Dogs were indeed part of life pre-Colombian America. There is [archeological evidence] (https://soar.wichita.edu/bitstream/handle/10057/1824/LAJ%2021_p42-54.pdf) for domesticated dogs in North America from around [9500-6500 BC] (http://www.jstor.org/stable/27825551?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents). For example three domestic dogs were found [buried] (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/204059?journalCode=ca) in the Illinois River Valley, with the remains dated to around 8500 BC. Dog remains have also been found in the [ancient Caribbean] (http://www.bioone.org.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/doi/abs/10.5252/az2013n2a17), both buried (and so seemingly important to their owners) and in refuse piles (suggesting they were eaten).
The evidence suggests dogs in pre-Colombian America were used for hunting, as beasts of burden (pulling sledges etc) and as food.
[Genetic studies] (http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1766/20131142) (looking at mitochondrial DNA lineages) of breeds of American dogs compared to those of east Asia and Europe also suggest that even today certain breeds, especially the Eskimo, Inuit and Greenland dogs, are almost entirely descended from east Asian ancestors that crossed over the Bearing Straights. Chihuahuas also share a unique haplotype with samples of ancient Mexican animals. This means that imported European animals did not completely overwhelm the native dogs.
[Here] (https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/07/130709-american-dog-breed-origins-asia-canine-science/) is a National Geographic article if you'd like some easy to read further information too.
Hi there! This here's a question I can answer, thanks to A Concise History of Canada's First Nations by Indigenous historians Olive Patricia Dickason and William Newbigging.
To begin, I am going to tweak your question from "Did American Indians also have dogs" to "Did Indigenous peoples in the Americas have dogs". My reasoning here is that Indigenous peoples of the Americas did not abide by our contemporary nation state borders, so answering the question as per our contemporary borders would be at best arbitrary and at worst historically inaccurate.
As you may know, Indigenous agriculture was largely plant-based rather than animals, in contrast to European (and later, American) farming practice. That being said, some animals were domesticated on permanent or semi-permanent farmland, depending on geographic location, including: llamas; guinea pigs; and turkeys. Much more common though was pairing plant-based agricultural production with wild-game hunting. For this reason, dogs were widely present and domesticated.
As Dickason and Newbigging explain, dogs in Northern Indigenous communities "pulled sleds but were also raised for food. On the Plains, they were pack animals and also hauled the products of the hunt and camp equipment by means of the travois, a V-shaped frame of tipi poles lashed together with hide. On the Northwest Coast, Amerindians had a variety of dog with a white woolly coat that provided fibres for weaving. In the northern forests, dogs were trained for hunting".
That's not to say that Indigenous peoples were familiar with European breeds of dog or dogs as we may know them today. Jesuit missionaries in the 16th century noted that Indigenous peoples were "endlessly interested" in French dogs with their uniquely floppy ears.
Further reading:
Dickason, Olive Patricia & Newbigging, William (2010). A Concise History of Canada's First Nations. Second Edition. Oxford University Press.
Yes, American Indians had dogs before the arrival of Europeans!
Different tribes have a variety of stories telling of how dogs came to be, and have fantastic details about them - giants in one case. A Cree story tells of how wolves began helping a struggling family in exchange for food, eventually turning into dogs, with a variation that the canid family (fox, coyote and wolf) all helped and evolved into dogs and earned a place of respect as Polaris and the surrounding stars.
We also know they had dogs before because of a Blackfeet legend about the arrival of the horse called "The Orphan Boy and the Elk-Dog" - of course there was no term for horses, so the hybrid term was created from the two closest things they were familiar with.
In the more concrete evidence world, genetic testing shows that some breeds of dog have little similarity to Old World breeds, and research from 2015(pay to read, sorry, here's an article about it ) suggests that migration from Eurasia brought dogs along. There are dog burials found at some sites that are over 600 years old.
Apparently the majority of these New World breeds are now extinct, but chihuahuas and a couple types of Inuit breeds still exist. The Plains Indians, like the Blackfeet and the Crow, used dogs frequently as pack animals to pull travois until (and after) horses arrived. There are photos of dogs in travois later on, which is essentially their main pack function. Some dogs were eaten, as Cortés wrote about regarding chihuahuas.
So yes, dogs existed in the New World prior to European arrival, unlike horses. I know I'm not technically a historian, but as we read The Orphan Boy and the Elk-dog in my class, I've looked into it in the past. I hope this is thorough enough.
I can't speak for most of the Americas, but I can speak for the area that's now Massachusetts.
The Wampanoag (and surrounding tribes like the Narragansett) did have dogs. While it's important to remember that the landing of the Plymouth settlers was not the first contact the Wampanoag would have had with Europeans, previous contact had been made by fishermen and slave raiders who would have little or no reason to bring dogs with them (Salisbury, pg 51). When the Plymouth settlers first land on Cape Cod, we get this description
Whereupon a few of them tendered themselves to go by land and discover those nearest places [...] it was conceived there might be some danger in the attempt, yet seeing them resolute, they were permitted to go, being sixteen of them well armed under the conduct of Captain Standish, having such instructions given to them as was thought meet. They set forth the 15th of November; and when they had marched about the space of a mile by the seaside, they espied five or six persons with a dog coming toward them, who were savages (Bradford, pg 72-73).
As the English get more established in Wampanoag country it becomes more clear that the presence of dogs the region predated European contact. Men whose deaths predates the earliest contact are buried with their dogs, and strong traditions surrounding dog ownership tend to indicate a long and rich history associated with them. (Wisecup)
Bradford, William, and Harvey Wish. Of Plymouth Plantation. New York: Capricorn Books, 1962.
Wisecup, Kelly. Good news from new england by Edward Winslow: a scholarly edition. Place of publication not identified: Univ Of Massachusetts Pr, 2014.
Salisbury, Neal. Manitou and providence: Indians, Europeans, and the making of New England, 1500-1643. New York, NY: Oxford Univ. Press, 1984.
This previous answer by /u/reedstilt, gives a little background on pre-1492 dogs in the Americas, so hopefully can be a good starting point, but there is certainly room for more information here!
^^^Yes, ^^^/u/Elm11 ^^^linked ^^^this ^^^in ^^^the ^^^top-level ^^^warning, ^^^but ^^^I ^^^know ^^^a ^^^lot ^^^of ^^^people's ^^^eyes ^^^glaze ^^^over ^^^on ^^^that ^^^so ^^^they ^^^might ^^^have ^^^missed ^^^the ^^^link ^^^at ^^^the ^^^bottom.
Yes.
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/298/5598/1613
Dogs often served even ritualistic purposes in some Southeastern Native societies. Bartram notes that during the Historic period in Georgia, dogs were sometimes consumed ritualistically consumed; if I remember correctly, it was associated with conveying a sense of loyalty to your leader. I know that doesn't necessarily answer your question about pre-Contact, but it should show you how canines are woven into the Native cosmology.
For PreColumbian evidence, I can point you to this publication off of the top of my head.
Recovered from that midden were two dog skeletons. They had not simply died and were covered up as time went on; they were intentionally placed in a mound alongside human burials in. Having worked with those collections personally, I can tell you that there was evidence that the dogs were processed before being interred (their flesh was flayed from their skeleton prior to interment.) The same thing actually happened to the skeleton they were associated with, but the author of that article misinterpreted the cut marks on bone as evidence of cannibalism. The article below kind of gives some guidance on burial processing.
This link will take you to one of the artifacts recovered from the Mckeithen site; it's actually one of the coolest artifacts at the Florida Museum of Natural History (and it's on display right now). It is a 4 headed effigy pot, and one of the heads is a dog. Weeden Island pottery often consists of very high-value pots being interred with the dead, and effigy vessels are the norm. What's cool is that the White's Mound site and Mckeithen site were occupied during the same time; hundreds of miles apart and both are burying a dog in some sense. More info on the Mckeithen site can be found here; they go into more detail about the importance of effigy vessels in mortuary practices.
Here is an even better article about the usefulness of canines in Native America
http://www.jstor.org/stable/40914418?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Hi folks!
I'm afraid we've unfortunately had quite a lot of responses in this thread that have either not met the standards of /r/AskHistorians, have veered rapidly off-topic, or both. Please keep in mind that we have high expectations for responses here, and that as such, speculation or quick links to other sites aren't sufficient.
While nobody likes opening up a thread with lots of comments to find it empty, that's unfortunately the reality of what happens when people don't read our rules before posting! Inevitably, most of the removed responses end up being people asking or complaining about all the removed responses, so you're really not missing much. In the meantime, go read a book, make some coffee, save this thread, and check it out in a few hours time. :)
Thanks for your understanding!
In the meantime, you may be interested in this post from /u/reedstilt, who has discussed this topic in the past.
