Second Sultanpur wolf boy

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First Lucknow wolf boy

The Lobo Wolf Girl of Devil's River

In May of 1835, the Wolf Girl of Devil's River was born to Mollie Dent, who had gone with her husband to the Beaver Lake area to trap. Mollie was having problems with the birth, so her husband, John Dent, rode to get help from a Mexican-run goat ranch on the Pecos Canyon, but he was struck and killed by lightning before he could return accompanied by the Mexican couple. By the time the Mexicans reached Mollie, she had died, apparently in childbirth. Wolf tracks in the vicinity suggested that the newborn infant had been devoured by the lobo wolves of the area.

Sighted after 10 years

However, in 1845 a boy saw a girl, in the company of a pack of lobo wolves, attacking a herd of goats. Less than a year later, a Mexican woman at San Felipe saw two large wolves and a girl devour a freshly-killed goat. She observed the girl run off — first on all fours, and then on two legs.

Capture… and escape

A hunt was mounted, and after three days the Lobo Girl of Devil's River was caught after fighting wildly to keep her freedom. She was taken to a ranch (really just a two-room hovel) and locked in. Her howling attracted answering cries from wolves far and wide, and a large pack of wolves rushed the corrals, attacking the goats, cows and horses. Shooting started, and in the confusion the girl managed to remove the board nailed over the window and make her escape.

Sighted seven years later

In 1852, a group of frontiersmen surveying a better route to El Paso saw a girl suckling two wolf cubs on a sand bar in the river, who then ran off, carrying the cubs. She would have been 17 in that year; but she was never seen again.

Read more about the Lobo Girl of Devil's River

One of the chapters of Straight Texas is about The Lobo Girl. There's also a bit about her in Of Wolves and Men by Barry Lopez.

Hear more about the Lobo Girl of Devil's River

The Lobo Girl of Devil's River (1967) is a piano work by Ernst Bacon based on this legend. Following Emily Corbato's New York premiere of this work, Raymond Ericson of The New York Times called it "virtually a tone poem. In a dissonant Ivesian vein, it has a primitivelike power..." (It is track 6 on the CD Bacon: Remembering Ansel Adams.) You can also buy the sheet music for The Lobo Girl of Devil's River.