Part 3

The motive of personal gain is exemplified by our American Indians, who put on a wolf’s mantle to steal, or to recover stolen animals (Grinnell, Pawnee hero stories, p. 247, also the story of robbery entitled Wolves in the night, p. 70 fol.). Similarly in Abyssinia, Andree, p. 69, where the lowest caste of laborers are believed to have power to transform themselves into hyenas or other animals, as such, plundering graves. They employ naturally various artifices to help along their cause, since it yields such returns. They are reported to act like other folk by day, at _night_ though to assume the ways of wolves, kill their enemies and suck their blood, roaming about with other wolves till morning. They are supposed to gain their supernatural powers by a secret beverage made from herbs. They are not likely to be discovered to be only sham animals, since their roaming and plundering is done in the _night_; in the daytime they of course conceal the animal skins (see Andree, p. 72).

Ethn. Rep. 1880-81, p. 68:—Among the Chaldeans, Egyptians and Greeks, the success of magic depended upon the ignorance of the masses and the comparative learning of the few who practised it. Among the American Indians the medicine-man and the more expert sorceress have little learning above that of the body of the tribe, and their success depends entirely upon their own belief in being supernaturally gifted, and upon the faith and fear of their followers.

The Iroquois believed in people who could assume a partly animal shape. See Grinnell, Blackfoot lodge tales, p. 79:—“An old blind wolf with a powerful medicine cured a man, and made his head and hands look like those of a wolf. The rest of his body was not changed. He was called a man-wolf.”

(7) Witchcraft.[66] It is very easy to see why it was usually the so-called medicine-men (more correctly Shamans), who claimed such transformation power, because they received remuneration from their patients.[67]

[66] Ethn. Rep. 1880-81, p. 73:—Witches could and did assume animal shapes. For example a dog seen by a man which had fire streaming from its mouth and nostrils. It was _night_. The man shot at it, and the next morning tracked it by the marks of blood from its wound. At a bridge a woman’s tracks took the place of the dog’s, and finally he found the woman. She had died from the effect of the shot. Page 73: Likewise a hog, when pursued, disappeared at a small creek, and finally reappeared as an old man, who said it was he, whom they had been chasing. So they, the pursuers, knew he was a witch. Page 74: A Canadian Indian one _evening_ pursued a white bull with fire streaming from its nostrils. He had never seen a white bull on the reservation before. “As it passed in front of a house it was transformed into a man with a _large white blanket_, who was ever afterward known as a witch.”

Ethn. Rep. 1901-02, p. 395:—A man going out at _night_ noticed a queer-looking burro. Upon his return home he was told that a large cat had entered the house. He went out again, discovered a man wrapped in a blanket, but not in the Zuñi fashion, his head was sunk low in the blanket. He knew this creature to be a wizard.

Ethn. Rep. 1887-88, p. 458:—That the medicine man (Shaman) has the faculty of transforming himself into a coyote and other animals at pleasure and then resuming the human form, is as implicitly believed in by the American Indians as it was by our own forefathers in Europe. And page 459: The Abipones of Paraguay credit their medicine-men with power to put on the form of a tiger. The medicine-men of Honduras claimed the power of turning themselves into lions and tigers. Also the Shamans of the Nicaraguans possessed similar power. Hertz, p. 133 fol.:—“In der christlichen Zeit wurde der heidnische Cultus Teufelsanbetung und hier entstand mit dem Hexenglauben die Vorstellung von Menschen, die sich mit Hilfe des Satans aus reiner Mordlust zu Wölfen verwandeln. So wurde der Werwolf das Bild des tierisch Dämonischen in der Menschennatur.”

[67] Ethn. Rep. 1887-88, p. 467:—The medicine-men of the Apache are paid at the time they are consulted, the priest beforehand among the Eskimo. Ethn. Rep. 1889-90, p. 187: “The magnitude of the disease is generally measured by the amount of the patient’s worldly wealth.” Page 416:—Sioux sorcerers prepared love-potions for those who bought them. Ethn. Rep. 1901-2, p. 568:—“The shaman, like the theurgist is usually paid after each visit with calico, cotton, or food, according to the wealth of the family, since it is always understood that these doctors expect proper compensation for their services.” Page 387:—“The Zuñi doctor is paid according to his reputation.” Grinnell, Blackfoot lodge tales, p. 284: “In early days if a man remained sick for three or four weeks, all his possessions went to pay doctors’ fees.”

Ethn. Rep. 1887-88, p. 462 fol.—The American Indian’s theory of disease is the theory of the Chaldean, the Assyrian, the Hebrew, the Greek, the Roman—all bodily disorders are attributed to the maleficence of spirits (that is of animal spirits, ghosts or witches), who must be expelled or placated. Gibberish was believed to be more potential in magic than was language which the practitioner or his dupes could comprehend. Page 468:—The medicine-men are accused of administering poisons to their enemies. Ethn. Rep. 1889-90, p. 416:—Sioux sorcerers were thought to cause the death of those persons who had incurred their displeasure. Ethn. Rep. 1887-88, p. 581:—“When an Apache or other medicine-man is in full regalia he ceases to be a man, but becomes, or tries to make his followers believe that he has become, the power he represents.” The Mexican priests masked and disguised, and dressed in the skins of the women offered up in sacrifice.

So the shaman practiced sorcery, medicine and was a priest. Ethn. Rep. 1887-88, p. 594:—The Indian doctor relied far more on magic than on natural remedies. Dreams, beating of the drum, songs, magic feasts and dances, and howling were his ordinary methods of cure. Grinnell, Story of the indian, p. 210 fol.:—They have “firm confidence in dreams.” “Their belief in a future life is in part founded on dreams,” etc.

(8) Finally dreams[68] and exaggerated reports gave rise to fabulous stories.[69]

[68] Note 67, close.

[69] An example of fabulous invention for pure personal gain occurs Andree, p. 77: If the Greenlanders catch too many seal at one place, the latter will take a terrible revenge. Assuming human form, they attack their enemy in the _night_ at his home. This is the transformation of an animal into a man, but the inventor of the story was no doubt looking towards his own gain. It is the same old fight for seal protection which in another form is still going on to-day. Andree, p. 72. In Siam stories are told of people who by magic formulae become tigers and roam about at _night_ in search of booty. One of the man-tigers was actually a priest.

We have discussed (1), (2), and (3);[70] for an example under (4) we have cited the practices of American Indians.[71] It is probable that about now (at the stage indicated in (4) above), what is known as the real werewolf superstition (that of a frenzied, rabid manwolf) began to fully develop. The man in wolf-skin was already a lurking thief or enemy, or a destroyer of human life. To advance from this stage to the werewolf frenzy, our primitive man must have seen about him some exhibition of such a frenzy, and some reason for connecting this frenzy particularly with, say the wolf. He did see insane persons, and the connecting link would be the crazy or mad wolf (or dog, as the transformation was usually into a wolf or dog,[72]) for persons bitten by it usually went mad too.[73] The ensuing frenzy, with the consternation it occasioned, soon appealed to certain primitive minds as a good means of terrorizing others. Of these mad ones some no doubt actually had the malady; others honestly believed they had it and got into a frenzy accordingly; others purposely worked themselves up into a frenzy in order to impose on the uninitiated.[74] Later, in the Middle Ages, when the nature of the real disease came to be better understood, the werewolf superstition had become too firmly fixed to be easily uprooted.

[70] Ante pp. 7, 8, 9.

[71] Ante p. 12 fol.

[72] See notes 19 and 74.

[73] Grinnell, Blackfoot lodge tales, p. 283: “It is said that wolves, which in former days were extremely numerous, sometimes went crazy, and bit every animal they met with, sometimes even coming into camps and biting dogs, horses and people. Persons bitten by a mad wolf generally went mad, too. They trembled and their limbs jerked, they made their jaws work and foamed at the mouth, often trying to bite other people. When any one acted in this way, his relatives tied him hand and foot with ropes, and, having killed a buffalo, they rolled him up in the green hide, built a fire on and around him, leaving him in the fire until the hide began to dry and burn. Then they pulled him out and removed the buffalo hide, and he was cured. This was the cure for a mad wolf’s bite.”

[74] Sometimes the professionals even became possessed of a monomania themselves, as in witchcraft. Andree goes into this widespread disease or delusion (of the first century till late in the middle ages), p. 76 fol.: “The sick” ones would prowl about burial places _at night_, imagining themselves to be _wolves_ or _dogs_, and go about barking and howling. In the middle ages such people would even kill children and grown people. When they came to themselves again, or were cured, they claimed to know nothing of what had happened. Ethn. Rep. 1888-89, p. 491: Amongst the Shamans feats of jugglery or pretended magic rivaling or surpassing the best of spiritualistic seances are recounted. Page 207: The use of robes made of the hides of buffalo and other large animals, painted with shamanistic devices, is mentioned. Page 235: The speaker terms himself a wolf spirit, possessing peculiar power.

We have discussed (5), (6), (7), and (8) in the notes.[75] As further examples of the development into fabulous story,[76] we may cite any of those stories in which the wild werewolf, or animal-man is represented as roaming the land, howling, robbing, and tearing to pieces men and beasts, until he resumes his human form. Thus an early scout in animal garb would be obliged to live on food he found on his way, and later fabulous report would represent him as himself when in disguise possessing the attributes of the animal he represented, and tearing to pieces man and beast. For such an account see Andree,[77] concerning what eyewitnesses reported of the wild reveling over corpses of the hyena-men of Africa. Naturally the uninitiated savage who witnessed such a sight would become insane, or at least would spread abroad such a report as would enhance the influence of the hyena-men far and wide. Some savages, as in Africa,[78] came to regard any animal that robbed them of children, goats or other animals, as a witch in animal form;[79] just as the American Indians ascribe to evil spirits death, sickness and other misfortunes.

[75] Notes 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69.

[76] See (8) above.

[77] Page 71.

[78] Andree, p. 69.

[79] Ethn. Rep. 1889-90, p. 263. gives the following story of the origin of the wolf: “_The wolf_ was a poor woman, who had so many children that she could not find enough for them to eat. They became so gaunt and hungry that they were changed into wolves, constantly roaming over the land seeking food.”

We can see how at first the man in animal disguise or an animal robe would go quietly to work, like the Pawnee scout;[80] how though, as soon as the element of magic enters in, he would try to keep up the illusion. At this stage, when the original defensive measure had become tainted with superstition, men would go about in the night time howling and holding their vile revels.[81] Andree,[82] narrates how a soldier in Northeast Africa shot at a hyena, followed the traces of blood and came to the straw hut of a man who was widely famed as a magician. No hyena was to be seen, only the man himself with a fresh wound. Soon he died, however the soldier did not survive him long. Doubtless one of the magician class was responsible for the death of the soldier, just as we to-day put to death the man who so violates our laws, as to become a menace to our society, or as formerly kings killed those who stood in their way; or as religious sects murder those who dissent from their faith. These magicians, supposed to be men who could assume animal form, as a matter of fact do often form a class, are greatly feared by other natives, often dwell with their disciples in caves and at _night_ come forth to plunder and kill.[83] It is to their interest to counterfeit well, for if suspected of being malevolent, they were put to death or outlawed, like criminals to-day.[84] Their frenzies were, as said above, in some cases genuine delusions; in other cases they offered, as one may readily imagine, excellent opportunities for personal gain or vengeance.[85]

[80] Ante p. 12 fol.

[81] Ethn. Rep. 1885-86, p. 152: It is impossible to imagine the horrible howlings, and strange contortions that these jugglers (shamans) or conjurers make of their bodies, when they are disposing themselves to conjure.

[82] Page 71.

[83] Andree, p. 70, gives an account of the chief magician (Abyssinia), who demands as yearly tribute of his subordinate animal-men the teeth of the persons whom they have killed during the year, with which he decorates his palace. See also pp. 72, 75, etc.: Ethn. Rep. 1885-86, p. 151, about sorcery among American Indians: Societies existed. The purposes of the society are twofold; 1. To preserve the traditions of Indian genesis and cosmogony, etc. 2. To give a certain class of ambitious men and women sufficient influence through their acknowledged power of exorcism and necromancy to lead a comfortable life at the expense of the credulous. Page 162: “Each tribe has its medicine men and women, an order of priesthood consulted and employed in all times of sickness. It is to their interest to lead these credulous people to believe that they can at pleasure hold intercourse with the munedoos,” etc. Sometimes one family constitutes the class. See note 65; Andree, p. 69.

[84] Grimm, Teut. Myth. III. 1104: To higher antiquity witches were priestesses, physicians, fabulous _night_-wives, never as yet persecuted. Maidens might turn into swans, heroes into werewolves, and lose nothing in popular estimation. The abuse of a spell was punished. A wise woman, healing sickness and charming wounds, begins to pass for a witch only when with her art she does evil. In course of time, when the Devil’s complicity with every kind of sorcery came to be assumed, the guilt of criminality fell upon all personal relations with him. Ethn. Rep. 1901-2, p. 393: “Though the witch may be regarded as all powerful, none but the poor and unfortunate are condemned. Few others are even brought to trial—their prominence prevents public accusation.” This again reminds us some of our customs; namely, that of overlooking the transgressions of the rich and powerful. See note 91, and for outlaws note 112.

[85] Such artificial frenzies had a serious effect upon the body, and more particularly the eyes, so that many shamans (Siberia, America, etc.) become blind.

Only by instilling in their fellows a firm belief in this superstition and maintaining the sham, could the perpetrators of the outrages hope to escape punishment for their depredations, could they hope to plunder and steal with impunity.[86] So they prowled usually under the cloak of _night_ or of the dark of the forest,[87] howled and acted like the animals they represented, hid the animal skin or blanket, if they used one,[88] in the daytime where they thought no one could find it, whereas the animal skin which was worn for defence, was put on either by day or night,[89] and one story recounts the swallowing of a whole goat, the man bellowing fearfully like a tiger while he did it.[90] Some of the transformed men claimed they could regain human form only by means of a certain medicine or by rubbing. The imposters were the criminal class of society that is still with us to-day,[91] no longer in werewolf form, but after all wolves in human dress, each maintaining his trade by deception and countless artifices, just as did the werewolf of old. Not unlike these shams are those of the American negro, who in church, when “shouting,” that is, when stirred up by religious fervor, inflicts blows on his enemy who happens to be in the church, of course with impunity; for he is supposed to be under some outside control, and when the spell has passed off, like some of the delusionists mentioned,[92] claims not to know what he (or generally she) has done. Similar also are the negro voudoo ceremonies, those of the fire-eaters, or any other sham.

[86] Encyc. Brit., XV. under Lycanthropy: In Prussia, Livonia and Lithuania, according to two bishops, werewolves were in the 16th century far more destructive than “true and natural wolves.” They were asserted to have formed “an accursed college” of those “desirous of innovations contrary to the divine law.” Also see note 90.

[87] See ante p. 13, and notes 64, 65, 66, 69, 84, 102, 110.

[88] Note 22 close, and note 102.

[89] See ante p. 13.

[90] Andree, p. 72. This same tiger-man in Asia killed a woman, whose husband set out in pursuit, followed him to his house, got hold of him later in his man shape and killed him. Feats similar to some performed by him are cited in Ethn. Rep. 1887-88, p. 470: The medicine-men of the Pawnee swallowed arrows and knives, and also performed the trick of apparently killing a man and bringing him back to life, like the Zuñi.

[91] Grimm, Rechtsalterthümer, II. 566: Hexen waren fast alle aus der ärmsten und niedrigsten Volksklasse (see note 84). Literary Digest, March 9, 1907, p. 378, article on Spiritualism and Spirituality: “Many, very many, spiritualists seem to care for communion with spirits only that they may more surely keep physically well, and earn their bread and butter and clothing the easier.” Encyc. Brit. under Lycanthropy: The absurdity of the superstition would have much sooner appeared, but for the theory that a werewolf when wounded resumed human shape; in every case where one accused of being a werewolf was taken, he was certain to be wounded, and thus the difficulty of his not being found in beast form was satisfactorily disposed of.

[92] Notes 57 and 67.

The wolf disguise, or transformation into a werewolf was that most often assumed for example in Germanic lands.[93] The term _wolf_ became synonymous with _robber_, and later (when the robber became an outlaw,[94]) with _outlaw_, the robber and outlaw alike being called wolf and not some other animal (i. e., only the wolf-man surviving to any extent) firstly, because the wolf was plentiful; and secondly, because as civilization advanced, there came a time when the wolf was practically the only one of the larger undomesticated animals that survived.[95] We can notice this in our own United States, for example in eastern Kansas, where at night coyotes and even wolves are sometimes heard howling out on the prairie near woodlands, or in the pastures adjoining farms, where they not infrequently kill smaller animals, and dig up buried ones.[96] In Prussia also it is the wolf that survives to-day. American Indians, and other savages however do not restrict the transformations to the wolf,[97] because other wild animals, are, or were till recently, abundant amongst them. As civilization advances, one by one the animal myths disappear with the animals that gave rise to them (like that connected with the mastodon);[98] or else stories of such domestic animals as the pig, white bull, dog superseded them.[99] When this stage was reached, as time went on and means of successfully coping with the brute creation became perfected, the animals were shorn of many of their terrors, and finally such stories as Aesop’s fables would arise.[100] This however was psychologically a long step in advance of our were-wolf believing peoples of an earlier period.

[93] Notes 9 and 19.

[94] Note 112.

[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.”

[97] Note 11.

[98] Note 20.

[99] Note 109.

[100] Note 24.