How Wolf Point Got Its Name

The poor kids here do not seem to get my sense of humor (ok, most people don’t understand my sense of humor but that’s never stopped me). Their mascot is, as one might expect, a wolf.

I got a lot of blank stares when I jokingly told the kids that I was surprised by this…

After we got over the fact that I’m not funny, I decided to ask the kids how Wolf Point got its name and ohmygoodness, I got quite the history lesson! So before I get to the totally true story of how Wolf Point got its name, I should say that we do an assembly about storytelling and part of it has to do with Native American folklore and we discuss how their stories not only teach values but often have to do with nature – we then go on to tell a Cherokee story called “The First Fire” which explains how man got fire and how certain animals gained certain features – and since this is a Native American reservation, part of me expected something rather poignant with a nice life lesson to neatly wrap it all up, but I got something far more straightforward and wonderful.

The order of events seemed to vary slightly from child to child but essentially one winter, a long, long time ago, it was really, really cold and a bunch of wolves died then froze solid and all of the hunters in the area just piled up the frozen carcasses along the banks of the Missouri River and people started calling it Wolf Point.

Isn’t that seriously the greatest thing you’ve ever heard?! I don’t think I’ve ever had a better mental picture of a historical event! Just a bunch of dead wolves chilling (literally!) on the side of a river.

And that is the story of how Wolf Point got its name.