The White Wolf’s Wonder World by Ernest Thompson Seton
This is one in an ongoing series of nature essays from Lives of Game Animals (1925-1928) by Ernest Thompson Seton.
The Arctic Wolf
His Primitive Simplicity/Vol. I pg. 351-352
“As one ponders on the lives and changing habits of the creatures that have had most contact and bitterest experience with man, the thought recurs again and again: What were these wild things like, before they met with the ever-hostile, hateful humankind? One longs for a glimpse of those far-off happy days when our Little Brothers were not afraid to be seen, and lived not ever in the withering circle of a pitiless gunfire that ceased only at dark.
Just such a glimpse is offered by the present animal. In all respects a Wolf, the same in make-up, mind, and needs as his furtive, fearsome cousin in the woods, he gives us in his life an exact picture of what his Southern kinsman was 200 years ago. First, and in all his ways, he is simply a big wild Dog, living on flesh that he gets by open chase, recording his call on tree or corner stone, unsuspicious and friendly, wagging his tail for pleasure, or baying at the moon, more prone to attack the running than the facing foe – for all his instincts are for pursuit – unafraid of man, yet restrained by some unknown force from attacking him, very ready to become his friend, his follower, his helper, his slave.”
