Cheyenne's Howl

Printed in Mountain Messenger on Friday August 8, 1997

European Influence of Fear

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Last week I was talking to you about the fear that humans have of us wolves and about how foolish this fear really is. This week one of the things I will tell you more about is how this fear came to exist. Fortunately, one of the greatest observations I have made since coming to work at the Gallery is that young children are beginning to question many of the fairy tales that they have been taught. In fact one young lady told me all about a book called The True Story of The Three little Pigs, written by A. Wolf. You can get this book and many others that tell it like it really is, at Polly Chandler's Book Store in Georgetown. Stop by and check them out and tell them Cheyenne sent you.

Last night I was watching one of my favorite videos by ABC World of Discovery called Wolf: Return of a Legend. In it I discovered that it was the Europeans that despised and hated the wolf. For centuries lack of understanding created a monster for fairy tales, myths, legends, and lore. These stories, such as Little Red Riding Hood which was written in France in 1697, caused the wolf to live in the minds of humans as a shadow of evil, and as a solitary, loathsome creature who is always out searching for something to kill, torture, or in the case of the three little pigs, to huff and puff and blow down. What I don't understand is why adult humans find it easier to fear something than to learn the true facts about it. Will this fear of wolves live forever in the subconscious of man or someday emerge into the light of understanding?

The fear and prejudice against wolves came with the movement of the Europeans to the West. The notion of the wolf as a blood thirsty demon, an evil presence that had to be destroyed, traveled across the American landscape almost as fast as a prairie fire. These beliefs were so widely held that the U.S. government even began to support them. Between 1850 and 1900 an estimated 1.5 million wolves were killed. Then in 1907 the government really got serious and called for the complete extermination of the wolf. This hatred continued through the 1960's. Poisoned, shot, tortured, wolves were nearly annihilated in the lower 48 states. After nearly a million years as part of the natural order, they were pressed to the edge of extinction in less than a century.

We wolves are a far more complex animal than most humans give us credit for. Those that have studied our behavior have used human terms to describe us. They say wolves are intimate, affectionate, loyal, joyful, and family oriented. We are also shy and timid, and highly intelligent. That sure doesn't sound like anything to fear to me. Maybe it's the intelligence part that scares some of you humans.

Now back to the three little pigs. There is only one part that is actually true. As in the pig's story where the pigs got away, we wolves do have a low hunting success rate and must hunt often. However, since I can run at thirty five miles per hour, if I had been the wolf in the story, I would have been at the third little pigs house before he could lay the first brick.

Cheyenne