Treasured amongst different First Nation’s neighborhoods, the Coast Salish woolly dog was more than your typical animal hound
If you had actually been roaming the Coast Salish areas of British Columbia some 4,000 years earlier, rambling thick forest and going to town longhouses, you would likely have actually found a variety of little, white, flocculent pooches.
Not simply 3 or 4, however packs of approximately 20, their white fluff set versus the growing green of the land like soft cumulus clouds versus a clear blue sky.
The Coast Salish woolly dog was an essential part of neighborhood living for the Indigenous groups that lived throughout the province, on Vancouver Island, in the locations around Puget Sound, and along the border of Washington State.
Similar to a modern Spitz, they were of little to medium build, with thick ivory hair, pointed ears and an enigma curled tail. Kept and reproduced for their glossy coats, their fluffy fleeces were sheared like the coats of sheep and spun with the hair of mountain goats to produce wool.
With it, Coast Salish females wove blankets and clothes that would end up being signs of status and wealth, products that were shown and talented on ritualistic events and gave through generations as treasured treasures.
Artifacts displayed in your area
Now, some 4,000 years later on, the Coast Salish woolly dog has actually disappeared and those blankets and bathrobes are all that stay, the last antiques of a cherished breed spread throughout museums all over the world.
This month, the Museum of North Vancouver opened an exhibit that is a requiem for the woolly dog, making up 2, unusual, ritualistic bathrobes weaved with its fur. One, from the collection of Indigenous activist Maisie Hurley, has actually remained in MONOVA’s archives for several years, while the other is on loan from Vancouver-based artist and fabric collector Terrence Loychuk.
Also on display screen are a variety of modern art work from different First Nations artists, who each pay tribute to the dog by diving into the significance it holds within their own neighborhoods.
Senaqwila Wyss, the Museum of North Vancouver’s cultural developer, says the woolly dogs termination does bit in the method of decreasing its existence within Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation) culture.
The pa7Pa7iḵn, actually equating to “fluffy haired dog” in the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh sníchim (Squamish language), is universal, ingrained within accounts, tales and legends that have actually been orally given through generations for countless years.
Traces of them can likewise be found in a minimal variety of paintings and photos, where they can be discovered snuggled on the floorings of the longhouses or sitting atop the knees of happy owners in monochromatic family pictures, their cotton ball bodies brilliant and white like spectral figures.
Their representation in art and photography validates the relationship oral tales inform of man and dog, says Wyss. An animal so extremely related to that it was fed an abundant diet plan of salmon, both raw and prepared, and kept separated on little islands to keep them from interbreeding with regional, hunting dogs.
“Yes they were a source of wool but they were so much more than that. They were great companions to us, they were members of the family,” she says, associating the Nation’s cherishment of the dogs to their character, not simply their look. The Coast Salish woolly dog was calm however lively, she says, and exceptionally faithful.
Embedded within Indigenous culture
Wyss estimates prominent Squamish Chief Louis Miranda, who when explained the dog’s worth by explaining how in emergency situation scenarios, a house fire or a factor a family would need to leave their home, a female would get her kid initially, and her woolly dog 2nd.
Eliot White-Hill, who will be showcasing his art and printwork as part of MONOVA’s exhibit, originates from the Snuneyumxw First Nation in Nanaimo. He says has actually been hearing stories about the Coast Salish woolly dog since he was a kid.
He explains one in specific that seems like dream fodder: A tale of a little island simply off the coast that resembled a dog sanctuary, cluttered with white, woolly editions of man’s buddy. Cameron Island equates to Solexwel in Snuneyumxw language, actually indicating ‘little wool dogs’, White-Hill says, and had actually been among the designated houses for the animals to keep them from blending with the more unfavorable types.
“Knowing that the people and my ancestors in Solexwel had access to wool dogs in that way speaks to the wealth that the village had, and how rich we were in that way. They had an entire island just for their dogs, and they had that access to the wool from them, which was a really significant economic resource,” he says, explaining how Coast Salish blankets woven from their fur had actually been “like currency” for First Nations neighborhoods.
“They were prized belongings, dogs that were passed down matrilineally that were just really, really highly regarded.”
Legends, misconceptions and tales which centre around the “cheeky” nature of the Coast Salish dogs were similarly as swarming, he says, their naughty and faithful nature making them prime prospects for any hero or heroine character.
A history unknown
And yet in different scholastic sources reference of the Coast Salish woolly dog is little, and on the unusual celebration the breed is discussed its representation is a far cry to the photo painted by the similarity Wyss and White-Hill.
History books and scholastic documents declare the Coast Salish individuals abandoned their woolly dogs following the establishment of trading posts and the intro of England’s Hudson Bay to B.C. in 1827. The arrival of the store, and in turn the arrival of sheep wool blankets that were quicker and simpler to make, urged Coast Salish females to quit raising their dogs and weaving their wool, ultimately enabling them to interbreed.
It’s pointed out as the factor for the population’s decrease in the 1800s and ultimate death by the early 1900s, however Wyss testifies that was not the case.
“To me, the stories I had heard growing up were completely different to what I would read online, which would say the Salish Indians gave up, they didn’t want to do weaving anymore and they thought it would be easier to buy a blanket than to weave,” she says.
“This research just did not resonate with me at all in terms of how important these dogs were to Coast Salish people. It was just so shocking that these narratives were out there, diminishing our whole relationship, and the significance of the blankets and the woolly dog itself.”
Instead, Wyss says the woolly dog’s decreasing population accompanied the federal government’s execution of Indian Agents, agents worked with to impose the Indian Act on reserves.
It wasn’t unprecedented for these representatives to shoot the dogs on website as a form of control, she says, and the decrease and termination of the breed had in fact been the direct outcome of manifest destiny, part of the larger Indigenous genocide.
Iain McKechnie, a zooarchaeologist with the Hakai Institute and the University of Victoria, says associating the breed’s termination to something as easy as the arrival of a Hudson Bay blanket collapses and condenses what is in fact a long, complex history.
“There is a lot of written documents and information out there, there is a lot to consider, but the voices of the people who experienced the trauma of the 20th century, of the 19th century for that matter, who experienced this humongous rupture in the world, they are the ones we should be listening to,” he says.
That such flight of fancies are prevalent isn’t unexpected to McKechnie, provided he had actually been among the couple of to persuade scholastic circles of the dog’s presence and frequency in the very first location.
It was McKechnie who, in 2019, led a research study analyzing countless mammalian dog bones gathered from throughout the Pacific Northwest. The bones had actually at first been tossed into the catch-all classification of “canid”, however upon closer examination McKechnie discovered that most of the bones had actually been from domestic dogs – not wolves or coyotes, as initially presumed.
Small dogs, numerous them, discovered throughout Coast Salish area. It was physical proof of a dog that some history books had actually virtually handed over to simple misconception.
Can we bring them back?
Since then McKechnie has actually been bought thoroughly investigating the Coast Salish woolly dog, and he is presently working along with Wyss on a task that analyzes its hereditary history.
He stays tight-lipped on the job’s specifics, however Wyss says checking out the dog’s genes might possibly help produce the valued canine’s return.
In recent years, she says, she has actually been working together with the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, presently home to the just recognized staying woolly dog fleece, to check out the possibilities around selective breeding.
“It is not possible to have an exact clone,” she says, “but if you did selective breeding you could look at all the certain traits of the dog, like the fluffiness of the fur, the size, the personality traits, and it could be possible that after ten years or so of selective breeding of different dog breeds we could be looking at a dog that closely resembles it.”
With types that still exist that are comparable in body and personality to the woolly dog, like the Pomeranian, the Siberian Husky or the American Eskimo, curating something that is as close in nature to a breed that when existed isn’t as improbable as it might appear.
“I think that it absolutely can happen and it should happen,” remarks White-Hill, who reveals it has actually constantly been his “personal dream” to see its return.
“Bringing back a genetically identical dog might not be possible, but at the core of the issue, for us as Coast Salish community, collectively and as a community, it is our right to say what the Coast Salish woolly dog is,” he says.
“If we choose to breed and do selective breeding to bring them back or create a similar breed, that is our right to say that this is the Salish wool dog.”
White-Hill imagines a future where the forests of Coast Salish area are when again cluttered with fluffy white clouds. Where cultural centres prevail, filled with females congregating to shoot the breeze over an afternoon of standard, dog-wool weaving, similar to they did some 4,000 years earlier.
Mina Kerr-Lazenby is the North Shore News’ Indigenous and civic affairs press reporter. This reporting beat is enabled by the Local Journalism Initiative.
