Of Wolves and Men by Barry Holstun Lopez

Abstract

236 Western American Literature must move towards a “New Community” of national rather than tribal identity. But no one should fail to see that Speaking of Indians is a sincere and intelligent attempt by one Native American to formulate realistic goals for her people. Nor should anyone fail to realize that the perspective in the book is also female. WILLIAM BLOODWORTH, East Carolina University Of Wolves and Men. By Barry Holstun Lopez. (New York: Charles Scrib­ ner’s Sons, 1978. 309 pages, illus., index, $14.95.) Of Wolves and Men is a book which needed to be written. It asks questions that no one has answers for. It demands soul searching. Man must abandon his misconceptions and half-truths and search the woods for the wolf’s identity. Lopez admits that he is no authority on wolves. Yet his research for the book included the review of scientific, political, historical, religious, and literary written records. He interviewed people in the field from Minne­ sota trappers to Alaskan Eskimos. At his home in Oregon he raised two wolf pups, a project he reviews with regret, and yet he claims he is not an authority: no one is an authority on wolves. There is no one definitive study of the wolf. And therein lies the message. The wolf is yet to be understood. The wolf’s behavior is as varied as his pelage. Lopez warns the reader it is dangerous to assume that all ani­ mal behavior can be compared in accurate metaphors to man’s behavior. One example of man’s faulty metaphor is the comparison of the wolf’s territory to man’s private property. A wolf’s territory is fluid whereas a man’s boundary markers are fixed. And so the story goes. Before continuing, I think it is important to state that this is no ordin­ ary book written by a “wolf lover”. Lopez establishes his point of view by discrediting trappers, biologists, conservation employees from the federal government as well as from the state and local levels, veterinarians, stock­ men, and laymen as being guilty of misconceptions and misdoings. So far none have understood the wolf. Some have his pelt, some his skeleton, and some have tracked his movements with a radio collar. Except for the Eskimo who lives in the same environment with the wolf and shares a similar ecosytem, all others have seen the part for the whole. Lopez claims that no other animal has been so highly imagined and abused as the wolf. Lopez traces misconceptions in fables and folklore from medieval time to the present day. For hundreds of years the wolf has been feared, equated both with the devil and the saint. Roots of hatred grew Reviews 237 from religous as well as secular life. The wolf has been pursued and hein­ ously tortured for what men believed the wolf to be. Lopez states, “It does not demean men to want to be what they imagine a wolf to be, but it demeans them to kill the animal for it” (p. 166). Of Wolves and Men is well written. Lopez wisely lets the facts speak for themselves and forces the reader to question his envisioning of animals and their relationship to man. MARY ELLEN ACKERMAN, International Falls, Minnesota The Scorched-Wood People. By Rudy Wiebe. (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1977. 351 pages, $12.95.) Like William Faulkner, who created the Yoknapatawpha County, and Frederick Manfred, who staked out his own Siouxland, Rudy Wiebe is developing as the spokesman of the Canadian great plains area. The Scorched-Wood People is a novel set in the same area as his Governor General’s Award winning novel, The Temptations of Big Bear. It is the tale of the loss of the Canadian West by the Metis to the dominantly Scottish and British Canadians, and it centers around two of the most fascinating characters in Western Canadian, or American for that matter, literature. The dust jacket blurb suggests that these central characters are two titanic figures, and in a sense they are, but they are more like human heroes — each with his Achilles heel. There is, first of all, Louis Riel, who is truly the center...