brother-wolves in other countries, is however, not strictly accurate;
for statistics show that not only are wolves on the increase in
Russia, but their depredations are much more extensive and costly
than formerly. The animals are also considerably larger, stronger
and fiercer than the average wolf. The increase in their number is
attributed to the peasants’ lack of rifles and shot with which to hunt
them. It is only within the last year that the Government, yielding
to complaints of the peasants that wolves were menacing their sheep
and cattle, organized special detachments of professional hunters to
exterminate the wolves, giving a premium for each animal killed.[14]
“The loss in sheep, cattle and horses caused by wolves during the last
year is estimated at $6,500,000. A full-grown Russian wolf can easily
kill a horse, cow, or even a bull. But he rarely, according to Russian
authorities on natural history, shows sufficient courage to attack a
man. Indeed, the wolf usually runs in terror at the sight of a human
being. Even when travelling in large packs, these Russian experts say,
wolves avoid meeting a man in daylight; they become dangerous only at
night, when they may collectively attack a person along a lonely, dark
road in the country.
“Throughout the day they usually sleep, wandering and hunting in
search of prey only in the dark. At such times, say the Russian
authorities, the most formidable weapon against the animals is not a
loaded gun, but a simple flare of artificial light, like a burning
match, a bonfire or an illuminated candle, wolves having mortal fear
of anything resembling fire.
“Wolves always live in families--the father, mother, two young wolves
born the previous year and two baby wolves born in February or March.
Throughout the Summer and Autumn they never leave the neighborhood
where their young were born. It is only during the mating season in
December and January that the male wolves, seeking their female kin,
form packs and roam for scores of miles at night.”
This statement would have been more convincing with the last paragraph
omitted. For perhaps the Russians might err on packs when they were
so wrong, or at least so far from what naturalists think they know,
about mating habits and size of litters among wolves. The usual view
is that instead of being whelped in pairs, as these Moscow informants
had it, wolves are born in litters ranging up to twelve, and that they
do not accompany the mother beyond six or eight months. It is a fresh
contribution, too, that wolf-packs consist of males that are searching
for females.
For the time being the packs had it--Sharkey’s suggestion (and Nelson’s
and Merriam’s) that wolves might be different in Europe seemed to be
carrying the day.
But there was the matter of wolves attempting to devour the Hampshire
regiment of British troops on its sleigh journey from Omsk to
Ekaterinburg in 1918-19. Sir Sidney Harmer of the Natural History
Museum, South Kensington, was a student of animal habits and of animal
lore. He should be able to get in touch with members of the Hampshire
regiment, and I wrote him June 23. The Museum’s Keeper of Zoölogy, W.
G. Calman, replied on the Museum’s behalf July 21 that the Hampshire
story was fading “as wolf stories generally do when they are more
definitely enquired into.” He forwarded a letter dated July 19 from
H. M. Howgrave-Graham, who is Secretary of the Metropolitan Police of
London and was (says _Who’s Who_) “Captain in the 1/9 Batln. Hampshire
Regiment in India and Siberia, 1914-19.”
“I was in Colonel Johnson’s Battalion (the Ninth Battalion of the
Hampshire Regiment) and it happens that I was in charge of the only
party which made any considerable sledge journeys during the winter
1918-19.
“My party tried to get to Orenburg from Omsk but didn’t get so far. We
went by train to Troitsk and from there we made two sledge journeys,
one to Verkhne Uralsk and back and one to Orsk and back. I remember
being told that we might see wolves and had hopes of doing so as we
travelled a good deal at night. But we were disappointed and never saw
or heard any signs of wolves at all....”
Junius B. Wood said in his above-quoted letter to me:
“Your statement ‘You know, of course, that of all wolf-pack stories
published by the American newspapers, more than 75 per cent are
without any foundation whatever, and that most of the rest are based
on some misapprehension’ indicates a clairvoyance worthy of your
fellow explorer ‘Doc’ Cook. It is the first suggestion which has come
to me that I ‘know,’ or even admit such a theory ... unless you can
show that you have tabulated and checked the individual inaccuracies
of ‘all’ the newspaper stories which you so sweepingly include, I am
extremely sceptical of your ‘75 per cent’ and have serious doubts of
your impartiality on the gregariousness of wolves.”
It had never been my intention to claim that three-quarters of all
cases had already been studied and found without any vestige of
truth. What I meant was that several students whom I know, among
them the Chief of the United States Biological Survey, had been
investigating for years the cases which came to their attention and
that three-quarters of these had proved without foundation--while
most of the rest, and perhaps all, were based on misquotations,
misunderstandings, and the like.
Particularly with regard to a distant and vast realm like the U.S.S.R.
it is hard to study all the cases reported. With increasing frequency
through my investigations I began to run upon the name of Sergius
Buturlin as a lifelong student of Russian and Siberian wild life and
as the foremost authority, among other things, on wolves. Accordingly,
I wrote him July 14, 1927, requesting as much general information and
as definite information as he felt like giving. He replied August 18:
“I began hunting when about 8 years old, now--I am sorry to say--some
46 years ago. And though my chief interest was always with birds, and
my first ornithological paper was published (in _Okhotnichia Gazeta_
or _Hunter’s Journal_, Moscow) in 1888, I was, and am still, very fond
indeed of big game shooting (bears, moose, wolves).
“I hunted much in the basin of middle Volga (governments of
Simbirsk--now Ulianovsk--Penza, Kazan, Nijny, Nijny-Novgorod) in
governments of Tula and Orel, in Livonia and Esthonia, in governments
of St. Petersburg--now Leningrad--and Novgorod, in Kirghiz country
(between Irtysh and Ob), Kulunda steppe, gov’ts. of Tomsk and Irkutsk,
and in the north: Arkhangelsk and Olonetz gov’ts., Kolguev, Novaia
Zemlia, Yakutsk, Verkhoiansk, middle and lower Kolyma, some parts of
Chukchee-land and Kamchatka.
“As from 1888 on I was always an active contributor to almost
all our hunters’ journals, Russian and German (we had _Baltische
Waidmann’s Blätter_), and from 1898 always took part, as now, in the
editorship of our best hunter’s periodicals, I had a vast amount of
correspondence with our most experienced shooting men.
“I can fairly say that we have now too much wolves in our country, but
I remember years--for instance, about 1900--when in my native Simbirsk
gov. and Penza gov. they were as plentiful as now.
“And never in my life have I seen more than 14 wolves in one pack,
and this only twice. And never have I heard a reliable account of
such a case. And I have known many old and experienced professional
trappers and hunters.
“Usual number is about 5-8.
“But I have seen--it was about half-past five in the morning on the
13th Oct. 1893, near my grandmother’s estate Lava in the middle part
of Simbirsk gov., Sura basin,--when a pack of 5 attacked a herd of
about 10,000 sheep, frightened about a thousand of them in a narrow
ravine and in a few minutes slayed 153 sheep--without even taking away
a single sheep, as I drove them away.
“I suppose if I didn’t happen to ride near by I would be informed
afterward by shepherds that they were attacked by 50 wolves. It was of
course too dark to see, but though there was no snow, the ground was
soft from rains, and I could count all their footprints in the morning
in the bush and woodland near this ravine.
“I am quite sure that wolves (at least in Russia and Siberia) hunt
only in family packs, that is, papa, mamma, young ones of the year and
often some ones of the previous brood. And this amounts to 5-8, more
rarely 9-10, and quite exceptionally 14 specimens.”
Privately we had disposed of the Russian packs of the winter 1927 but
in the newspapers they continued to do well. There appeared in Miami,
Florida, (and no doubt elsewhere), a despatch which we copy from the
_News_ of June 12:
“MOSCOW, June 11--Ten families were rushed to the Pasteur institute at
Moscow from Kalujsky, a small village of the Kuban district, after a
large pack of mad wolves had swept down the village street, invading
gardens and even entering several homes, biting the residents.”
By now the _Associated Press_ was keen on wolves--indeed had been for
six months when Stiles wrote on September 30 that there was in his
office a Polish representative who believed stoutly in wolf-packs and
that they had received (and, I gather, killed) a press despatch from
Warsaw:
“Polish military patrol Russian border attacked by pack wolves
dispersed them with gunfire.”
I had long been thinking to write my classmate John B. Stetson who was
Minister to Poland. This gave occasion, and he replied June 8, 1928:
“A long time ago I had your letter regarding the possible attacks of
wolves....
“While there is much talk about the danger of wolves attacking human
beings and while people relate incidents which occurred to them when
they have seen wolves which they thought were going to attack them,
etc., it is extremely difficult to find specific instances when
attacks have been made by wolves....
“I asked the Chief of the Frontier Guards to make an investigation of
the various border posts to see if any attacks had been noted along
the 1500 kilometer front between Russia and Poland. This region is
wild and not densely settled. I enclose herewith the letter which I
have received from him.”
The letter from General Minkiewicz had specific information on two
cases of wolves, each time three in a group, that had been fired on by
frontier guards.
As to whether wolves attack in large packs, the General says:
“Accounts of wolves attacking men sometimes appearing in the
press have their origin in the phantasy of correspondents seeking
sensational news.
“In a few cases, however, we have noted a very aggressive attitude
displayed by wolves and, if they did not dare to attack me, it was
only due to the fact that there were but few of them....”
The general commanding the frontier guard, then, had apparently never
heard that (around September, 1927) “Polish military patrol Russian
border attacked by pack wolves dispersed them with gunfire.”
Lee Smits had suggested my writing David C. Mills of the National
Association of Fur Industries as likely to be informed on wolf-packs.
Mills wrote from New York, December 9, 1927. A summary of his
three-page letter is:
Vladimir Eitington (of Eitington-Schild Co., 226 West 30th Street, New
York City) was once followed by wolves in Siberia until he camped and
built a fire. He thought there might have been 15 or 25, “but he says
that in the dark and under such circumstances, he could not make a
rational estimate.”
Many animals have the following habit. Mills cites from his own
experience wolves (two), coyotes (several), and bears.
Writer’s opinion, and that of his friend, is that wolves never kill
people. Specially cited here is John B. Burnham, noted American
authority on wild animals, former secretary of the American Game
Protective Association.
Mills thinks that “common knowledge” of wolves and suchlike is usually
wrong. Then he has his own summary:
“The information from Russian sources in re. the wolf myth is--
“1st There has never been a scientific investigation of the question.
“2nd That wolves, under ordinary conditions, do not attack humans.
“3rd That mad wolves sometimes enter villages and snap right and left
at anything or anyone. I presume this means rabies, as that disease is
also found in America among coyotes.
“4th That they have no knowledge of any authenticated case of wolves
in packs attacking travelers in sleighs, etc., but do not know that it
has never happened.”
In 1928, perhaps for variety, the newspaper wolf-packs transferred
their chief European activities to districts other than hackneyed
Poland and Russia. The American papers informed us soon after the New
Year (we quote the New York _World_ of January 6) that:
“... eleven peasant girls of the Czechoslovakian town of Maramaros
Sziget were devoured by wolves when returning from a neighboring
village through the forest.”
The Consul General of Czechoslovakia gave preliminary reply to my
inquiry on January 10, warning that stories of wolves “especially
stories from Vienna are always greatly exaggerated.” On April 2 he
wrote that “we have here the reply of the Administration of the
Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia stating that the report of killing of eleven
peasant girls by wolves in Maramaros Sziget is not true.” Further on
the letter says that some wolves were seen near Maramaros Sziget in
January “and this was the possible foundation for the wild report of
_Neue Freie Presse_.”
November 7 the _Evening Standard_ of London, England, printed a Moscow
despatch of even date:
“Wolves are becoming a menace to life in the country districts of
North Russia and Siberia....
“... A pack of several hundred attacked a priest and his wife while
they were driving from one village to another 100 miles south of
Moscow.
“While his wife held the reins, the priest beat off the wolves with a
whip. Suddenly a wolf bit one of the horse’s legs. It lurched forward,
throwing the priest from the wagon. He was killed by the wolves. The
horse carried the woman to safety.
“Similar attacks on persons are reported daily from all parts of the
country.--International News Service.”
On this the Chairman of the Amtorg Trading Corporation, Saul G. Bron,
wrote me November 25:
“These are termed in the Soviet Union as the ‘big Russian cranberry
tree’ tales. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that malicious
white-Russian propaganda agencies ... are working overtime and that
the comparative scarcity of reliable information about the U.S.S.R.
in this country makes a fertile field for the circulation of stories
about uprisings, wolves roaming the countryside, etc.”
October 25, C. K. Ogden (whom H. G. Wells has since discussed in the
Fifth Book of _The Shape of Things to Come_) wrote me from the Royal
Societies Club, London. He told that the De Reszke cigarette had small
prize cards in their packages and that the one on The Wolf said “dogs
and wolves hunt in packs.” He wrote them and they replied:
“We are sorry that we cannot give you any zoological authority to
maintain the view that wolves hunt in packs as stated on the back
of picture No. 26 of our Zoological Studies.... The error will be
corrected should we have a reprint of the series.”
Through laxity, or real failure of the sources, my wolf record is
blank for Europe and Asia during 1930 and 1931--there is no account
of tenderly-nurtured wolf children from India, of babies devoured in
Siberia, of forays of Rumanian wolves into Czechoslovakia. But in 1932
the times were more abundant and my records are bulky.
On January 10, 1932, Duncan Campbell Scott, president of the Canadian
Authors’ Association, descended to his more factual role of president
of the Royal Society and wrote from Ottawa with concern for my wolf
studies. He sent a press cutting headed “From Our Own Correspondent,
Vienna, Sunday”:
“While an express train from Bucharest was snowbound near Zloty and
awaiting help, a pack of hungry wolves bore down upon it.
“Having no firearms, the train staff emptied a luggage van and threw
into it raw meat from the restaurant car.
“Twenty or more wolves jumped into the van and began to fight one
another for the meat. The doors were promptly locked and later the
train proceeded on its journey to Kischinev, Bessarabia. On arrival 18
wolves were found alive, the rest having been torn to pieces.”
In view of the style of this despatch I have looked up Karel Capek
in _Who’s Who_ and _Britannica_ but cannot determine from the brief
sketches whether he was in Vienna during January, 1932.
How wolf stories rotate appeared two years later when C. K. Ogden sent
me what is essentially the same tale--though with a new city of origin,
a new date line, a few new frills. The cutting is unfortunately from an
unnamed paper of London, England--I dare not guess which paper, though
I think I recognize the style. It was from Budapest, December 19, 1933.
Like the one of two years earlier it was “From Our Own Correspondent.”
It ran:
“An unpleasant adventure which overtook the direct train from Bucarest
to Budapest is reported from Bucarest.
“During the night the train was held up by snowdrifts and obliged to
stand nine hours in an uninhabited part of Roumania. To the terror
of the passengers a pack of wolves surrounded the train, and the
situation was only saved by the wit of a conductor.
“An order was given that the luggage van should be emptied, and some
raw meat from the kitchen was then placed in the van and the doors
thrown open. When all the wolves were safely inside the van the doors
were shut, and the train continued its journey with these unusual
passengers.
At the station of Chrisina, in Roumania, the wolves were transferred
to cages which had been prepared for them.”
It is usually difficult to trace stories from the Balkans, perhaps
because their Ministers and Consuls there get tired of answering
questions about all the strange things we print from their part of the
world. For instance, I still covet the real truth on what appeared,
as Special Correspondence, in the New York _Times_, February 28, 1932,
from Bucharest:
“Two peasants on the way to market in Oradea Mare were attacked on the
highroad today by a pack of starving wolves. They were unarmed and,
after a brief attempt to beat off the animals with sticks, were pulled
down, killed and partly devoured.”
I queried the Roumanian Legation on this but never had a reply.
I have had better luck with the northern countries, perhaps because
there I know the ropes. The Director of the University Museum,
Philadelphia, wrote March 21 on behalf of himself and one of his
vice-presidents, passing on to me heartrending news:
WOLVES KILL GIRL IN FINLAND; INVADE VILLAGES FOR FOOD
Wireless to The New York _Times_.
“HELSINGFORS, March 4.--Villagers in Eastern Finland were terrorized
this week by an invasion of hungry wolves, roaming southward from the
frozen plains of Lapland.
“The beasts entered villages and even the outlying districts of towns
in search of food. The young daughter of a farmer in middle Finland
was attacked and killed by wolves while she was walking on a highway
near her home. Her parents found only bones and fragments of clothing
after the tragedy....”
I wrote Helsingfors, sending a copy of the _Times_ despatch. The
Intendent of the Zoological Museum replied March 20th:
“... it is not true that a young daughter of a farmer was attacked and
killed. A similar notice was found in our press, so that the telegram
to New York is therefore explicable. By an official investigation,
the whole thing turned out to be a manifestation of too vivid
imagination--somebody had found a bloody rag on the road, and thus the
story was immediately given. In the same way it is a real nonsense
that the wolves had penetrated into villages and towns. The whole
thing was about a couple of animals which killed a number of dogs
before they were driven away and killed.”
The cruel ingenuity of man towards wolves is a defensive reaction
to the cruel rapacity of wolves toward man. In fact, the wide
dissemination of stories about packs is a necessity in justifying the
extensiveness of the war we wage and the character of the weapons and
tactics we use. We would not be half so successful in protecting the
chickens of the farmer and the sheep of the rancher if we did not
constantly circulate reports of how wolves will attack anything from
a child playing on a cabin floor in Michigan to a regiment of British
troops in Siberia.
Some of the methods used against wolves are commonplace, not worth
describing, though we might name a few of them--trapping, shooting, the
use of poisoned bait, the finding of dens and smoking out of the pups
to be clubbed to death. One method is so peculiar that we describe it.
Under date of March 12, 1927, the _Associated Press_ received, but did
not issue to the newspapers, information upon the extent and manner of
wolf hunting in Poland.
“... for centuries wolf hunts have been carried out by Poles (1) by
the aristocrats as a sport, (2) by peasants as a means of livelihood.
The same method, which is gentle, as you will see, has been employed
by nobility and peasant.
“A live pig is attached by a leather rope at the rear of sleigh or
sled in which six or seven men take their places, all heavily armed.
The sleigh is drawn by two or three horses. Two men devote themselves
exclusively to protecting the horses from the onslaught of the wolves
which, led from their lairs by the screams of the suffering and dying
hog, rush in a pack after the swiftly moving sleigh. Two other men
empty their rifles at wolves from either side and two others do their
execution from the rear.
“... (Our informant) said his father has often hunted wolves, which
attack in packs, after this fashion.”
I might have traced this account through my aforementioned classmate
the Minister to Poland, and would have done so but for chancing upon
remarks of Sir Albert Gray before the Royal Geographical Society of
London as they are reported in that society’s _Journal_ for June, 1921,
p. 445. They are to the effect that people continue holding strange,
romantic, beliefs no matter how often these are exposed. He has in
mind chiefly the idea that wolves run in packs and quotes the (for the
time and place) annihilation of the idea by Baddeley in his _Russia in
the Eighties, Sport and Politics_, (London, 1921). I was on the track
of wolf-packs then and followed Sir Albert’s clue. I found the author
demolishing the pack to his own satisfaction and that he also pays his
respects to various beliefs regarding the methods of hunting wolves.
John F. Baddeley spent in Russia, of which a large section of Poland
was then a part, most of the decade following 1879 and much of those
years in hunting and in the company of sportsmen and naturalists. After
denying that wolves ever go in packs and after denying also that wolves
are numerous in Russia, he says, beginning on p. 149:
“The idea that wolves are very numerous in Russia has gained
substance, also, from the very natural tendency of certain sportsmen
to exaggerate their performances; and more especially is this the case
in regard to that form of sport in which wolves and sucking-pigs are
supposed to play the chief parts. According to published accounts--I
have one or two before me but will not pillory the writers--you
have only to take a sucking-pig (in good voice) and drive along the
highroad in a sledge any winter’s night, trailing behind you a bundle
of straw at the end of a string to represent piggy--who meantime must
be made to squeal his loudest--to enjoy excellent sport with the
numerous wolves that will assuredly come to the lure the first time of
asking. Here again I am regretfully forced to say that I never knew
a man of proved veracity who claimed to have bagged even one wolf by
this method, while one honest friend assured me that he had tried it
no less than seventeen times in places where wolves were known to
exist, but had only once had a shot at what he thought might be one.”
It may be, as claimed by this author, that wolves do not swarm in
from Polish forests at the squeals of a pig, but the belief that they
do is useful. Faraway, in Michigan for instance, stories detailing
the alleged Polish ingenuities will tend to lead American woodsmen
to cleverness of wolf-killing that, in the long run, saves the local
farmers a good many chickens and lambs.
A reporter friend tells that the wolf-pack is a standard joke among
the foreign correspondents in Europe, certainly in Vienna, and he has
passed on to me a crystallization of their attitude, as expressed by
the correspondent for a London paper:
The yarn is that the Orient Express was held up by a pack of wolves.
They began at the front end, eating the engineer and fireman, and
proceeded towards the rear, devouring everyone as they went until, in
the last car, they came upon a correspondent whom they spared on his
promise that he would give them adequate publicity.
CRUMBS FOR PACK BELIEVERS
The evidence has been, then, that wolf-packs which come up to motion
picture and folklore standards do not exist. But there still may be a
foundation of reality upon which the imaginative and inventive have
built their fabrications.
Students who scout the pack as ordinarily defined and pictured have
nevertheless agreed on certain things which, by multiplication,
magnification and misinterpretation, could start the pack idea going,
or at any rate might keep it going.
Obviously wolf pups will remain with their mother until weaned.
Doubtless the family breaks up before the young are quite full grown,
or when they are between five and eight months old. There may be as
many as twelve in a litter, fourteen by some views. When you meet
stories of packs with five to fifteen in them you can thus have a true
report of a family hunting, traveling or living together. If the story
describes a “gigantic leader of the pack” you may be sure that a family
is involved. With the even-sized pups taken for normal wolves, mama
looks colossal. If there are two gigantic leaders, then papa must be
traveling along.
A foremost authority for America, Nelson, and a foremost one for
Eurasia, Buturlin, differ on one point, though only in degree. Nelson
is somewhere between thinking it rare and thinking it improbable that
last year’s pups will be found still traveling with their mother after
this year’s become large enough to hunt; Buturlin thinks it rare but
sees no improbability. Accordingly, when Nelson credits a report of
say twenty wolves he is inclined to think that two families have come
together accidentally for a few moments, or are only following each
other accidentally instead of really traveling together. Buturlin feels
these are probably one mother’s litters of two years and that they are
in semi-permanent company.[15]
With such family groups for nuclei, the traveler’s tale, the peasant’s
yarn which the reporter believes, become easy. Just multiply by ten and
you have packs of 50, 100, 200. Zero is nothing. So what is a zero more
or less in a good yarn?
There are methods other than simple multiplication which can lead
reasonably to packs of great size.
In the Arctic and sub-Arctic I have stood at vantage points from which
I could see in one, two, or several directions from me scattered wolves
which, counted together, would make a “pack.” These are no more really
a pack of wolves than the scattered and unconnected pickpockets of a
city are a band of thieves. But assume the story is thrice repeated.
First version: I saw 100 wolves from one place. Second version: Jones
saw 100 wolves in one place. Third version: Brown says Jones saw a pack
of 100 wolves.
It might happen that two wolf families scent a caribou or a band.
Running up the wind they might so nearly come together, without really
joining, that a careless observer seeing the two packs running in
the same direction would take them to be one pack--this all the more
because groups that are indubitably a mother with pups will sometimes
string out half a mile as they lope in pursuit of caribou. But two
families strung out, say a mile from the first to the last of them,
would not make a pack in the sense of a band working systematically and
semi-permanently together.
With considerations such as these in mind, we examine seemingly
reliable testimony for considerable numbers of wolves having been
observed together.
“Considerable” needs defining. The wolf-killing service of the U. S.
Biological Survey were polled by Nelson and voted for two, three, and
at highest five wolves being seen together, these always mother or
parents with pups. Many have testified for seven in a family, however,
among them the zoologist, Dr. R. M. Anderson, Chief Biologist, Ottawa,
who has in Canada an official position similar to Nelson’s in the
United States. A few apparently good witnesses have testified to nine.
We are, then, chiefly concerned in this section with numbers larger
than nine and with their interpretation--were they really together and
then in what sense? How permanently were they together? Were they
family groups?
My voluminous correspondence on packs was, as said, begun in 1922 when
I realized that my own belief in wolf-packs, begun in _The Friendly
Arctic_ (see that book’s index) was untenable. We have already used
that part of the correspondence which attempted to trace packs reported
between 1922 and 1936, finding all that could be traced wanting. We now
canvass the rest of the evidence, using it in the main chronologically.
_The Encyclopedia Britannica_, Fourteenth Edition, says in its article
on wolves that: “Except during summer when the young families of cubs
are being separately provided for by their parents they assemble in
troops or packs.”
That edition is dated 1929. Seven years before, on March 27, 1922,
Anderson wrote to Nelson that during several years spent in Arctic and
sub-Arctic Canada and Alaska:
“... I never saw more than seven wolves in any band nor did I hear
of any larger bands than seven. A reliable Eskimo in my employ told
me that he was once followed by nine wolves on a river near Herschel
Island, and in the Joint Report, _Survey International Boundary, 141st
Meridian_, 1918, there is a report of nine wolves seen in a band on
the boundary.
“In that region the wolves are more often seen in bunches of two or
three, or singly, and the bunches of five or more are probably an old
female with her cubs of the year. Several that we killed out of such a
band at Langton Bay were all immature....
“I have heard occasional vague rumors of larger bands of wolves in
more southerly parts of Canada, but have never been able to verify any
such reports....”
In passing on to me, November 25, 1922, the information given by
Anderson, Nelson added:
“... I am satisfied that the stories of great packs of wolves banded
together to pursue caribou or any other game are based on the fertile
imagination of the writers and not on observations in the field. It
is common knowledge that the wolves pair more or less permanently and
are in no sense gregarious animals. At the end of each breeding season
and until well into the following winter, my field experience and the
information which has come to the Biological Survey from its large
force of hunters destroying predatory animals in the western states,
coincide in enumerating packs of wolves not exceeding the ordinary
normal number of the two parents and the litter of the season which
may vary from three or four animals up to ten or twelve. Such bands
of parents and their young of the year hunt together until well into
the following winter but with the approach of spring they separate
to mate.... There is a bare possibility that in pursuing bands of
reindeer or caribou, several of these family packs of wolves might
accidentally come together in pursuit but such union would be purely
fortuitous and of very temporary endurance.
“My observations and personal information obtained at first hand
extends from the mountains bordering the valley of Mexico, north to
the Arctic circle in Alaska and also the observations of our large
corps of hunters numbering several hundred men, who, during the
progress of their campaign against predatory animals in the western
states have killed between four and five thousand of these animals
within the last six years.”
Nelson wrote me January 4, 1923, after a fresh study of some Russian
evidence, that clearly they have there the same situation as we have
here, “the wolves running in family parties exactly as they do in
North America, running in great bands only in literature and folklore.”
On January 18 Harkin sent me a long quotation from a story he had found
in “one of our local papers, under date the 17th instant.” It is a long
statement, generally claiming that wolves are not dangerous. A section
bearing on our present theme is under the subhead “Whole Pack Fled.” In
northern Ontario the sledge was crossing a lake, on a winter evening,
toward an island:
“We were just making the point of this island, and what should we meet
coming from the other side but a pack of wolves. We just met there.
The leader, a big, grizzled, long-legged old chap, looked me over from
a distance of about twenty feet; the rest of the pack ranged behind
and alongside of him, their tails straight out for just about as long
as it takes to stiffen them out with fear. Then they broke. They just
flattened out on the ice and flew--twenty-one of them.”
We have used in another connection parts of a letter from Inspector
Jennings of the R.C.M.P., Edmonton, April 20, 1923, one of the most
informative of the whole wolf correspondence:
“... it appears timber wolves are becoming more numerous in the
McKenzie Delta, but do not appear to be running in packs. At Baillie
Island where a number were killed in the winter of 1921-22 they appear
to be running in packs of from four to seven. We have also paid
bounties at Tree River Detachment for wolves killed in the Coronation
Gulf. C. Klinkenberg, whom you remember, told me in 1921, when I was
North, of a fight he had with a she wolf and five yearling pups. He
was attacked by all of them, and only by the fortunate appearance of
his son with his rifle was his life saved.... The general impression
is that such bands, or what may be called a band, is generally a
family, and that it is only occasionally, when hunting for food, that
two or more families might come together and constitute a real pack.
“In regard to the McKenzie District, an old prospector who has
travelled from the headwaters of the Thelon River to the British
Columbia boundary in the West states that while east of the McKenzie
River wolves may be plentiful when Caribou are numerous, he has
never seen them in what may be called a pack, although at times in
the open several wolves may be seen together, but evidently working
independently. Below Simpson and also on the Liard River in the Foot
Hills, he has seen as many as twenty under one leader, but generally
the pack is from five to nine. The band of twenty was following a
moose track. At another time he states that when his party had killed
a moose, shortly after, a large grey wolf was seen on the opposite
side of the river. This wolf called a few times and was soon joined by
others to the number of ten....
“One of my officers in February, 1916, while traveling on the
McKenzie, about 30 miles below Simpson, came upon a band of seven, at
a place where a moose had been killed the previous day.”
December 19, 1924, Nelson reaffirmed his lack of evidence for believing
that two or more families ever made up a “temporary pack.” He also
defined the terms under which, for sake of argument, he might concede
theoretically, in the absence of evidence, that unions might take place.
“I am still skeptical about the formation of wolf-packs which are
made up of two or more families hunting in companionship. I have
no knowledge of any such combination, and knowing the habits and
characteristics of wolves doubt this occurring except under what might
be termed fortuitous circumstances. Two or more family parties of
wolves might incidentally come together in the pursuit of the same
game animal and join in the kill; but if they did so I should expect
a fierce battle to ensue between the different parties of wolves,
strangers to one another, just as would happen in the case of strange
dogs. Furthermore, I believe that should two or more family parties of
wolves thus come together in the immediate pursuit of game, they would
promptly spread into their original units as soon as the kill was made
or the chase ended. Wolves have much the same nature as dogs, and the
hostility that strange dogs show one to another is a good indication
of what might be expected on the part of wolves....”
C. Hart Merriam wrote January 12, 1925, quoting his own _Mammals of the
Adirondacks_ (New York, 1882):
“Comparatively few wolves are now to be found in the Adirondacks,
though twelve years ago they were quite abundant, and used to hunt in
packs of half a dozen or more.... The amount of noise that a single
wolf is capable of producing is simply astonishing, and many amusing
episodes of camp lore owe their origin to this fact. More than one
‘lone traveler’ has hastily taken to a tree, and remained in the
inhospitable shelter of its scrawny branches for an entire night,
believing himself surrounded by a pack of at least fifty fierce and
hungry wolves, when, in reality, there was but one, and (as its tracks
afterwards proved) it was on the farther side of a lake, a couple of
miles away.”
Merriam further quotes Theodore Roosevelt’s _Hunting Trips of a
Ranchman_ (New York, 1885):
“According to my experience, the wolf is rather solitary. A single one
or a pair will be found by themselves, or possibly with one or more
well-grown young ones, and will then hunt over a large tract where no
other wolves will be found; and as they wander very far, and as their
melancholy howlings have a most ventriloquial effect, they are often
thought to be much more plentiful than they are.”
In its care to avoid nature faking the _Associated Press_ refused to
circulate a story which they received from Winnipeg and which Jackson
S. Elliott, Assistant General Manager, sent along for my wolf files
July 8, 1926. That account, however, runs well within family limits and
so has the probabilities for it. The applicable section runs that “the
hunter noticed a string of seven grey wolves crossing the prairie. He
waited until they approached and was successful in bringing down five
of them.”
The story seemed probably correct and gave a lead to further
information, so I wrote A. Brabant, Fur Trade Commissioner of the
Hudson’s Bay Company, Winnipeg, and received through him a valuable
letter from their A. C. Clark, Norway House, Manitoba, August 3:
“Carl Sherman, the trapper who killed the wolves referred to, is at
present in this locality, and I have been able to get the details of
the story referred to.
“Sherman is trapping on the Hayes River, about 150 miles north of
Oxford House Post. He was travelling north one day early in November
... and saw about 14 or 15 wolves making for the point on which he
stood. When they got to within 75 yards of him, he fired and brought
down the leader. By the time they got out of sight, he had killed
five.... They were all full grown, and all males. The wolves were not
dangerous, but made for safety, as soon as they got over the surprise
of the first shot. The wind was in the wrong direction for the wolves
to get the scent of Sherman.
“I can vouch for the above story being correct....”
This, then, is a remarkable story. The reader will find several things
in which it contradicts, or seems to contradict, Nelson, Buturlin, and
Anderson in so far as he was quoted (above) by Nelson. It fits badly
with the rest of our evidence but is nevertheless impressively vouched
for.
Information similarly difficult came in an undated letter July, 1927,
from Fred B. Kniffen of the Department of Geography, University of
California, Berkeley:
“... I have seen two wolf-packs.
“I had occasion to spend the winter of 1923-24 prospecting in the
upper Tanana region of Alaska. I hunted considerably as caribou meat
furnished an appreciable part of my diet and almost all of that of my
dogs. One afternoon I was seated on a little hill about a quarter of a
mile from a small lake. Through the natural pass below me the caribou
had been passing at the rate of several hundred a day. As I watched,
a file of wolves emerged from some brush on the opposite side of the
lake, skirted the shore and went off in the direction the caribou were
going. They seemed to be running roughly in a column of twos and I
counted about twenty-eight in the pack.
“One night I was awakened by the howls of my dogs responding to those
of some wolves. I stood in the doorway of my cabin and a little later
could distinguish the forms of five wolves against the snow of the
river, perhaps seventy-five yards away. The dogs were now growling,
apparently in fear. One shot dispersed the wolves....
“These events all occurred in late winter. It is quite possible that
an old she wolf and her pups may have accounted for a large part
of this but the large pack could hardly be explained away in this
fashion.”
Kniffen himself suggests a family explanation for his second pack. On
July 14 I suggested in a letter to him that _possibly_ the first set
were not a pack, either,--in the sense of having banded together for
cooperative hunting. I said that: “The wolves you saw following each
other, though there were twenty-eight, were (then) no more necessarily
a pack than eleven college men walking towards an athletic field are
necessarily the college team.”
The well-known and highly-regarded student of Canadian wild life, Tony
Lascelles, wrote for the Winnipeg _Free Press_ of April 25, 1936, an
article, “The Mammals of Manitoba.” A paragraph in it can be read as
supporting the traditional wolf-pack--I did not so read it but thought
others might. But Lascelles writes from Mistamick Lodge, Dauphin,
Manitoba, May 15, 1936, with reference to his use of the key word, that
“the pack is a family group and the maximum pack is a maximum family.”
With this we close the section of our discussion which is written for
those who like to believe that even the seemingly most absurd folklore
tale has developed from a nucleus of fact.
WOLVES AND BABES
The misanthropy of wolves, dramatic in their pursuit of wedding parties
and in the siege of stalled trains, is particularly horrible toward
little children. They eat them all up, rather jocularly in Red Riding
Hood, grimly in our newspapers. See, for instance, the tragic story
“Copyright, 1928, by the New York Times Company. By Wireless to The New
York _Times_:
“RIGA, Jan. 1.--A woman of the Unciany district of Lithuania, riding
with a child in a one-horse sleigh and pursued by a pack of wolves,
made a desperate effort to escape, but after a short, sharp race the
horse collapsed.
“The wolves tore the child from its mother’s arms, devoured it, and
then fell on the mother. Some peasants, hearing her cries, hurried to
the scene and rescued her, torn but still alive.
“As a result of the severe weather the depredations by wolves in many
parts of Russia are unusually alarming. The Soviet authorities are
carrying out an organized campaign against the danger by offering
rewards for wolves’ heads. In some districts detachments of the Red
Army are used.
“Packs of wolves have appeared in many parts usually immune,
especially in the Crimea.”
Reporters naturally have time for cabling such stories but ministers
at Washington and consuls-general in New York, though frequently kind
and helpful, are at times so buried in humdrum that you cannot get them
interested. I failed in tracing this despatch from Riga. Therefore we
can but deal in likelihoods and refer to the Michigan story of February
3, 1927, reported _ante_--it was nearer home and so we were able to
enlist the help of local investigators.
We are reluctant to pursue further this gruesome child-eating. The case
against the wolf in this respect is indeed black enough, what with
the inclusion of many babes among the people devoured already in this
chapter by the ravenous hordes. We turn with relief to a brighter side
of the case. In warm contrast are the maternally kind and otherwise
friendly wolves that have nursed and cared for children, sometimes even
twins, as in the case of Romulus and Remus. In our present century
there is never a decade, there is seldom a year, when newspapers do not
bring us well-attested cases.
Through the _Associated Press_ the New York _Times_ reported October
22, 1926 (from London, October 21):
“Two little ‘wolf girls’ were found recently living in a wolf’s den
near an isolated village in Bengal, British India. The story is told
by _The Westminster Gazette_, which received it from India, vouched
for by the Rev. Jal Singh of Midnapur, Bengal, and Bishop Pakenham
Walsh of Bishops College, Calcutta.
“Bishop Walsh relates that about the end of August, while visiting the
Rev. Jal Singh’s orphanage at Midnapur, Mr. Singh recounted how he
discovered the ‘wolf girls.’
“In a distant part of his district not long before, the villagers
pointed out to him a path they avoided because it was haunted by
demons. Investigation revealed a wolf den in which there were several
wolf cubs and two girls, about two and eight years of age, both
exceedingly fierce, running on all fours, uttering guttural barks and
living like wolves.
“The supposition was that they were abandoned as babies by their
mother or mothers and were found and adopted by the she wolf. With
much difficulty, the children were rescued, but the younger died soon
afterward.
“The elder child survived and is now at the orphanage. She was
gradually weaned from her savage ways, but she fought fiercely
against wearing clothes, and tore them off even after they were sewn
on her. For a time she refused to be washed and ate with her mouth in
a dish. Eventually she was taught to use her hands and say a few words.
“She still is weak mentally and neither cries nor laughs, but is
gentle with animals, preferring the company of dogs to children.”
Sir Sidney Harmer, British student of wolves, wrote November 15, 1926,
that the _Westminster Gazette_ had told him they knew the bishop of the
story existed and believed the wolf children also were real. Sir Sidney
closed:
“I have myself no information on the subject, and I do not know
of anyone else who could help you. We are inclined to be a little
sceptical.”
I never did get farther with the investigation of this particular case.
Reports that were traced, though not by me, appeared several times
the next year. The first, “Copyright, 1927, by The New York Times
Company--Special Cable to the New York _Times_, Allahabad, British
India, April 5,” said that:
“Herdsmen near Miawana, seventy-five miles from here, found a small
Indian boy supposed to be about 10 years of age, in a wolf’s den. From
marks in the den it was obvious that the boy had been living there. He
was unable to talk or to walk properly, but went on all fours, lapped
water and ate grass.
“The boy was brought here, put in a special lockup and supplied with
food and medicine. At night he barked, bit himself and other people
and had to be tied down. He is very thin and emaciated, but his limbs
are otherwise well formed. He has a terrible scar on one side of his
face, as if he had been mauled by some animal.
“He has been taken to Bareilly for treatment at a mental hospital.”
The _Times_ furnished a supplementary note:
“This is the third case of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Jungle Book’ hero,
Mowgli, in real life which has been discovered in India within the
last ten months. Last September Bishop Walsh wrote to the Indian
_Social Reformer_ of Bombay of the case of two little girls who
had been found by the Rev. J. Singh in a wolf’s den near Bengal.
They revealed the same characteristics as the boy described in the
Allahabad dispatch. One of them soon pined away and died, but the
other rapidly became ‘humanized’ in Singh’s orphanage at Midnapur. It
was supposed that the girls, as is sometimes the case in India, had
been abandoned in the jungle by their parents on account of their sex
and had been mothered by a she wolf which had just been deprived of
her young.
“The same explanation would not account for the presence of the boy in
a wolf’s den near Miawana.”
Further news, similarly special and copyrighted, came by wireless from
London and was published April 27:
“Further information is now available about the so-called ‘wolf-child’
whose discovery near Miawana, British India, seventy-five miles from
Allahabad, provoked so much discussion. Some travelers tell of similar
discoveries extending back many years, but medical authorities are
inclined to dismiss them as fables.
“The boy found in Miawana is judged to be between 7 and 12 years
old and in general appearance is said to be little different from an
ordinary child, but in his actions betrays signs that are declared to
point to his bringing up with wolves. He can stand up and walk, but
sometimes prefers to crawl, sitting on his haunches with legs curled
up and propelling himself forward with the palms of hands....
“He is said to display certain instincts even lower than those of his
alleged foster parents....”
On July 10, a long, undated communication marked “London,” said that:
“News of the discovery of another alleged wolf-child in India has
started a brisk controversy here over the authenticity of such
children. No previous wolf-child has occasioned so much stir in
scientific quarters as has the boy discovered by Indian herdsmen a
few weeks ago in a wolves’ cave near Miawana, seventy-five miles from
Allahabad.
“Some of the best known medical men in London have called the story
incredible. Old Indian army officers have replied by asserting that
they have actually seen wolf-children....”
whereupon the _Times_ devotes more than a column to a statement
generally in support of the India despatches. Among those in favor is:
“Rudyard Kipling, whose Mowgli of the ‘Jungle Book’ is the best known
wolf-child in fiction, has for once withdrawn his veto on newspaper
interviews, and is quoted as saying that wolf-children ‘are by no
means impossible.’ The author goes on to say:
“‘There have been other instances of them. They say that the Miawana
boy crawls on the hands and knees: I think it much more likely that
it would be the knees and elbows. That was the way of the other
children who, like Mowgli, were adopted by wolves and knew all the
mysteries of the jungle. That way leaves their hands free to seize
their prey and to defend themselves.’”
This long article, dealing with many cases of wolf-children, says that:
“... the one commonly known as the Secundra wolf-boy, is the best
authenticated case within the memory of living man. This boy was
captured in 1867 by a shooting expedition in the unfrequented jungles
of Bulandshahr. The hunters surprised a stray wolf, which they
followed to a small mound of earth with a flat-topped rock sticking
out of the mound. A small, strange-looking animal was asleep in the
sun on the rock. To the amazement of the hunting party, it proved to
be a boy, who leaped from the rock as soon as he saw the hunters and,
running on all fours, disappeared into a cave along with the startled
wolf.
“The hunters were either unable or afraid to go further; but, feeling
that something ought to be done, they returned to Bulandshahr and
consulted the Magistrate. They were advised to go back to the cave and
smoke out the wolf and its weird companion. This they did. The wolf
was shot as soon as it rushed out and its companion was pounced upon
and captured after a severe struggle, during which several members of
the party were bitten. Two wolf cubs were also killed and the party
returned to the Magistrate to claim a reward for the dead wolf and the
dead cubs, and to exhibit the human being they had captured.
“The wolf bounty was paid and the wolf-boy was sent to the Secundra
Orphanage. He was thought to be about 7 or 8 years old. For a long
time he tore off the clothes that were supplied him and persisted in
eating his food from the ground. As the years went by he became more
docile and eventually was baptized, taking the name of Sanicher, which
is Hindustani for Saturday, the day on which he was captured. His head
was small, his forehead low and narrow; his eyes were large and gray
and restless. He squinted incessantly and when walking lifted his feet
high like a man walking through wet grass, his entire body moving in a
series of jerks as he stepped along.”
Interest, sympathy, resentment were among the feelings commonly
expressed by those who wrote “Letters to the Editor” during the
outstanding wolf-child year of 1927. An undated cutting from the
New York _Times_, probably around July 15 or 20, has a letter from
Jacqueline Nollet:
“Have men for ‘humanity’s sake’ the right to take this Miawana boy
away from his mother-wolf and from his brotherly playmates, from the
jungle’s new and enthralling life, and to condemn him instead to an
existence devoid of companionship and a life of utter misery...?
“Since the wolf-man is no longer free to pursue his own mode of living
and is considered as a near-animal, could not the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals interfere and have a law voted to the
effect that a child saved from starvation, loved and protected by the
wolves against ferocious beasts, might be left to live with his wolf
family? And if the boy must be taken away from the wild, could not man
take a lesson and be as merciful as a wolf and spare the life of the
foster-mother and her cubs?
“Let us hope never to see repeated the act of the magistrate of
Bulandshahr who planned and rewarded the murder of the wolf family of
the Sanicher boy....”
The scientists were more hard-boiled. For instance, Herman B.
Sheffield, M.D., of New York City, wrote July 10, evidently fresh from
reading the long historical summary in the _Times_ of that date:
“Judging by the article on the ‘New Wolf Child Found in India,’ I
surmise that there are still a large number of civilized people,
including scientists, who seriously believe that ‘wolf-children’
exist in reality instead of in fiction. As a matter of fact, such
‘wolf-children’ are frequently met in daily practice and are nothing
but microcephalic idiots.
“These children are born with small, often dome-shaped, heads in
consequence of undeveloped, small brains. Owing to their extreme
restlessness and awkward power of locomotion, their habit to hop from
place to place often resembles that of a rabbit, goat or monkey.”
As the _Times_ reported, there was keen interest in London. The
Over-Seas League was naturally concerned and published in their journal
_Over Seas_ a statement by “A Member” which says that:
“Valentine Ball (previously quoted) mentions that he asked an eminent
surgeon of his day what he thought of all these stories, and the reply
was, ‘I don’t believe any of them.’ The medical profession of to-day
seems to share this lack of conviction....
“No one, apparently, has ever found a child living in an animal’s lair
and left it there, returning from time to time to observe how it was
progressing and to find out how it was fed. There is no trustworthy
evidence to show that the children so far reported as wolf-children
have ever survived for more than a few hours or days away from human
care before they were discovered and restored to such care. There is
no recorded case which could not be explained on the theory that the
child had wandered from home or been abandoned within a day or two
of its being rescued, and it is a well-known fact that Indian mothers
will sometimes ‘lose’ in the jungle mentally defective children,
which goes far to account for the imbecility of all so-called
wolf-children....
“All the stories of alleged wolf-children rest on native evidence, and
native evidence is by no means always to be relied upon as faithful
records of fact. The world of reality has its limits. The world of
imagination, especially of Eastern imagination, is boundless.”
Somewhere in the reports on most children nurtured by wolves there is
comment that, even after they had been taught by their human captors
to eat meat, they continued fond of roots, and even of grass. Is it
possible, then, that the wolves which bring up children are of a
kindlier disposition than ordinary wolves for the reason that they are
vegetarians?
WOLVES FOR POSTERITY
As said at the beginning of this chapter on wolves, we write for
every shade of belief. This last section is for a group first in our
thoughts, because largest--the lovers of romance, the enemies of the
cant of science, the vast multitude of free believers in the freedom to
believe.
True, the attacks on the wolf-pack are numerous. But what do they
amount to? They are not campaigns by great armies, they are at most
guerrilla warfare. More accurately, they are sniping.
For example, the chief of a biological survey writes letters to a
friend of his, poohpoohing wolf-pack stories, and the friend perhaps
shows them around a bit. Not half of the few who see the letters will
be affected--everybody knows what scientists are, a self-elected Brain
Trust dictating to all of us as to what we may and may not believe. If
the letter is shown in any place like a smoking room, it is talked down
by several who know people who know other people who have been treed,
pursued, or at the very least scared half to death by immense packs of
wolves.
Or a pack story in the newspapers gets a large head on the front page;
the denial comes a week later in small type on an inside page where no
one reads it. Again the pack triumphs.
The disgruntled may have for a time the active support of a
news-gathering organization, as above mentioned for the _Associated
Press_, but the most they can do is to caution their own direct
employees to be careful. They may not dictate to their affiliates, as,
for instance, the _Associated Press_ trying to dictate to the _Canadian
Press_ or to _Reuter’s_. Besides, they could not hold their own as
purveyors of readable news if they left to rivals the wolf-children
of India, the sieges of trains by wolf-packs in the Balkans, or that
increase of wolves in the U.S.S.R. which (everybody at that time
agreed) resulted from the substitution of communism for capitalism.
You may manage, perhaps, to get printed a diatribe against packs in
a highbrow journal, as I once did in the _American Mercury_. But you
cannot make new disbelievers in wolf-packs by addressing the readers
of such a magazine, for the badge of their sophistication is that they
are disbelievers already in whatever the rest of the world believes. If
you ever made nearly everybody sceptical on wolf-packs the _Mercury_
clientele would start believing in them--which is, of course, a
digression.
We shall close this chapter with a triumphant, because sufficient,
proof that wolf-packs are a reality. To accomplish this we use the
democratic method, adjudication by majority vote.
We shall have support for wolf-packs from that most popular appeal to
the people, our greatest of weeklies, the _Saturday Evening Post_, with
its millions of sold copies and no doubt several readers per copy.
We shall have on our side, too, the most orthodox and the broadest
appeal to the scientists, which is through the American Association
for the Advancement of Science and through their kind of affiliate
_Science Service_. They do not have so large a membership as that of
the _Post_, but it is effective since it overlaps but slightly the
circle of the _Post’s_ readers. The members of the Association include
most professors and other teachers of science in our various schools
and colleges, most scientists in the employ of commercial companies
(at least those in the higher brackets), and most of those employed by
the national, state, and other governments. Their official journal,
_Science_, goes to every library of consequence in the United States,
and widely through other countries. _Science_ is read for excerpts and
for ideas on behalf of newspapers and magazines. Then a great many of
the papers subscribe to _Science Service_, and even use it.
If we can show that the _Post_ and _Science_ (including _Science
Service_) are on the side of the wolf-pack, we have it winning hands
down.
On January 9, 1932, C. B. Ruggles had in the _Post_ an article,
“Neighboring With Wolves.” We are told, or given to understand, in this
and other of his _Post_ contributions, that Ruggles yields to few in
the extensiveness and intensiveness of his northern lore. He has not
merely been in Alaska; he has actually lived there. He must have been
way up north, for he tells about the sun that “it would, for one hour
and fifteen minutes, skirt the earth’s rim before sinking below the
horizon for another twenty-odd hours of opaque-lidded slumber.” We have
been told a little earlier about a Light of Delusion--“The Eskimos call
this kind of light Woosha Kua”--which plays strange tricks with your
eyesight. Still, apparently, it was not, in the Ruggles judgment, due
to the Woosha Kua that he saw wolves pursuing caribou in great detail
and that “There were twenty-seven wolves in the pack.”
About this time I happened to give a talk before a small group at the
University Museum, Philadelphia. I must have said something about
wolf-packs and the Director, Dr. Horace H. F. Jayne, must have given my
address to Max C. Goodman, of 3143 West Diamond Street, Philadelphia,
who in turn must have written to C. B. Ruggles, at Freedom, Oklahoma,
telling that Ruggles and I seemed in disagreement on wolf-packs.
These things are inference, for there is a gap in my records. I have,
however, a copy of a letter from Ruggles, dated January 19, 1932, sent
me by Goodman, which runs in part:
“Nature causes wolves to gather in monstrous packs in all parts of the
wilderness the last part of December or the first part of January.
Eskimos call these large wolf-gatherings, ‘KA-MA-CHUA’ (Mate choosing
season) for this is about four or five weeks prior to wolf mating time
and the Eskimos as well as the Northern trapper believe nature has
brought these gatherings about for the young and unmated wolves to
choose their mates, believed for life.
“I am writing you the above for the sole purpose of you taking it up
with the greatest and most noted naturalist that you might find. If
you should find that Mr. V. Steffenson’s statement is false, kindly
investigate other positive statements that he has made regarding the
Arctic....
“I hope to hear from you again and in regard to the results of your
investigation of my statement as well as the investigation of the
statement of V. Steffenson.”
Goodman was to submit the Ruggles statement and mine about wolves to
“the greatest and most noted naturalist that you might find.” So I
wrote Goodman on January 25 a letter in about 90 per cent disagreement
with Ruggles and taking substantially that position contrary to his
which is stated in the first section of the present chapter. Goodman
submitted this letter and the Ruggles one, which we quoted just above,
to the often-mentioned Chief of the U. S. Biological Survey, Dr. E.
W. Nelson. Nelson wrote Goodman from the Hotel Johnson, Visalia,
California, February 10. Again we quote in part:
“Your letter came to me just as I was preparing to leave Washington
for California--hence, the delay in my reply.
“I have been interested by the letters from Ruggles and Stefansson and
am in complete accord with the statements in Stefansson’s letter. Mr.
Ruggles appears to be imbued with the old folklore idea about huge
packs of wolves roaming wild regions of the North.
“In common with most people, as a young man, I had the same ideas
derived from the commonly published misstatements on the subject.
Then for more than twenty years as a field naturalist, much of the
time in wolf country and later for more than that length of time
administrating the field work of other naturalists and hunters in wolf
country, I came to a definite knowledge that the typical wolf-pack
consists of the two old wolves and their young of the previous spring.
These ‘packs’ may number from three to more than a dozen animals,
according to the number of survivors of the litter of young. Sometimes
a wolf may have a dozen young. There is no doubt that, by chance, two
or perhaps more litters might come together, but such association
would be extremely brief. I have never known or had definite
information of such an instance and it is given as a mere possibility.
“For many years, the Biological Survey in Washington investigated
every published account of devastations and of the killing of people
by wolf-packs in the United States and Canada by writing to the
postmaster or others living near the scene of the alleged work of
wolf-packs and without a single exception, they proved to be purely
imaginary.
“Under my direction, one of the best field naturalists in the
Government Service spent more than a year in the Tanana River country
of Alaska in the very district where Alaska papers published accounts
of great wolf-packs destroying caribou and although he traversed that
country in various directions in winter, he saw only occasional wolf
tracks in the snow and never a sign of the alleged packs....
“My information is from my own observations and from hundreds of other
reliable men in the field in wolf country.”
Once more there is, superficially, a defeat of the wolf-pack. Really
the pack won, for the _Post_ is read by several million people of the
type who believe what they see in that sort of publication, while the
quadrangular Goodman-Nelson-Ruggles-Stefansson correspondence could
have had an effect upon only one of the four. Ruggles knew already
there were packs, so we could not convince him there weren’t. Nelson
and I knew there weren’t any, so Ruggles could not convince us there
were. Goodman remained the only one who may have been affected, and he
may have swung either way. I believe Dr. Jayne saw the correspondence,
but from his record I think he was likely enough prejudiced already
against the pack. Perhaps a dozen or two of Goodman’s friends saw the
correspondence, and perhaps some of them were influenced. If so, they
may have gone in either direction. Therefore, the balloting, _Post_
readers against some of the letter readers, must have gone something
like a million to one in favor of the pack.
The authenticity of the wolf-pack might have been secure for years on
the strength of just the one Ruggles article in the _Saturday Evening
Post_. But they have carried more articles by Ruggles, and may have
carried further eyewitness testimony. Then certainly there are many
journals, only a little down from the _Post_ in their sway of the
public mind which have borne witness. Packs are going strong in the
movies and, as shown heretofore, they appear frequently in the daily
press. The general verdict is, therefore, clear.
But we said above that we would range scientists with the true
believers. This we do by referring to the previously described journal
_Science_, from which we quote in part an item that appeared in the
issue of February 28, 1936:
“Wolf fighters, skilled in warfare against these voracious
pack-hunting beasts, are asked for in an emergency wire from Governor
John W. Troy, of Alaska, recently received at the Department of the
Interior.... Vicious gangs of wolves have been raiding the reindeer
herds owned by natives of northern Alaska.... Native hunters have
proved unable to cope with the animals, but it is believed that about
four hunter leaders, each with a few assistants, could in a swift
campaign break up the marauding bands.”
Thus we have the official journal of a foremost scientific body
vouching for wolves as pack-hunters, as being in gangs and in bands.
But a testimony from Canada is in a way more striking than any can be
from the United States, for wolves are by common consent more numerous
and widespread there. As in the United States, the Canadian Government
takes special cognizance of them, for they prey on flock and fowl.
There is, then, _Bulletin No. 13, New Series_, Dominion of Canada,
Department of Agriculture, “The Habits and Economic Importance of
Wolves in Canada,” by Norman Criddle. On p. 6 we read:
“Parent wolves live in pairs during the summer months, but as the
young develop they form with them small bands, which meeting with
other families in their wanderings, acquire the proportions of packs.
These packs break up again in February....”
We close our case by repeating and insisting that attacks on
wolf-packs are not serious--they are no more than sporadic sniping.
The _Saturday Evening Post_, _Science Service_, and the Department
of Agriculture of the Dominion of Canada, powerful and worthy of all
respect and confidence, are in this relation spokesmen too for a
popular and a scientific multitude. The wolf-pack, then, is secure
even as things stand. But conditions are bound to trend steadily in
their favor. As living beasts, wolves are getting fewer with the
colonization of the wilderness, but wolf-pack stories do not thereby
get fewer--witness how they come again and again from districts where
wolves no longer exist. The fewer the living wolves the less the chance
of their being so studied that evidence against the pack habit can be
gathered. Finally there will be no wolves left, except in zoos. The
belief in packs will have survived the means of refuting it. It will
have become a truth.