origin of were wolf

26 UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI STUDIES [278
no longer in werewolf form, but after all
wolves in human dress,
each maintaining his trade by deception and countless artifices,
just as did the werewolf of old.
Not unlike these shams are those
of the American negro, who in church, when "shouting," that is,
when stirred up by religious fervor, inflicts blows on his enemy
who happens to be in the church, of course with impunity; for
he is
supposed to be under some outside control, and when the
spell has passed off, like some of the delusionists mentioned, 92
claims not to know what he (or generally she) has done.
Similar
also are the negro voudoo ceremonies, those of the fire-eaters, or
any other sham.
The wolf disguise, or transformation into a werewolf was
that most often assumed for example in Germanic lands.93 The
term wolf became synonymous with robber, and later (when
the robber became an outlaw,
94 )
with outlaw, the robber and outlaw
alike being called wolf and not some other animal (i. e.,
only the wolf-man surviving to any extent) firstly, because the
wolf was plentiful ;
and secondly, because as civilization advanced,
there came a time when the wolf was practically the only one of
the larger undomesticated animals, that survived. 95 We can
every case where one accused of being a werewolf was taken, he was
certain to be wounded, and thus the difficulty of his not being found in
beast form was satisfactorily disposed of.
92
Notes 57 and 67.
93
Notes 9 and 19.
94
Note 112.
^See note n, also Ethn. Rep. 1897-98, I. 263: "The deer, which is
still common in the mountains, was the principal dependence of the
Cherokee hunter, and is consequently prominent in myth, folklore, and
ceremonial." see note 42. Page 264: "The largest gens (clan) in the
tribe bears the name of 'wolf "
people.' Page 420: The Cherokee
have always been an agricultural people, and their old country has a
luxuriant flora, therefore the vegetable kingdom holds a far more important
place in the mythology and ceremonial of the tribe than it does
among the Indians of the treeless plains and arid sage deserts of the West.