[95] See note [11], also Ethn. Rep. 1897-98, I. 263: “The deer, which is still common in the mountains, was the principal dependence of the Cherokee hunter, and is consequently prominent in myth, folklore, and ceremonial.” see note [42]. Page 264: “The largest gens (clan) in the tribe bears the name of ‘wolf people.’” Page 420: The Cherokee have always been an agricultural people, and their old country has a luxuriant flora, therefore the vegetable kingdom holds a far more important place in the mythology and ceremonial of the tribe than it does among the Indians of the treeless plains and arid sage deserts of the West.
[96] The St. Louis “Westliche Post” for January 9, 1908, furnishes another example: A tame wolf which for the past two years has been a pet in a farmer’s family at Marshfield, Wisconsin, escaped and attacked a chicken. The farmer’s daughter called to the wolf, but it had become wild from the taste of blood, attacked her, and bit her on both arms and one leg. It held so fast that the young lady could not be released until she had nearly choked the wolf with its collar.
Also the following clipping from the same paper, January 13, 1908, shows the prevalence of wolves to-day in even quite populous districts: “Wolf-Plage. Aus dem nördlichen Wisconsin wird gemeldet, dass Wölfe in diesem Jahre zahlreicher sind denn je, und dass sie, durch Hunger getrieben, sich nahe an die Ortschaften wagen, und Hausthiere und auch Menschen angreifen. Zwei grosse Wölfe griffen in dieser Woche das Pferd der Frau Branchard an; das Pferd scheute und jagte in den Wald, wo es durch Arbeiter angehalten wurde, welche die Bestien verscheuchten.”
[102] John Fiske, Myths and myth-makers, p. 78, fol., gives the origin and development of the werewolf as follows: From the conception of wolf-like ghosts it was but a short step to the conception of corporeal werewolves.... Christianity did not fail to impart a new and fearful character to the belief in werewolves. Lycanthropy became regarded as a species of witchcraft, the werewolf as obtaining his powers from the Devil. It was often necessary to kill one’s enemies, and at that time some even killed for love of it (like the Berserker); often a sort of homicidal madness, during which they would array themselves in the skins of wolves or bears and sally forth by night to crack the backbones, smash the skulls and sometimes to drink with fiendish glee the blood of unwary travelers or loiterers.... Possibly often the wolves were an invention of excited imagination. So people attributed a wolf’s nature to the maniac or idiot with cannibal appetites, then the myth-forming process assigned to the unfortunate wretch a tangible lupine body. The causes were three: 1. Worship of dead ancestors with wolf totems originated the notion of transformation of men into divine or superhuman wolves. 2. The storm-wind was explained as the rushing of a troop of dead men’s souls or as the howling of wolf-like monsters (called by Christianity demons). 3. Berserker madness and cannibalism, accompanied by lycanthropic hallucinations, interpreted as due to such demoniacal metamorphosis, gave rise to the werewolf superstition of the Middle Ages. The theory that if one put on a wolf’s skin he became a werewolf, is perhaps a reminiscence of the fact alleged of Berserkers haunting the woods by night, clothed in hides of wolves or bears. A permanent cure was effected by burning the werewolf’s sack, unless the Devil furnished him with a new wolfskin. Primitively, to become incarnated into any creature, the soul had only to put on the outward integument of the creature. The original werewolf is the night-wind—a kind of leader of departed souls, howling in the wintry blasts. Encyc. Brit, under Lycanthropy:—The Berserkir of Iceland dressed in the skins of bears and wolves, and further on: “Beastform is in mythology proper far oftener assumed for malignant than for benignant ends.”