[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.
