Did Native Americans have any domesticated animals? Particularly dogs?

by cokevanillazero

Pick your tribe. Did any group of Native Americans have domesticated pets or working animals prior to contact with the European settlers?

cdb03b

Many native American tribes had dogs as pets, hunting companions, and beasts of burden. Several of the plains tribes used them to drag small sleds that carried supplies, and the arctic/northern native tribes have had dog sleds for thousands of years.

In South America they had lamas and alpacas.

And many of them had domesticated eating animals such as guinea pig, turkeys, chickens.

constantandtrue

Like /u/cdb03b said, it was common for Indigenous peoples to domesticate dogs.

Coast Salish oral traditions commonly describe a type of particularly shaggy or wooly dog, often taken care of by women, and their fur was used in textile production (the dog may be similar to the one in this photograph).

Subsequently, biological analysis of Salish blankets preserved in museum collections has shown that weavers mixed dog fur with goat wool and wove it into blankets.

Searocksandtrees