Wolves and Wolf Nature 



of white men in America, game was so plenty 

 that the wolves had no difficulty in killing for 

 themselves whatever they needed to supply 

 their wants. They were seldom disturbed by 

 man, and so were on terms of friendliness with 

 the aborigines. Very soon after the coming 

 of the white man the wolves began to learn 

 that these new people were not friendly or 

 indifferent, and were armed with weapons 

 far more effective than those used by the 

 Indians; and from regarding man as a friend 

 and associate they came to avoid him as a 

 being to be feared. 



The deer, the moose, the caribou and the 

 buffalo furnished a fat subsistence to the wolf, 

 and long before those animals had become 

 exterminated in any region, and hunger had 

 forced him to consider the question of attack- 

 ing human beings, the wolf had learned the 

 power of the white man, and had retreated 

 beyond the settlements to regions where game 

 was still plenty. 



Major Frank North, who, as a boy, in 1856 

 and '57, devoted a winter to poisoning wolves 

 in Nebraska, and who followed the wild life 

 of the western prairies almost up to the time 

 of his death, nearly thirty years later, told me 



173 



