AMERICAN SERENGETI: THE LAST BIG ANIMALS OF THE GREAT PLAINS author Dan Flores first hand accounts of 19th century explorers, naturalists and frontiersmen take on the 19th century Gray Wolf/Bison "predator/prey dance" reinforces the most recent Yellowstone combat between these two "trophic titans".................."When early Western diarists like Meriwether Lewis, George Catlin and John James Audubon first encountered wolves on the Great Plains, they referred to them as the “shepherds” of the buffalo herds"...................... "Josiah Gregg observed of wolves that although there were “immense numbers of them upon the prairies,” their presence in the landscape was often dependent on bison"............Indian portraitist Catlin stated that "even an old, sick or disabled buffalo was “a huge and furious animal” and would often deal “death by wholesale to his canine assailants"..............."William Clark observed, and Lewis recorded, the most common wolf-hunting technique in April 1805, as their expedition ascended the Missouri through the Dakotas"............. “Capt. Clark informed me,” Lewis wrote, “that he saw a large drove of buffaloe [sic] pursued by wolves today, that they at length caught a calf which was unable to keep up with the herd"............. "An old Pawnee adage held that wolves ran down and devoured four of every 10 bison calves, an equation that kept both species stable across millennia"

http://www.historynet.com/wolf-west.htm

Wolf West

BY DAN FLORES 
3/24/2016 • WILD WEST MAGAZINE

Dr. Michael Steck, a newly appointed Indian agent traveling the Santa Fe Trail in the early 1850s, offers a glimpse of what represented the North American equivalent of the African Serengeti. Steck noted that anytime his traveling party got among the bison herds on the Great Plains, they encountered “immense numbers” of wolves. “A common thing to see [is] 50 at a sight,” he recalled. “In the daytime, never out of sight of them, [we] see hundreds in a day.” Famed wildlife painter John James Audubon, traveling up the Missouri River near the eastern border of future Montana a decade earlier than Steck, made a similar observation: “If ever there was a country where wolves are surpassingly abundant, it is the one we now are in.”

 Until the 1920s there was never a time when wolves were not the keystone predators throughout the West. Before humans arrived on the continent 15,000 or more years ago, wolves likely shaped life here more profoundly than any other mammal.

With buffalo the only Western grazer still standing after the (Pleistocene) extinctions, bison numbers skyrocketed to between 20 and 30 million animals. Some 1.5 to 2 million wolves served as their primary predators in this new order. As Western trader-explorer-author Josiah Gregg put it in the 1840s, “Although the buffalo is the largest, he has by no means the control among the prairie animals; the scepter of authority has been lodged with the large gray wolf.”

When early Western diarists like Meriwether Lewis, George Catlin and John James Audubon first encountered wolves on the Great Plains, they referred to them as the “shepherds” of the buffalo herds. Josiah Gregg observed of wolves that although there were “immense numbers of them upon the prairies,” their presence in the landscape was often dependent on bison.

 Indian portraitist Catlin crisscrossed much of the West in the early 1830s. One of his observations about buffalo wolf, or white wolf, hunts was how dearly a wolf pack often won a meal. Even an old, sick or disabled buffalo was “a huge and furious animal” and would often deal “death by wholesale to his canine assailants, which he is tossing into the air or stamping to death under his feet.” Catlin’s painting Buffalo Hunt: White Wolves Attacking Buffalo Bull shows such a scene, wherein an aging bull holds off a wolf pack with such resolution that “his eyes were entirely eaten out of his head—the grizzle of his nose was mostly gone—his tongue was half eaten off, and the skin and flesh of his legs torn almost literally into strings.” Yet even with the bull in that condition, numerous wolves “had been crushed to death by the feet or horns of the bull.”

Pawnee Indians observed that Wolves killed 40% of Bison calves--keeping
the Bison population in concert with the land

William Clark observed, and Lewis recorded, the most common wolf-hunting technique in April 1805, as their expedition ascended the Missouri through the Dakotas. “Capt. Clark informed me,” Lewis wrote, “that he saw a large drove of buffaloe [sic] pursued by wolves today, that they at length caught a calf which was unable to keep up with the herd.” An old Pawnee adage held that wolves ran down and devoured four of every 10 bison calves, an equation that kept both species stable across millennia.

One trait many observers noted when first encountering Western wolves was how docile they appeared. In that wolf country par excellence along the Missouri, Audubon marveled how wolves would lie on the banks as the steamboat passed, yawning like dogs at passersby. Clark was able to approach close enough on land to impulsively stab one dead with his bayonet. When Audubon arrived at Fort Union, at the confluence of the Yellowstone, he was met by American Fur Co. trader Alexander Culbertson, whose chief hobby when boredom set in was running down wolves on his Indian pony. As Audubon’s companion Edward Harris described it, with wolves in constant view, the trader offered them a demonstration.

“Mr. Culbertson…,” wrote Harris, “started his beautiful Blackfoot pied mare at full speed, when within a half-mile of the wolf, who turned and galloped off leisurely until Mr. C. was within two or three hundred yards of him, when he started off at the top of his speed.” Within the time it took Harris to scribble his account, Culbertson was back at the post with the wolf draped across his horse in front of the saddle, shot through the lungs and shoulders as the trader had chased him at breakneck speed across the prairie. It was an impressive performance, no doubt, so long as you hadn’t experienced it from the perspective of the wolf.

Long centuries of benign interaction with the Plains Indians had taught Western wolves not to fear humans. Despite Old World folklore and Hollywood hype, except in the rare rabies case wolves were not aggressive toward people. In fact, it was a Western trope that both wolves and coyotes were fearful around humans. While scornful of canine cowardice, early observers often remarked on how trusting wolves seemed, trotting before approaching horses like dogs or watching curiously as travelers passed within feet.

Dan Flores writes books about the environmental West and is a frequent contributor to Wild West. His latest books are Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History (2016) and American Serengeti: The Last Big Animals of the Great Plains, (2016).

Late in life famed Western painter Frederic Remington depicted this lone canid on a nighttime prowl in his oil “Moonlight, Wolf.”