Pre-Colombian Canines: America’s First Dogs...
BY DAN SAYERS continued
dog meat a ‘special dainty.’” However, this was not at all a common practice among the area’s people. According to the author, “The northern Yokut, who felt that dogs possessed immortal souls, viewed the southern Yokut dog-eating habit with distaste.” A GENUINE PUREBRED A dog from the coastal Pacific North- west may likely have been the only genuine “purebred” dog bred in pre- contact North America. The extinct Salish Wool Dog was intentionally bred for its fur that was spun into yarn and woven into blankets. This dog’s unique role in society —that of a genuine “pet” —was a precursor of things to come. As Schwartz explains, “The Pacific North- west, with its plentiful supply of salmon and timber, provided its residents with riches unparalleled in other hunter- gatherer societies. Wealth, warfare, and elaborate rituals characterized the cul- tures of this area.” Among these rituals was a practice among the Salish people to segregate their small wool dogs from the common “village” dogs in order to prevent the kind of cross-breeding that was inevitable everywhere else on the continent. “These special dogs, with either thick white woolly hair or a long brownish-black coat, were sheared twice a year and kept on islands to pre- vent interbreeding with hunting dogs,” writes Schwartz. “Each day women would paddle out to the dogs’ islands with food and water.” During the winter months, the small dogs were brought into the communities’ large plank hous- es where they became companions to the women who spun their coats into yarn. “To produce the blankets, women combined sheared dog hair with moun- tain goat wool, adding goose down and the fluff of the fireweed plant, and then rubbed the fibers with white clay,” according to Schwartz who indicates that a woman’s wealth was counted in the number of dogs she owned. When Captain George Vancouver charted the region in 1792 for the British Crown, he made an entry in his journal that makes mention of North America’s first pure- bred. “The dogs belonging to this tribe of Indians were numerous, and much resembled those of Pomerania, though in general somewhat larger. They were all shorn as close to the skin as sheep are in England,” he noted. Ironically, it was the introduction of sheep from Great Britain that made the Salish Wool Dog obsolete in its native land. Ultimately, its unique role within its wealthy com- munity of traders could not save this purebred dog from extinction.
The dogs of the Ojibwa people pulled toboggans that were introduced by European explorers.
Commonly used to hunt rabbit and chase deer, the native dogs of California were said to be barkless.
The coat of the Salish Wool Dog of the Pacific Northwest was interwoven with mountain goat hair to create blankets.
44 • S how S ight M agazine , N ovember 2018
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