Of Wolves and Men

by Barry Lopez

  All that I have been saying about interdependence in a tribe, about individual, personal medicine power and homeopathic imitation, comes together in a famous story that Plenty Coups told many years ago about a Crow medicine man named Bird Shirt.

  In a battle with Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho near Pryor Creek, Montana, a Crow named Swan’s Head took a large bullet square in the chest that tore through his lungs and came out his back. He held on to his horse, which turned and carried him back to the Crow village. By the time he arrived, the horse glistened red with the man’s blood.

  Three medicine men, Hunts to Die, Wolf Medicine, and Bird Shirt, believed he could be saved. Bird Shirt requested that a brush lodge be built next to the river which ran near the camp. After moving Swan’s Head there, he asked for absolute silence. The people who gathered to watch were pushed back to keep a wide path open from the lodge to the water and told to keep any dogs away.

  Bird Shirt took his medicine bundle and entered the lodge. He took a wolfskin out of the bundle. As Plenty Coups goes on:

  “It was a whole wolfskin with the head stuffed. The legs of the skin were painted red to their first joints and the nostrils and a strip below the eyes were also red. I watched Bird Shirt paint himself to look like his medicine skin. His legs to the knees, his arms to their elbows, his nostrils, and strips below his eyes were made red, while he sang steadily with the beating drums. He painted his head with clay until it looked like that of the buffalo-wolf, and he made ears with the clay that I could not tell from a real wolf’s ears, from where I stood. All the time he was singing his medicine song with the drums while the people scarcely breathed.

  “Suddenly the drums changed their beating. They were softer and much faster. I heard Bird Shirt whine like a wolf mother that has young pups, and saw him trot, as a wolf trots, around the body of Swan’s Head four times. Each time he shook his rattle in his right hand, and each time dipped the nose of the wolf skin in water and sprinkled it upon Swan’s Head, whining continually as a wolf mother whines to make her pups do as she wishes.

  “I was watching—everybody near enough was watching—when Swan’s Head sat up. We then saw Bird Shirt sit down like a wolf, with his back to Swan’s Head, and howl four times, just as a wolf howls four times when he is in trouble and needs help. I could see that Swan’s Head’s eyes were now open, so that he could see Bird Shirt stand and lift the medicine wolfskin above his own head four times whining like a wolf mother. I seemed myself to be lifted with the skin, and each time there was, I saw, a change in Swan’s Head. The fourth time Bird Shirt lifted the wolf skin, Swan’s Head stood up. He was bent, his body twisted, but his eyes were clear while Bird Shirt trotted around him like a wolf, whining still, like a wolf mother coaxing her pup to follow her.

  “Bird Shirt walked out of the lodge, and when Swan’s Head followed him I could scarcely hear the drums or the men’s voices singing his medicine song. I felt that I was with Swan’s Head when he stopped once, twice, three times and then into the open way to the water behind Bird Shirt, who kept making the coaxing whine of a wolf mother, until both had stepped into the water.

  “Not once all this time had the drums stopped, or the singers, whose voices rose and fell with the drums. Everybody was watching the two men in the river.

  “Bird Shirt led Swan’s Head out into the stream until the water covered his wounds. Then he pawed the water as a wolf does, splashing it over the wounded man’s head. Whining like a wolf, he nosed the water with the wolf skin and made the nose of the wolf skin move up and down over the bullet holes, like a wolf licking a wound.

  “‘Stretch yourself,’ he told Swan’s Head; and when Swan’s Head did as he was bidden, stretching himself like a man who has been asleep, black blood dripped from the holes in his chest and back. This was quickly followed by red blood that colored the water around them, until Bird Shirt stopped it. ‘Bathe yourself now,’ said Bird Shirt, and obediently Swan’s Head washed his face and hands in the running water. Then he followed Bird Shirt to the brush lodge where they smoked together. I saw them… .”

  Thus were wolf and man one.

  Oto Indian wolf bundle.

  Though the wolf was respected, he had his uses, too. Wolf fur was good for a parka ruff. A wolf pelt was powerful medicine, a good item in trade. Wolves sometimes preyed on an Indian’s fish traps or meat caches or got after his horses. Indians rarely killed wolves, but when they did it was for these reasons.

  The common methods for capturing and killing wolves before steel traps were available were the pit fall and the deadfall. The pit fall consisted of a deep hole, wider at the bottom to keep the wolf from running up the walls, covered over with grass and brush, and baited with meat. Some tribes put sharpened stakes at the bottom to kill the wolf when it fell in.

  Deadfalls of rock, ice, and slabs of snow were more common in the north where pits were hard to dig. Pulling on a piece of bait, the wolf would trip a balanced weight that crushed or pinned him.

  Rawhide snares that caught the animal around the neck were also in use. Some Eskimos coiled sharpened willow sticks or strips of baleen in frozen tallow balls, which were then left out for the wolves to eat.

  Two sorts of knife trap were also used. A wolf knife consisted of a sharp blade encased in fat and frozen upright in a block of ice. The wolf licked the fat until he cut his tongue badly enough to bleed to death. The other knife trap was a baited torsion spring that stabbed the wolf in the head when triggered.

  But it never was easy.

  Among the Cherokee there was a belief that to kill a wolf was to invite retribution from other wolves. Many tribes felt that killing a wolf would cause game to disappear. And there was widespread belief that a weapon that had killed a wolf would never work right again. It either had to be given away, usually to a child to be used in future as a toy, or taken to a shaman to be cleansed. A Cherokee cure for a gun that had killed a wolf was to unscrew the barrel, insert small sourwood (Oxydendrum arboreum) sticks ritually treated in a fire, and lay it in a running stream till morning.

  When the Kwakiutl of coastal British Columbia killed a wolf, they would lay the carcass out on a blanket. Small strips of meat would be cut off and each person who had participated in the killing would eat four of them, expressing his regret at the wolf’s death and calling him a good friend. The remains of the carcass were wrapped in the blanket and carefully buried.

  The Ahtena Indians of southern Alaska brought a wolf they’d killed into camp on their shoulders, chanting: “This is the chief, he is coming.” The dead wolf was taken inside a hut, where he was propped up in a sitting position and a banquet meal was set before him by a shaman. Each family in the village contributed something. When it was felt the wolf had eaten all he wanted, the men ate what was left. No women were permitted inside.

  When certain Eskimos killed a wolf, they would bring it to the edge of the village and leave it out there for four days. The man who had done the killing would walk around his house four times, expressing his feelings of regret for the wolf, and abstain from relations with his wife for four days.

  Because there was such risk involved, a common practice of those who needed a wolfskin was to hire someone who knew the rites of atonement to kill the wolf. This person then might explain to the dead wolf that he had been hired by some other village so the wolf would take out any revenge at the wrong place. The Chukchi Eskimo of northeastern Siberia routinely told any wolf they killed that they were Russians, not Eskimos.

  THE WOLF AND THE INDIAN DOG

  The wolf was an important part of tribal, ceremonial, and individual life but he was nevertheless regarded as Other by the Indian, distinct from man and never to be confused with a dog. Indians probably brought three or four different breeds of dog with when they came to America, which they continued to breed to each other. Dogs were to be used: their hair for weaving, their flesh among some tribes for food. They were to pull travois and sleds, to pack food paniers and firewood, and to hunt game. The
y were pets. Any that proved a nuisance by getting into food caches or digging under tipis were quickly dispatched.

  Crossing wolves with dogs almost always produced hybrids that were headstrong and dangerous, so Indians rarely tried it. Dogs several generations removed from a cross might prove gentle, obedient, intelligent, and very hardy, but few Indians were interested in this kind of special breeding. More fundamentally, dogs and wolves were poles apart in the Indian mind; it did not seem appropriate to mix them. The wolf had a soul in Nunamiut Eskimo eyes; not so their sled dogs. In the Sioux language the term for wolf was shunkmanitu tanka, “the animal that looks like a god (but) is a powerful spirit.” The wolf was integral to many religious ceremonies; the dog unceremoniously kicked out of any ceremonial lodge.

  There is a story that neatly summarizes native American perceptions of what wolf and dog might have thought of each other. A Crow woman was out digging roots when a wolf came by. The woman’s dog ran up to the wolf and said, “Hey, what are you doing here? Go away. You only come around because you want what I have.”

  “What have you got?” asked the wolf.

  “Your owner beats you all the time. Kids kick you out of the way. Try to steal a piece of meat and they hit you over the head with a club.”

  “At least I can steal the meat!” answered the dog. “You haven’t got anything to steal.”

  “Hah! I eat whenever I want. No one bothers me.”

  “What do you eat? You slink around while the men butcher the buffalo and get what’s left over. You’re afraid to get close. You sit there with your armpits stinking, pulling dirt balls out of your tail.”

  “Look who’s talking, with camp garbage smeared all over your face.”

  “Hrumph. Whenever I come into camp, for a good life, that’s all that’s wrong with my owner throws me something good to eat.”

  “When your owner goes out to ease himself at night you follow along to eat the droppings, that’s how much you get to eat.”

  “That’s okay! These people only eat the finest parts!”

  “You’re proud of it!”

  “Listen, whenever they’re cookin in camp, you smell the grease, you come around and how, and I feel sorry for you. I pity you… .”

  “When do they let you have a good time?” asked the wolf.

  “… I sleep warm, you sleep out there in the rain, they scratch my ears, you—”

  Just then the woman shouldered a bundle of roots, whacked the dog on the back with a stick, and started back to camp. The dog followed along behind her, calling over his shoulder at the wolf, “You’re just full of envy for a good life, that’s all that’s wrong with you.”

  Wolf went off the other way, not wanting any part of that life.

  The pelt was normally all that was taken from a wolf, though teeth, claws, and internal organs were needed for decorative or religious purposes. The pelt was used by shamans in curing ceremonies like the one Bird Shirt performed; to wrap sacred, usually commemorative, articles to make a “wolf bundle”; and as totemic representation of the wolf’s presence. Kills in the Night, a Crow medicine woman, for example, used a wolf pelt to escape a Lakota war party that was chasing her and her daughter, Pretty Shield. After dusting their horse tracks with it, Kills in the Night put the wolfskin over their heads and singing a medicine song led her daughter away. The Lakota became confused in a sudden thundershower and lost the woman’s trail.

  The most widespread use of the wolf pelt on the plains, however, was among scouts, who used it in imitative disguise.

  The Skidi Pawnee were plains scouts extraordinaire. The hand sign in plains sign language for Pawnee was the same as that for wolf: index and middle finger of the right hand were raised in a V next to the right ear, then brought forward. Waving the sign from side to side signified the verb to scout. Dressed in their wolf skin cloaks, known as the Wolf People because the wolf figured so strongly in their foundation myth, there were no others like them. The Cheyenne, Comanche, and Wichita called the Pawnee wolves because “they prowl like wolves … they have the endurance of wolves, and can travel all day, and dance all night, and can make long journeys, living on carcasses they find on their way, or on no food at all.”

  The Pawnee conceptualization of the wolf was that he was an animal who moved like liquid across the plains: silent, without effort, but with purpose. He was alert to the smallest changes in his world. He could see very far—“two looks away,” they said. His hearing was so sharp he could even hear a cloud as it passed overhead. When a man went into the enemy’s territory he wished to move exactly like this, to sense things like the wolf, to be Wolf.

  The sense of being Wolf that came over a Pawnee scout was not the automatic result of putting on a wolf skin. The wolf skin was an accouterment, an outward sign to the man himself and others who might see him that he was calling on his wolf power. It is hard for the Western mind to grasp this and to take seriously the notion that an Indian at times could be Wolf, could actually participate in the animal’s spirit, but this is what happened. It wasn’t being like a wolf; it was having the mind set: Wolf.

  White historians wrote off the superior tracking abilities of the Pawnee, Arikara, and Crow scouts that the army used to “native intelligence” and a “hocus-pocus” with wolfskins. What was actually present was an intimacy with the environment, a magic “going in and out,” so that the line of distinction between a person and his animal helper was not always clear. The white, for the most part, was afraid of, separated from, the environment. He spent his time flailing at it and denouncing it, trying to ignore that in it which confused or intimidated him.

  Pawnees wore their wolf pelts like capes during exploration of an enemy territory, the flat pelt falling across the shoulders and the wolf’s head coming up over the man’s head so the wolf’s ears stood up erect. (Hidatsa scouts slit the pelt vertically and wore it over the shoulders, with the wolf’s head lying against the chest.) A Sioux named Ghost Head wore a wolf skin tied tightly around his waist whenever he went against his enemies. In the evening he would make a small fire, smoke the skin in sweet grass (Hierochloe odorata), and seek to align himself with the wolf spirit represented therein, asking that the presence of his enemies be revealed to him by the (real) wolves around him, whom he considered his helpers.

  It was customary for scouts returning to camp or signaling to each other to howl like wolves.

  Before moving on to a deeper consideration of wolves and warriors, I would like to encourage some reflection on all these ideas by mentioning several ways in which the wolf was associated with the more or less mundane among various tribes. The number of examples is remarkable.

  The wolf showed up as a child’s carved, wooden toy among the Nehalem Tillamook on the Oregon coast and three thousand miles away, among the Naskapi of Labrador, in a game of lots called wolf sticks, in which the wolf stick was the long stick among several shorter ones. On the plains, children played a game of tag called wolf chase with a “rabbit” who was “it.” In the north, Eskimos made an object (known to anthropologists as a bull-roarer) that made a noise when whirled overhead on the end of a tether, which they called a wolf scarer.

  The Sioux called the December moon The Moon When the Wolves Run Together. The Cheyenne believed a wolf’s being caught asleep at sunrise was a sign of its imminent death. In a story the Crow told, the pin-tailed grouse was created with a wolf claw for a beak. So-called wolf berries (Symphoricarpus occidentalis) that grew in the upper Missouri country were used in solution as a wash for inflamed eyes. And wolf moss (Everina vulpina) was boiled to produce a yellow dye by several tribes.

  We who have largely lost contact with wild animals, have indeed gone to lengths to distinguish ourselves from them, can easily miss the significance of such a view of the human world in which the natural world is so deeply reflected. The view is fully integrated. It produces, often, an utter calm, a sense of belonging.

  It is this need, I think, that people most wish to articulate when
they speak of “a return to the earth.”

  Six

  WOLF WARRIORS

  THE INDIAN DID NOT think of the wolf as a warrior in the same sense as he thought of himself as a warrior, but he respected the wolf’s stamina and stoicism and he encouraged these qualities in himself and others. The wolf, therefore, was incorporated into the ceremonies and symbology of war. It was common practice for warriors to tie a wolf tail around the lower leg or ankle or at the back of a moccasin to signify an accomplishment in battle. Among the Mandan the practice was rather refined. A man who had never counted coup (to strike an enemy with one’s hand or a stick) was entitled to wear one wolf tail on his moccasin if he was the first to count coup in a fight; two wolf tails if he counted coup twice before anyone else did; and a wolf tail with the tip disfigured if he counted coup after someone else had in the same fight.

  Assiniboin warriors wore white wolfskin caps smeared with red paint into battle.

  The Wolf Soldier band of the Cheyenne was one of the best known of all the wolf warrior societies on the plains and it incorporated the most wolf lore.

  The Wolf Soldiers were established early in the nineteenth century by a northern Cheyenne named Owl Friend. At that time, the northern and southern bands of the Cheyenne were traveling slowly toward each other. Owl Friend set out on his own one morning to reach the southern band. He wore a red robe and deer skin leggings with a great deal of porcupine quill and beadwork in them—very dressy, but he expected clear weather. In the afternoon a thunderstorm came up which changed to sleet and, later, to snow. By dusk Owl Friend suspected he was lost. He was also distraught over his ruined clothes. But thinking he must be near the southern Cheyenne camp, he pushed on. Finally, late that night, it seemed he came to a large tipi at the edge of a creek, which he took to be the Cheyenne camp. He went up and stamped the snow off his feet and a young man came to the door and welcomed him in.