10/12/2026
Indigenous Peoples' Day (also known as Columbus Day)
A lot of us grew up learning a version of American history that started in 1492. But people and dogs were living, working, and building lives together on this continent for thousands of years before that, and most of us never heard those stories in school.
Here are a few things that most of us never learned:
• Dogs have been family here for at least 10,000 years. At the Koster site in Illinois, archaeologists found dogs that were intentionally buried about 10,000 years ago, some of the oldest dog burials known anywhere. Being laid to rest with care says these dogs mattered as more than tools.
• Before horses spread across the Plains, dogs did the hauling. Plains nations used trained dogs to pull travois, a frame of poles carrying tents and household goods, about 60 pounds per dog. In 1541, members of Coronado's expedition described the Querechos, an Apache group, traveling with "troops of dogs loaded with poles."
• Coast Salish peoples bred a dog for its wool. For at least 5,000 years, Coast Salish communities in what's now Washington and British Columbia raised small, white "woolly dogs." Women kept them apart on islands and in pens so the coat stayed true, sheared them, and wove their wool, often with mountain goat wool, into blankets and regalia. That's careful selective breeding, thousands of years before modern breed standards. The breed disappeared after colonization, when missionaries and colonial authorities targeted the dogs and the communities that kept them.
As trainers, this hits home. The partnership between people and dogs didn't start with modern training methods or kennel clubs. Indigenous nations across the Americas were breeding, training, and living alongside dogs as haulers, wool-makers, and family, each in their own way.
Today we're honoring that history, and the people who carry it forward. 💜
Want to learn more? Look up the Coast Salish Wool Weaving Center in Skokomish, Washington, and the Smithsonian's story of Mutton, a woolly dog whose pelt has been at the Smithsonian since 1859.
Images:
1. Two First Nations girls holding a Salish woolly dog, Chilliwack, B.C., about 1895–1897. Photographer: James O. Booen. Courtesy of the Chilliwack Museum and Archives, Booen fonds, P. Coll 120 No. 25.
2–3. Paul Kane, "A Woman Weaving a Blanket" (full painting and detail), Songhees/Saanich (Central Coast Salish), southeastern Vancouver Island, about 1849–1856. Royal Ontario Museum, 912.1.93. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
