When Upper East Tennessee Was Infested with Wolves

Timber wolves formerly ranged over most of North America, including the southern Appalachians, but no longer exist in the eastern United States. The most powerful of all the wild dogs of the world, the timber wolf can measure over 6-feet in length, stand nearly a yard at the shoulder, and weigh as much as 175-pounds.

In Cherokee lore he was the revered “Wa-ya,” the companion of Kana’-ti, their master hunter, and they would not normally kill a wolf. Certain hired killers who followed elaborate rituals for atonement could slay wolves that raided stock or fish traps.

Back in the 1700s when the Europeans first began to settle what we now know as upper East Tennessee, the virgin forests had never been broken. Forests covered much of the land. Herds of buffalo, deer, elk, and wolves roamed the hills and hollers.

The first settlers living inside the Watauga Settlement and Holston Settlement had a hard time dealing with the wolves including the Red and Gray wolves, living in the area. The wolves outnumbered the humans. In fact, this area was infested with wolves. The wolves would attack the settlers, kill their livestock.

In the area of Piney Flats, Tennessee, the settlers would met and have 'wolf drives'. In these wolf drives they would extend themselves from the Watauga River to the Holston River during the night and would transverse, by morning the wolves would be cooped up between the two rivers. When morning brought enough light, shooting wolves was the order.

 The first wolf bounty was set in North Carolina in 1748 at 10 shillings for each wolf scalp. Bounty hunters pursued their quarry with guns, dogs, and wolf pits. After the Revolution, the bounty climbed to $5 per scalp.

This intense pressure helped drive most of the remaining population into the mountains by the early 1800s, where skillful hunters familiar with the upcountry were required. The brothers Gideon and Nathan Lewis of Ashe County, North Carolina, were the first of the renowned wolf hunters. Locating a wolf den, one of the brothers would crawl in and secure the wolf pups as bounty, but somehow the female would always “escape.”

When asked why they never managed to kill a mature female, Gideon would reply matter-of-factly, “Would you expect a man to kill his milch-cow?”

The period of the Civil War marked a resurgence of wolves as many excellent marksman were pulled out of the mountains or otherwise occupied by the conflict so that the multiplying wolves became increasingly brazen.

 The last native gray wolf was killed in the Southern Appalachians around 1900. While the red wolf, a distinct species, was declared extinct in the wild in 1980, conservation efforts led to its reintroduction into the region, with the first wild releases occurring in the late 1980s.