, Newfoundland: Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1973) and Frank Speck, Naskapi: The Savage Hunters of the Labrador Peninsula (Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1935). On sacred meat and the Animal Master see Speck’s book and two articles by A. Hultkrantz: “Animals Among the Wind River Shoshoni” (Ethnos 26: 198–218, 1961) and “The Owner of the Animals in the Religion of the North American Indians: Some General Remarks” in A. Hultkrantz, ed., The Supernatural Owners of Nature (Stockholm: Almquist & Wiksell, 1961).

  For some interesting elaboration on the idea of a conversation of death, see J. Eisenbud, “Evolution and Psi” (Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 70: 35–53, 1976). On territorial hunting see D. S. Davidson, Family Hunting Territories in Northwestern North America (NY.: Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, 1928); F. Speck, “The Family Hunting Band as the Basis of Algonkian Social Organization” (American Anthropologist 17 (2): 289–305, 1915); and B. Smith, “Predator-Prey Relationships in the Southeastern Ozarks—A.D. 1300” (Human Ecology 2 (1): 31–43, 1974). Comparable data on behavioral adaptations of deer under pressure from humans and wolves respectively can be found in H. Hickerson, “The Virginia Deer and Intertribal Buffer Zones in the Upper Mississippi Valley” in Man, Culture and Animals: The Role of Animals on Human Ecological Adjustments, A. Leeds and A. Vayda, eds. (Wash., D.C.: American Association
for the Advancement of Science, 1965) and L. D. Mech, “Population Trend and Winter Deer Consumption in a Minnesota Wolf Pack” in Proceedings of the 1975 Predator Symposium, R. L. Phillips and C. Jonkel, eds. (Missoula, Mont.: Montana Forest and Conservation Experiment Station, 1977).

  Black Elk Speaks by John Neidhardt (Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1961), The Sacred Pipe by Joseph Epes Brown (Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1953), and Seeing With a Native Eye, Walter Capps, ed. (N.Y.: Harper & Row, 1976), convey a general impression of the world view of native Americans. Many diverse observations on Indian attitudes toward animals are recorded in the indexed 32 volumes of Early Western Travels, 1748–1846, edited by Reuben Thwaites (Cleveland: A. H. Clark, 1904–1907). Of particular interest are the journals of Maximilian, Prince of Wied (volumes 22, 23, and 24).

  For the Cheyenne and Pawnee who figure so prominently in the text see, respectively, The Cheyenne: Their History and Ways of Life by George Bird Grinnell (Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1972, 2 volumes) and Gene Weltfish, The Lost Universe (NY.: Basic Books, 1965). See, too, Grinnell’s story collections: Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk-tales (Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1961); By Cheyenne Campfires (Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1971); and Blackfoot Lodge Tales (Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1962). For ritual use of the wolf skin see Thomas Mails, The Mystic Warriors of the Plains (NY.: Doubleday, 1972). Bird Shirt’s story is from American: The Life Story of a Great Indian, Plenty-Coups, Chief of the Crows by Frank Bird Linderman (NY: John Day, 1930) and used with permission. Additional information is in William Wildschut, Crow Indian Medicine Bundles (NY: Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, 1960). Material on the Bella Coola is from The Bella Coola Indians by Thomas F. McIlwraith (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1948). The stories about Kills in the Night and Ghost Head at the end of chapter 5 are recounted more fully in, respectively, Pretty Shield: Medicine Woman of the Crows, by Frank Bird Linderman (Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1972) and The Sioux: Life and Customs of a Warrior Society by Royal B. Hassrick et al. (Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964).