Vicious : Wolves and Men in America

by Jon T. Coleman

• ISBN13: 9780300103908
• ISBN10: 0300103905
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2004-08-11
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

Over a continent and three centuries, American livestock owners destroyed wolves to protect the beasts that supplied them with food, clothing, mobility, and wealth. The brutality of the campaign soon exceeded wolves' misdeeds. Wolves menaced property, not people, but storytellers often depicted the animals as ravenous threats to human safety. Subjects of nightmares and legends, wolves fell prey not only to Americans' thirst for land and resources but also to their deeper anxieties about the untamed frontier. Now Americans study and protect wolves and jail hunters who shoot them without authorization. Wolves have become the poster beasts of the great American wilderness, and the federal government has paid millions of dollars to reintroduce them to scenic habitats like Yellowstone National Park. Why did Americans hate wolves for centuries? And, given the ferocity of this loathing, why are Americans now so protective of the animals? In this ambitious history of wolves in Americaand of the humans who have hated and then loved themJon Coleman investigates a fraught relationship between two species and uncovers striking similarities, deadly differences, and, all too frequently, tragic misunderstanding.

Author Biography

Jon T. Coleman teaches history at the University of Notre Dame.

Table of Contents

Southern New England
Howls, snarls, and musket shots : saying "this is mine" in colonial New England	p. 19
Beasts of lore : how stories turned fearsome monsters into skulking criminals	p. 37
Wolf bullets with adders' tongues : how to kill a wolf in colonial New England	p. 52
The Northeastern woodlands
Predator to prey : wolves' journey through the Northeastern woodlands	p. 69
Surrounded : fear and retribution in the Northeastern forests	p. 102
Metaphors of slaughter : two wolf hunts	p. 123
The American West
A wealth of canines : Mormon Americans on the Great Plains	p. 147
Call it a coyote : how to exterminate wolves in colonial Utah	p. 173
The federal government
Annihilation and enlightenment : the cultural extinction of North American wolves	p. 191
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