Among the common folk of Southern Utah
there is a legend of a woman named Annie Bangs. The legend says that she
traveled to the state with her family in a covered wagon, but the wagon hit a
rock or bump in the road and the child fell out of the wagon. By the time her
absence was noticed the family had traveled too far and could not find young
Annie. However, a coyote found Annie and raised her as a sort of ‘wolf-child’.
Annie therefore was a very wild woman, ferocious when she attacked and with a
terrifying appearance, living like an animal as she did. And so, when you hear
the howl of a coyote in the Southern Utah
desert, it may be a coyote you hear, or it may be Annie Bangs, looking for her
meal. She possesses a supernatural ability, in a way, since she continues to
haunt the desert with her howls and her form, even though she is said to have lived
more than a hundred years ago. Annie is timeless and not bound by death or any human
morals. She is survival, rage, and terror.
I live in Utah, every year the third graders at several elementary schools take a field trip, this is where we learn about Annie Bangs.
ReplyDeleteThe story we learned was different than this, that the bangs family had their cabin built in Gooseberry. It is a desert, but the snow can get surprisingly high, and it was far worse before global warming, and a particularly brutal winter left them stranded alone in the mountains when they ran out of food.
The father went out into the snow to try and find food, but he never returned, and the mother had no choice but to try for herself. Annie was just a baby and there was no way she could have survived being out in the cold for that long, so the mother had to leave her behind.
There are two versions of the story from that point, one that wolves came across the cabin, hearing Annie's cries and took her with them to raise as a wolf, while the other (more realistic) version says it was the indigenous people of the area who found her and raised her amongst them