Many people have said that "humanity has long despised the wolf" or similar statements, but I'm not going to say that because it's not true. Many societies throughout time have revered the wolf, admiring its strength and abilities and comparing its sociality to our own. Native Americans in particular are known to have looked at the wolf as a teacher and guiding spirit. The only people who have ever despised the wolf are the people of our own culture. "Humanity" did not despise the wolf, our culture did.
Native Americans and Wolves
Many Native American creation myths tell of a wolf releasing humans from under ground and allowing them to live above ground, and many others include the idea that wolves taught humans how to live in social groups and how to hunt.
Many Native Americans revered the wolf and honored it by performing Wolf Dances or ceremonies, and many called upon its spirit to bless their hunts. Shamans used its power to heal people, and many people thought to have wolf-like abilities were given wolf names, such as Yellow Wolf or Wolf Lies Down. Some tribes donned wolf skins and crept among their prey, so that the prey would not notice them, because the prey was used to wolves being nearby. During ceremonies, some people would wear wolf skins and paint their bodies to look like wolves, believing this would turn them into a wolf.
While wolves rarely killed humans, and then only children or lone travelers, Native Americans killed wolves relatively often, usually for their skin or other sacred parts, but sometimes for food when other prey was scarce. A wide variety of methods were used, ranging from simple deadfalls to well-built wolf pits to the Eskimos' use of the isiiviroaq, a thin flexible baleen folded and embedded in ice, placed inside a piece of bait. When the wolf swallowed the bait, the ice melted and the baleen would go back to its original shape and pierce the stomach, and it was so painful that the wolf would lay down and die before going too far.
The Native Americans greatly respected the wolf, and though they shared the same prey, they lived side by side for thousands of years.
Europeans and Wolves
For centuries and perhaps millennia, Europeans have feared and hated the wolf. This most likely stems from times when most people herded sheep and other livestock, and wolves got a reputation for killing the animals. However, out of this grew a widespread hatred for them, which brought to life hundreds of stories portraying wolves as evil, such as "Little Red Riding Hood" who is beguiled by a "big bad wolf." Stories spread far and wide about wolves killing thousands and thousands of livestock, as did the idea that wolves preyed on humans whenever possible. Stories of half-man half-wolf creatures called werewolves ("wer" meaning "man" in Old English) abounded. In addition, the devil was often portrayed as a wolf. By the late 1700s, wolves were gone from the British Isles and were drastically reduced elsewhere in Europe. Today in Europe only a few wolves remain in isolated protected areas.
Europeans in America and Wolves
Despite the fact that by the time Europeans arrived in America they had most likely never seen a wolf, the legends and myths surrounding the wolf were still quite prevalent, and when the colonists found an abundance of wolves in their new land, they were afraid and set about to destroy the wolf.
The Europeans also used a number of methods to catch wolves, the main one being the gun, but other methods such as poison and traps were used. Some Europeans adopted the wolf pit from the Native Americans. High-priced bounties for wolf skins or heads were common in many of the colonies. When the amount of wild game began to go down due to the Europeans' unchecked hunting, wolves turned to livestock, which further enraged the colonists. The price of the bounties began to go up, which in many cases used up all of a town's funds. And in some places people took advantage of this, bring the same wolf head to a town council multiple times and receiving the bounty. When only the ears were required, some would bring in dog or fox ears.
But soon the colonists began to notice that their efforts weren't paying off. It seemed that as soon as they had eradicated wolves from an area, they wound return. What was happening was what happens to any animal species: there was enough prey and suitable land in the area to support wolves, so they invariably spread to the area again and again. As soon as a group of wolves had been killed, the wolves in the neighboring territory would move in, simply because they could.
When the Europeans realized what was happening, they were able to solve the problem by increasing the price of a dead wolf, paying Native Americans to kill them, and by not giving up until every last wolf was gone. This and the habitat loss caused by their spreading settlement resulted in the loss of the wolf from the East Coast and much of the eastern part of the continent. In some places the last reported killing of a wolf came as late as 1900, but these were only the last remaining few; wolves were doomed to be gone from the East long before then.
As the Europeans spread west, these events were repeated: wild game would disappear from the area, and the wolves would begin preying on livestock. Then in response the settlers would hunt down the wolves of the area and kill them, and continue to spread west. This was especially the case with the decline of the buffalo. On the plains the buffalo were the main source of food for wolves, and in the 1870s when the government called for the extermination of the buffalo to rid the Native Americans of their livelihood, the wolves suffered a great loss, as the number of buffalo fell from 20 million or more to only one thousand in less than ten years. At first the number of carcasses helped the population of wolves, but soon these ran out and the wolves were left only with the animals that had been their secondary prey. At this point a vast number of Europeans were wolf hunters, called "wolfers," using strychnine to poison them. As the potential for buffalo hunting went down, so did the potential for wolf hunting, and soon "wolfing" was no longer profitable.
With the buffalo gone and the plains being overtaken by livestock owners, wolves once again turned to domestic animals for prey, and the settlers again vowed to destroy them. Bounties were offered in many places, in most areas 2 to 5 dollars a wolf, but in some places ranging up into the hundreds, and once again wolf hunters sought out the animals, using strychnine to poison them or traps. But some wolves, particularly the older experienced ones, learned to avoid poison and traps. Hunters reacted by using dogs to hunt them down. However, even these measures failed to rid the plains of the wolf, as fraud among wolf hunters was widespread and many more wolves were reported killed than actually were. By the end of the 19th century, though, wolves were all but gone from the lower 48 states.
At the beginning of the 20th century, many people became interested in preserving nature and setting up parks where they could enjoy wildlife. All of them agreed that predators such as wolves had no place in their vision. However, not long after this, a number of books and stories about wolves, such as White Fang by Jack London, came out and portrayed the wolf in a better light, although they were mostly of the view that even though wolves are savage killers, they are so intelligent, or social, or some other human quality, that people should sympathize with them. Even so, these early books paved the way for later conservation efforts.
Beginning in the 1920s, a number of biologists and other people who had studied the wolf became aware that wolves were not as savage and murderous as society believed them to be, and were in fact a necessary part of the ecosystem, keeping the wild game populations down and thereby protecting the area from an overrun of herbivores. While most scientists and the public still believed the old stereotype, things were beginning to change.
In 1963, the book Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat came out, which phenomenally changed the general opinion about wolves. Although the book was a fictionalized account of his time studying wolves, he portrayed their intelligence, loyalty, and other traits, and showed that they did not fit the traditional stereotype. After this, several other books about wolves came out, and the public's view of wolves was changing.
Then came the wolves' saving grace. In 1973, wolves finally won protection from humans in the Endangered Species Act. Along with many other species, wolves were finally protected and humans were no longer allowed to hunt them in the US, and mining, oil, and other such companies would have to show there would be no effect on endangered species before using their land for resources.
Since then things have been drastically different for the wolf. A number of reintroduction programs have been proposed, and in 1995 the first group of wolves arrived in Yellowstone National Park, which had not had any wolves in over 70 years. Wolves were also reintroduced in an area of Idaho, and in a few other places. The reintroductions to Yellowstone and Idaho appear to have been successful, and hopefully in the future there will be more protected areas for wolves to live. Today the public opinion of wolves is generally good, and appears to be getting better.
This writing may not be used in any way without my permission. Most of this information was found in the book The Great American Wolf by Bruce Hampton. This writing focuses on American history and culture because I don't know much about the Wolf in other cultures. If you have any suggestions of where I can find out about the wolf in other cultures, please me.