and may be taken as the last proof of his unchanged savagery of
spirit. He had never come into actual conflict with a man, not because
of unwillingness, but in consequence of the restraint imposed by
confinement, bonds, or his guardian’s presence. On the evening of
his death he was fastened by the fountain; when, as it is said, for
unhappily the writer was absent, a strange dog appeared, whom he sprang
at, breaking his chain close to the collar, and killed. Afterwards
he climbed a tree, and while the servants shut themselves up in their
apartments, stretched himself out on a limb, and looked down upon the
mangled remains of his victim. No doubt the ferocious feelings of his
nature were all aroused, and unfortunately just at that time a man rode
through the stone passage that in this country serves as a front door.
Then the puma came down and flew at him, springing on to the croup of
his horse, and wounding, though slightly, both it and its rider. The
man being a nervous person, lost his head entirely, and not satisfied
with making himself safe in a room whose door was opened to him, must
needs fire out of the window with a carbine he found in the apartment.
Some people become demented at the sight of their own blood, and this
was one of them. He held straight, however, and the ball shattered the
animal’s right shoulder and passed backwards into his body. Gato had
got between two great roots of the tree when his friend arrived, and
that saved him from another shot. The creature was desperate, but too
intelligent not to know that he who approached had no part in what he
suffered. It was a mortal wound, but death promised to be delayed till
that splendid frame was wasted by morbid processes and his life was
gasped out in agony. This was not to be endured. The hand of affection
did him the last good office, and he died instantly.
Pumas do not charge men in masses. Their victims are chosen among those
creatures they find alone. Individuals have sometimes been assailed
by more than one. Im Thurn asserts that the “Warracaba tigers” of
Guiana, who hunt in families, are pumas. Two persons occasionally
appear in authentic records as having been assaulted. Mostly, however,
the incidents of any serious adventure of this kind are only known to a
single individual, and whether they are ever recounted depends almost
entirely upon the way in which the attack is made. A hunter taken by
surprise would generally lose his life. This animal is not difficult
to kill, and the facility with which it may be disposed of is another
reason for disparaging its prowess among the class who most commonly
encounter it.
A source of misunderstanding is also found in the special habits of
this animal. Those of the _Felidæ_ about which some more or less vague
information is most generally diffused, do not climb. The puma is
particularly given to doing so wherever forest lands are found within
the range of its distribution. Quite as frequently as the Asiatic and
African leopard, and more commonly than a jaguar, this beast resorts
to trees when pursued. Its reasons for doing so cannot be doubted: it
feels at home among the boughs; observation has taught the animal that
none of those natural enemies it need avoid can follow. If dogs are on
its track, it is well aware that, owing to their superior speed, they
are certain to come up with it, and that in taking to the limbs above,
its scent will be lost. For this habit but one reason has been commonly
assigned; namely, that the puma is a poltroon.
In G. O. Shields’ compilation of monographs upon “The Large Game of
North America,” he publishes some narratives that throw light upon
the cougar’s character. Revenge is not a very powerful or persistent
passion in the _Felidæ_, but cruelty is. Injuries are soon forgotten,
and nobody ever knew a lion or tiger to act in this regard like
an elephant. The feline beast never forgets, however, or becomes
indifferent to the joy of torture. That is why it is fatal to fear it.
The sight of this kind of suffering excites all their fell tendencies.
Accidents with these animals are not results of abiding hate and
premeditated vengeance, but very often of sudden impulse excited by
the sight of apprehension. Deep, concentrated, persistent feeling
is beyond the _Felidæ_. This is why Dio Cassius’ story of Androcles
and his lion is untrue; quite as much a romance of the affections as
Balzac’s “Passion du Désert.” Gérard’s touching account of his reunion
with Hubert at the _Jardin des Plantes_ fails, in his version of the
animal’s feelings, for the same reason--because it is impossible. No
doubt the lion he had reared was glad to see him, but that is not what
is conveyed. The picture presented is too like that drawn by Homer of
the behavior of Ulysses’ dog, when his “far-travelled” master came
back, an unrecognized stranger, to Ithaca. No wild beast of the cat
kind ever sat for that portrait.
Shields and others inform us that on several occasions “panthers” have
been known to accompany women and children for some distance, and play
with them, caper about their paths, and pull at their clothes, without
doing further harm than was produced by fright. That these creatures
act under the influence of playful moods is certain, but that a wild
beast should come out of the woods and in pure lightness of heart
invite a perfect stranger to romp, appears to be improbable.
Without pretending to decide upon what the mental or emotional state
under such circumstances really was, both the natural character of
these beasts, and certain well-known devices, not only of theirs,
but of allied species, suggest another explanation. One of the most
common means for defence resorted to by this family at large, is an
assumption of anger, and the pretence of attack--they try to frighten
intruders whom they suspect of an intention to do them harm. When a
puma crouches and bares its teeth it is not always enraged, but very
frequently does this for the reason that it is uneasy, or dislikes what
you are doing and wishes to put an end to something disagreeable by
terrifying the objectionable person. It might then happen that a cougar
would, when startled by an accidental meeting of this kind, assume an
offensive attitude with the intention of intimidating the person met.
If it succeeded, apprehension might easily give place for a time to
its propensity towards torture, and the beast would then behave much
in the same manner, apart from actual violence, as if in the course of
its pursuit of prey this had been overtaken. Such situations, however,
present none of the conditions that tend towards permanence. In default
of speedy rescue, the partially aroused tendencies of the puma would
soon become fully awakened, and its impulses break out in acts of
bloodshed.
Various references have been made to that part of the education
of feline beasts by which they are taught not to kill their human
associates. One may read a great deal without finding much information
on this subject. Most all of the professional trainers whom the writer
has exchanged ideas with on this point were of opinion that fear
alone would prevent these creatures from becoming dangerous; and it
is customary to proceed upon this principle. As soon, however, as any
single rule is attempted to be fitted to all cases, it becomes plain
that it will not apply. The personality of a cat is not to be compared
with that of a man; nevertheless, if one is reared without taking
this into account, it will be ruined. Such beings differ so greatly
in disposition and temper, in capacity, and the power and willingness
to learn, that to force them all alike into a mould, causes mental
and moral deformity with the same certainty that a similar proceeding
would cause distortion of their bodies if the means used were material
restraints to physical development. The system of terrorism is based
upon the false assumption that fear is the only feeling which will
affect the _Felidæ_ deeply and permanently, and that this can only be
excited in one way; namely, by severity.
The intercourse of an average keeper with the animals he has in charge
is in most instances of the most limited description. His observations,
if he makes any, are more likely to relate to their behavior as either
submission or otherwise, than to their general conduct towards himself,
and usually, all he has to communicate possesses little interest except
to the visiting public, who are easily satisfied, and ready to believe
anything. A trainer or tamer, although often an interesting person
in virtue of his experiences, is not always an instructive one. As a
rule, all that he knows is confined to what has presented itself in the
course of a few simple instructions. Experiments are rarely resorted
to, both the knowledge of how to conduct them, and the attainments
by which their results could be properly interpreted, being from the
nature of the case most generally wanting.
A young savage of the cat kind will naturally bite and scratch when
enraged, and the only means of discouraging such practices are those
of punishment, and a clear demonstration that its hostile attempts
are unavailing. No creature belonging to this class could comprehend
the difference between right and wrong in an abstract form. But
notwithstanding that what is bad in itself is hidden from them, things
forbidden come to be quickly learned, and this _malum prohibitum_ no
doubt influences their minds in much the same way that, allowing for
the inequalities, ceremonial observances and rites affect those of
savages. The latter are largely occupied in performing and avoiding a
number of actions because they expect personal advantages to accrue
in one case, and condign vengeance to be visited upon malpractice in
the other. They are superstitious, and so is the brute. Over and above
the benefits or penalties these know of, there are others which they
imagine but do not know.
To become even in a measure acquainted with pumas, one must take a
reasonably good-natured and intelligent specimen in its infancy, and
train it as consistently as if it were a child; make it feel the
folly and futility of violence towards its tutor, impress it with
the constant experience that its tricks and stratagems always fail
before that friendly but invincible being who watches over its life
and sees everything. Excite the animal’s curiosity and wonder, show
it the difference between yourself and others, be just and firm and
calm. It will never be anything but a wild beast; but if this is done,
it will be such an one as cannot otherwise be met with. Above all,
if the interest of this occupation is not enough to affect the risk
necessarily incurred, if such a pursuit cannot be followed without
apprehension, give it up at once. A loose beast of prey is not a fit
associate for a nervous man.
THE WOLF
The wolf represents the typical form among _Canidæ_, and it possesses
all the ordinary characters belonging to this group in their highest
degree of development. There is but one family in the _Cynoidea_, that
of the dogs, and all species of his group fall within the limits of a
single genus. “_Canidæ_ display likenesses in structure nearly as great
as those which the cats exhibit,” remarks W. N. Lockington (“Riverside
Natural History”). Professor Huxley has broken up the aggregate into
two groups, dog-like or Thoöid animals, and the _Alopecoids_--those
which most resemble wolves. These are marked off from each other by
peculiarities of the base of the skull and those parts developed around
it. _Canis_, moreover, is a genus which, while it varies very greatly
among its included forms, is physiologically so nearly identical that,
as Lockington observes, “there is no proof that any species of this
family is infertile with any other.”
[Illustration: THE WOLF.
[_From a photograph by Ottomar Anschütz. Copyright._]]
Wolves are among the wildest, wariest, and most widely removed from
human association of all animals. The question whether all kinds--red,
black, white, and gray--are of one species or many, may be dismissed at
once. Nobody is able to say what specific characteristics really are.
_Canis lupus_ is one of the most widely distributed of living forms.
His range encircles the world within the arctic zone, and it extends
southward into the tropics in America; wolves roam over nearly all
Asia, and at one time they were found throughout Europe.
“The common wolf,” says Lockington, “is the largest and fiercest
animal of the group, and the only one that is dangerous to man.” Its
average length is about four feet six inches, it stands rather more
than two feet high at the shoulder, and it is a little higher behind
than before. These dimensions vary in geographical varieties; the
French wolf being smaller than the German, the Scandinavian larger,
heavier, and deeper in the shoulder than the Russian; while wolves on
this continent are not so large as those of the Old World. All Asiatic
forms north of the Altai Mountains are modifications of the common wolf
of Europe, and the same is true of black wolves in the Pyrenees and
highlands of France, Spain, Italy, and Russia, as well as of the white,
lead-color, black, and dull-red varieties of America. As a rule, the
wolf dwindles and degenerates within the tropics. _Canis pallipes_, the
Indian form, approaches the jackal, according to Huxley, more closely
than the members of any other climatic group, and as Professor Baird
remarks, the coyote--_Canis latrans_, replaces the jackal in the New
World.
Finally, the wolf, though a flesh-eater and beast of prey, possesses
traits of structure which distinguish carnivora less highly specialized
than _Felidæ_. Unlike the cats, its limbs are long and less united
with the body; freer in their movements, and adapted to running rather
than to the short, bounding rush and spring of the latter. Wolves are
very powerful animals in proportion to their size; active, hardy, with
strong and formidably armed jaws. Their senses are all extremely well
developed, their speed is great, and the tireless gallop of the wolf
has given rise to stereotyped phrases and comparisons in many languages.
Leaving now the zoölogical relations of wolves, their habits,
character, and capacity present themselves for consideration. At the
commencement of such an inquiry we find sources of information upon
some of these points which are valuable in themselves, and in their
general tenor conclusive.
Cuvier (“Règne Animal”) asserts that the wolf is “the most mischievous
of all the carnivora of Europe,” and it would have been possible to
know this from the folk-lore of those countries alone. In mythology and
minstrelsy, in fireside story and local legend, wolves stand foremost
among wild beasts in nations of the Celtic and Teutonic stocks. Their
fierce visages look out from all the darker superstitions of the Old
World, and echoes of their unearthy cry linger in the saddest of its
surviving expressions of dread, foreboding, and despair. Hans Sachs
called them “the hunting dogs of the Lord”; but this is a conception
restricted to a single religion, and nearly everywhere from Greece to
Norway, the wolf has been an object of horror and hate, an incarnation
of evil, the emblem, agent, or associate of those unseen beings under
whose forms terror personified unknown and destructive forces.
All this is not meaningless; great masses of men do not combine to
give a “bad eminence” to anything that is insignificant. They do not
often fear harmless objects, and they never do so when these are
familiar. Cuvier says in his description of the wolf, that “its courage
is not in proportion to its strength.” But it is certain that packs
once howled at night around Paris, and tore people to pieces in her
streets; that they ravaged, and killed man and beast, in every part
of Western Europe, made public highways unsafe, and put travellers by
forest roads in constant peril of their lives. When the traditions
and myths referred to were formed, things were much worse in this
respect than in Cuvier’s time, and we may be absolutely sure that these
animals’ reputation rests on a strong foundation of fact. It was not
the accident of an idle fancy that pictured gaunt gray wolves, dripping
with blood, that bore the spirits of death upon northern battle-fields.
Geri and Freki, the wolves of Woden, battened on the fallen in
Valhalla. On earth and on high, fantasy grouped its most tragic
conceptions around “the dark gray beast” of early Sagas; and it was
believed that chained in hell, the Fenris wolf awaited that day when
the demons of the underworld should be loosed, and with the bursting of
the vault of heaven, “the twilight of the gods” would come.
Very little good has ever been said about a wolf. But on the Western
Continent there is an almost complete absence of evidence to show that
imagination was affected by this creature in the same manner as was
common among European nations.
Henry R. Schoolcraft (“Indian Tribes of North America”) remarks that
“the turtle, the bear, and the wolf appear to have been primary and
honored totems in most tribes.... They are believed to have more or
less prominence in the genealogies of all who are organized upon the
totemic principle.” None knew wolves better than the aborigines of this
country, and it is most improbable that beasts which so powerfully
affected the thoughts and feelings of men in a similar social phase
elsewhere, failed to conduct themselves similarly here. The cause for
this striking difference is probably to be found in the peoples and
not in the animals; more especially as every element was present in
the situation where the former were placed, that would have fostered
the growth of superstition. “The Indian dwelling or wigwam,” says
Schoolcraft, “is constantly among wild animals, ... whether enchanted
or unenchanted, spirits or real beings, he knows not. He chases them
by day, and dreams of them by night.... A dream or a fact is equally
potent in the Indian mind. He is intimate with the habits, motions,
and characters of all animals, and feels himself peculiarly connected
at all times with the animal creation. By the totemic system, he
identifies his personal and tribal history and existence with theirs;
he thinks himself the peculiar favorite of the Great Spirit, whenever
they exist abundantly in his hunting-grounds, and when he dies, the
figure of the quadruped, bird, or reptile which has guarded him through
life, is put in hieroglyphics on his grave post.”
This is not an exaggerated statement, and the fact is that the wolf
was not only a tutelar of gentes and emblem of their confraternity,
but also, as in case of the fabled founders of Rome, a protector of
helpless innocence. In the cycle of legends and myths that gather
around the culture-hero Hiawatha, we find the pretty tale of the
“Wolf-brother.” When the orphan child had been forsaken by all who
were bound through natural affection to cherish it, wolves admitted
the deserted little creature to their company, and gave the food that
supported its life.
With southern tribes the coyote takes the place of the northern wolf;
and how it happened that this “miserable little cur of an animal,”
as Colonel Dodge calls it (“Plains of the Great West”), became the
guardian of anybody or anything, passes understanding, unless it be due
to the fact that there is more cunning and rascality wrapped up in its
skin than exists in that of any other creature whatever. Nevertheless,
it is true that this jackal of the West undoubtedly occupies the
position spoken of. Dr. Washington Mathews (“Gentile System of the
Navajo Indians”) has shown that a coyote is the tutelar of at least
three gentes in this great tribe, and Captain John G. Bourke (“Gentile
Organization of the Apaches of Arizona”) traced this animal in the
same capacity through several branches of the Tinneh family. He found
coyote gentes in the Apache, Apache-Mojave, Maricopa tribes, and among
the Pueblo Indians as well; at Zuñi, San Filipe, Santana, Zia, and
other places. In his “Notes on the Apache Mythology,” Captain Bourke
gives a clue to the undeserved honors which this beast has received.
His researches make it plain that these natives fully appreciated
its astuteness. The coyote made a bet with the bear and won it; and
by its means, also, men were provided with fire. There was nothing
Prometheus-like in his conduct on this occasion; not a trace of the
spirit which prompted the Titan. Far from it; he stole a brand the
celestial squirrel dropped, and set fire to the world.
Like other wild beasts, the wolf has suffered at the hands of those who
have described him. Men who, according to their own showing, had the
most limited opportunities for learning anything about them have so
often pronounced authoritatively upon the character of this race, and
have so constantly confounded observation with inference, that closet
zoölogists are now provided with a body of extemporaneous natural
history in which the real animal has become as purely conventional as
an Assyrian carving.
Perhaps the only accusation which has not been made against this much
abused creature is that of stupidity. Nobody ever suspected a wolf
of want of sense; although Buffon (“Histoire Naturelle”) says, “_il
devient ingénieux par besoin_,” as if he knew of other and more gifted
animals who exerted their minds without any need for doing so.
The common representation which people make to themselves of wolves,
and which they are most apt to see in pictures, is that of a pack.
There is little doubt, however, that packs are accidental and temporary
aggregates. They are not composed of family groups. Their members
merely unite for an especial purpose, and disperse when this is at an
end. Moreover, it is exceptional to find large numbers together in
America under any circumstances. Wolves consort in pairs or small
detached bands, and pack temporarily and rarely.
Captain James Forsyth (“Highlands of Central India”), speaking of
_Canis pallipes_, an animal whose specific identity with the common
form Sir Walter Elliot and Horsfield deny, while Blyth and Jerdon very
properly insist upon it, remarks that it is a relatively small and
slender beast with comparatively delicate teeth. He gives a narrative
of his personal experience which is utterly subversive of many sweeping
assertions which have been made upon the subject of their habits and
temper.
In the provinces referred to, wolves are very numerous, and are “a
plain-loving species.” They “unite in parties of five or six to hunt,”
and so far as his observations go, more than these have not been seen
together. “Most generally they are found singly or in couples.” The
domestic animals upon which these chiefly prey are dogs and goats.
“They are the deadly foes of the former, and will stand outside of a
village or travellers’ camp, and howl until some inexperienced cur
sallies forth to reply, when the lot of that cur will probably be to
return no more....
“The loss of human life from these hideous brutes has recently been
ascertained to be so great, that a heavy reward is now offered for
their destruction. Though not generally venturing beyond children ...
yet when confirmed in the habit of man-eating, they do not hesitate to
attack, at an advantage, full-grown women, and even adult men. A good
many instances occurred during the construction of the railway through
the low jungles of Júbbulpúr, of laborers on the works being so
attacked, and sometimes killed and eaten. The assault was commonly made
by a pair of wolves, one of whom seized the victim by the neck from
behind, preventing outcry, while the other, coming swiftly up, tore
out the entrails in front. These confirmed man-eaters are described as
having been exceedingly wary, and fully able to discriminate between a
helpless victim and an armed man.