I encountered someone like this once: she was the lady (or former lady) of a nearby hamlet, which had been attacked by goblins and subsequently abandoned. The rest of the town were refugees in a nearby camp, among them some of the lady's hearthspeople, who told me they were soldiers in her service. She, however, naked and mute, just stood on the fringes of the goblin camp nearby (the goblins, actually, were
also refugees - I don't know why they abandoned the site though). After a while one of my companions attacked and killed her for no apparent reason.
Later on I was traveling pretty far north of that location, came across a * on the map - it was a group of naked peasants/wrestlers, only one of whom had any name (though they could all talk) - they mostly introduced themselves with "Greetings. My name is ." Their leader said they were refugees from the aforementioned town - which, again, was quite a ways in the south. I left them, but went back to check on them again, and they had all vanished.
Basically, insurrections/conquests/refugees are
rife with bugs and glitches (along with most of the rest of the game). Whatever this bug is, it's probably related to confused civilization/group identities.
What is this deal with animal recruits then? Whom are those?
Those are historical figure animals - named animals whose histories are traced. Chances are some of them have rampaged or killed someone at some point. Killing them should make people approve of you as a "hunter." I don't know why their called recruits, maybe some game-internal reason to make them move in the world.