Pelt of the woolly dog Mutton in the Smithsonian’s collection (IMAGE)
Caption
The 160-year-old pelt of the woolly dog Mutton in the Smithsonian’s collection.
Researchers from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History led a new analysis that sheds light on the ancestry and genetics of woolly dogs, a now extinct breed of dog that was a fixture of Indigenous Coast Salish communities in the Pacific Northwest for millennia. The study’s findings, published today, Dec. 14, in the journal Science, include interviews contributed by several Coast Salish co-authors, including Elders, Knowledge Keepers and Master Weavers, who provided crucial context about the role woolly dogs played in Coast Salish society.
By the mid-19th century, the once thriving Coast Salish dog wool-weaving tradition was in decline. In the late 1850s, naturalist and ethnographer George Gibbs cared for a woolly dog named Mutton. When Mutton died in 1859, Gibbs sent his pelt to the nascent Smithsonian Institution, where the fleece has resided ever since.
Mutton’s genetics could tell the researchers little about what caused these dogs to decline. Traditionally, scholars have speculated that the arrival of machine-made blankets to the region in the early 19th century made woolly dogs expendable. But insights from Coast Salish community members and experts revealed that it was improbable that such a central part of Coast Salish society could be replaced.
Woolly dogs were likely doomed by numerous factors impacting the Coast Salish tribal nations after European settlers arrived. Due to disease and colonial policies of cultural genocide, displacement and forced assimilation, it likely became increasingly difficult or forbidden for Coast Salish communities to maintain their woolly dogs.
Credit
Brittany M. Hance, Smithsonian
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