Wolf Nurses in India

The wolf

Stories of wild animals that have acted the part of nurses toward infants accidentally or purposely exposed, are to be met with in every part of the world, and among races of the most widely distinct character. It was a favorite legendary origin for a great hero, the founder of a nation or of an empire. The stag, the bear, the dog, and many others figure in these traditions; but, of all, the wolf is the most remarkable and the most frequently to be met with. What truth there may be in the old story of Romulus we shall not attempt to decide. Some reality, however, underlies the wildest fictions; and we have at this moment before us a very interesting account of observations made in Northern India, which may be worth the consideration of some future Niebuhr or Arnold. They were conducted by a distinguished Indian officer, who has possessed unusual opportunities for obtaining information from the wilder and less known parts of the country. He has published a pamphlet, giving an account of his investigations. In the following notice we shall use this pamphlet largely and without scruple, since it has scarcely attracted the notice its very curious subject deserves.

The wolf in India is looked upon, as it formerly was in Northern Europe, as a sacred animal. Almost all Hindoos have a superstitious dread of destroying or even of injuring it; and the village community within the boundary of whose lands a drop of wolf's blood has fallen, believes itself doomed to destruction. The natural consequence is, that in the districts least frequented by Europeans, these animals are very numerous and destructive, and great numbers of children are constantly carried off by them. Only one class of the population, the very lowest, leading a vagrant life, and bivouacking in the jungles, will attempt to kill or catch them. Even these, however, although they have no superstitious fear of the wolf, and are always found to be well acquainted with its usual dens and haunts, very seldom attempt its capture—in all probability from the profit they make of the gold and silver bracelets and necklaces worn by children whom the wolves have carried to their dens, and whose remains are left at the entrance. In all parts of India, it appears, numbers of children are daily murdered for the sake of these dangerous ornaments.

The wolf, however, is sometimes kinder than man. In the neighborhood of Sultanpoor, and among the ravines that intersect the banks of the Goomtee river, this animal abounds; and our first instance of a “wolf nurse” occurs in that district. A trooper, passing along the river bank near Chandour, saw a large female wolf leave her den, followed by three whelps and a little boy.

The boy went on all-fours, apparently on the best possible terms with his fierce companions, and the wolf protected him with as much care as if he had been one of her own whelps. All went down to the river and drank, without noticing the trooper, who, as they were about to turn back, pushed on in order to cut off and secure the boy. But the ground was uneven, and his horse could not overtake them. All re-entered the den; and the trooper then assembled some people from Chandour, with pickaxes, who dug into the den for about six or eight feet, when the old wolf bolted, followed by her three cubs and the boy. The trooper, accompanied by the fleetest young men of the party, mounted and pursued; and having at last headed them, he turned the whelps and boy (who ran quite as fast) back upon the men on foot. They secured the boy and allowed the others to escape.

The boy thus taken was apparently about nine or ten years old, and had all the habits of a wild animal. On his way to Chandour he struggled hard to rush into every hole or den he passed. The sight of a grown-up person alarmed him, and he tried to steal away; but he rushed at a child with a fierce snarl, like that of a dog, and tried to bite it. Cooked meat he would not eat, but he seized raw food with eagerness, putting it on the ground under his hands, and devouring it with evident pleasure. He growled angrily if any one approached him while eating, but made no objection to a dog's coming near and sharing his food. The trooper left him in charge of the Rajah of Husunpoor, who saw the boy immediately after he was taken. Very soon afterward he was sent, by the Rajah's order, to Captain Nicholett's, at Sultanpoor; for although his parents are said to have recognized him when first captured, they abandoned him on finding that he displayed more of the wolf's than of human nature.

He lived in the charge of Captain Nicholett's servants nearly three years; very inoffensive, except when teased, but still a complete animal. He could never be induced to keep on any kind of clothing, even in the coldest weather; and on one occasion tore to pieces a quilt, stuffed with cotton, and ate a portion of it, cotton and all, every day with his bread. When his food was placed at a distance from him, he ran to it on all-fours, like a wolf; and it was only on rare occasions that he walked upright. Human beings he always shunned, and never willingly remained near them. On the other hand, he seemed fond of dogs and of jackals, and indeed all animals, and readily allowed them to feed with him.

He was never known to laugh or smile, and was never heard to speak till within a few minutes of his death, when he put his hands to his head, and said it ached, and asked for water, which he drank, and died. Possibly, had this boy lived, he might gradually have been brought to exhibit more intellect and intelligence; but almost every instance seems to prove how completely the human nature is supplanted by the brutal.

The next is still from the neighborhood of the Goomtee. In March, 1843, a cultivator who lived at Chupra, about twenty miles east of Sultanpoor, went to cut his crop of wheat and pulse, taking with him his wife, and a son about three years old, who had only lately recovered from a severe scald on the left knee. As the father was reaping, a wolf suddenly rushed upon the boy, caught him up, and made off with him toward the ravines. The people of the village ran to the aid of the parents, but they soon lost sight of the wolf and his prey.

About six years afterward, as two Sipahees from Singramow, about ten miles from Chupra, were watching for hogs, on the border of the jungle, which extended down to the Khobae rivulet, they saw three wolf cubs and a boy come out from the jungle, and go down to drink at the stream; all four then ran toward a den in the ravines. The Sipahees followed, but the cubs had already entered, and the boy was halfway in, when one of the men caught him by the hind leg, and drew him back. He was very angry and savage, bit at the men, and seizing in his teeth the barrel of one of their guns, shook it fiercely. The Sipahees, however, secured him, brought him home, and kept him for twenty days, during which he would eat nothing but raw flesh, and was fed accordingly with hares and birds.

His captors then found it difficult to provide him with sufficient food, and took him to the bazaar, in the village of Koeleepoor, to be supported by the charitable people of the place, till he might be recognized and claimed by his parents. One market day, a man from the village of Chupra happened to see him in the bazaar, and on his return described him to his neighbors. The cultivator, the father of the boy, was dead, but his widow, asking for a minute description of the boy, found that he had the mark of a scald on the left knee, and three marks of the teeth of an animal on each side of his loins. Fully believing him to be her lost child, she went forthwith to the Koelee bazaar, and, in addition to these two marks, discovered a third on his thigh, with which her boy was born.

She took him home to her village, where he still remains, but, as in the former case, his human intellect seems to have all but disappeared. The front of his knees and elbows had become hardened from his going on all-fours with the wolves, and although he wanders about the village during the day, he always steals back to the jungle at nightfall. He is unable to speak, nor can he articulate any sound distinctly. In drinking, he dips his face into the water, but does not lap it up like a wolf. He still prefers raw flesh, and when a bullock dies and the skin is removed, he attacks and eats the body, in company with the village dogs.

Passing by a number of similar stories, we come to one which is in many respects the most remarkable. About seven years since, a trooper, in attendance upon Rajah Hurdut Singh, of Bondee, on the left bank of the Ghagra river, in the district of Bahraetch, in passing near a small stream, saw there two wolf cubs and a boy, drinking. He managed to seize the boy, who seemed to be about ten years old, but was so wild and fierce that he tore the trooper's clothes and bit him severely in several places.

The Rajah at first had him tied up in his artillery gun-shed, and fed him with raw meat, but he was afterward allowed to wander freely about the Bondee bazaar. He there one day ran off with a joint of meat from a butcher's shop, and another of the bazaar keepers let fly an arrow at him, which penetrated his thigh. A lad, named Janoo, servant of a Cashmere merchant, then at Bondee, took compassion on the poor boy, extracted the arrow from his thigh, and prepared a bed for him under a mango-tree, where he himself lodged. Here he kept him fastened to a tent-pin. Up to this time he would eat nothing but raw flesh, but Janoo gradually brought him to eat balls of rice and pulse.

In about six weeks after he had been tied up under the tree, after much rubbing of his joints with oil, he was made to stand and walk upright. Hitherto he had gone on all-fours. In about four months he began to understand and obey signs. In this manner he was taught to prepare the hookah, put lighted charcoal on the tobacco, and bring it to Janoo, or to whomsoever he pointed out. He was never heard, however, to utter more than one articulate sound. This was “Aboodeea,” the name of the little daughter of a Cashmere mimic, or player, who had once treated him with kindness. The odor from his body was very offensive; and Janoo had him rubbed with mustard-seed soaked in water, in the hope of removing it. This was done for some months, during which he was still fed on rice and flour; but the odor did not leave him.

One night, while the boy was lying under the mango-tree, Janoo saw two wolves creep stealthily toward him; and after smelling him, they touched him, and he got up. Instead, however, of being frightened, the boy put his hands upon their heads, and they began to play with him, capering about him, while he threw straw and leaves at them. Janoo tried to drive them off, but could not; and becoming much alarmed, he called to the sentry over the guns, and told him that the wolves were going to eat the boy. He replied, “Come away and leave him, or they will eat you also;” but when Janoo saw them begin to play together, his fears subsided, and he continued to watch them quietly. At last he succeeded in driving them off; but the following night three wolves came—and a few nights after, four—which returned several times. Janoo thought that the two which first came must have been the cubs with which the boy was found, and that they would have seized him had they not recognized him by the smell. They licked his face with their tongues as he put his hands on their heads.

When Janoo's master returned to Lucknow, he was, after some difficulty, persuaded to allow Janoo to take the boy with him. Accordingly, Janoo led him along by a string tied to his arm, and put a bundle of clothes on his head. Whenever they passed a jungle, the boy would throw down his bundle, and make desperate attempts to escape. When beaten, he raised his hands in supplication, took up his bundle, and went on; but the sight of the next jungle produced the same excitement. A short time after his return to Lucknow, Janoo was sent away by his master for a day or two, and found on his return that the boy had disappeared. He could never be found again.

About two months after the boy had gone, a woman of the weaver caste came to Lucknow, with a letter from the Rajah of Bondee, stating that her son, when four years old, had, five or six years before, been carried off by a wolf; and from the description given of the boy whom Janoo had taken away with him, she thought he must be the same. She described marks corresponding with those on Janoo's boy; but although she remained some considerable time at Lucknow, no traces could be found of the boy; and at last she returned to Bondee. All these circumstances were procured by the writer of the pamphlet from Sanaollah, Janoo's master, and from Janoo himself, both of whom declared them to be strictly true. The boy must have been with the wolf six or seven years, during which she must have had several litters of whelps.

It is remarkable that no well-authenticated instance has been found of a full-grown man who had been nurtured in a wolf's den. The writer of the pamphlet mentions an old man at Lucknow, who was found when a lad in the Oude Tarae, by the hut of an old hermit who had died there. He is supposed to have been taken from wolves by this hermit, and is still called the “wild man of the woods.”

“He was one day,” says the writer, “sent to me at my request, and I talked with him. His features indicate him to be of the Tharoo tribe, who are found only in this forest. I asked him whether he had any recollection of ever having been with wolves He said, ‘The wolf died long before the old hermit.’ I do not feel at all sure, however, that he ever lived with wolves.

”In another instance, a lad came into the town of Hasanpoor,“ who had evidently been brought up by wolves.” He was apparently about twelve years old, was very dark, and had, at first, short hair all over his body, which gradually disappeared as he became accustomed to eat salt with his food. He never spoke, but was made to understand signs well. It is not known what eventually became of him.

These are doubtful cases; but in the former instances there seems no room for questioning the facts. Our readers, however, must judge for themselves. At all events, the subject appeared to us so curious and so full of interesting suggestions, that we hardly think they will quarrel with us for bringing it thus briefly under their notice.