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Where some ideas are stranger than others...

TURTLE ISLAND at the Moonspeaker

The Moonspeaker:
Where Some Ideas Are Stranger Than Others...

"Those Were the Dog Days..."

Most of us at one time or another have heard the expression "the dog days of summer." If you try looking up the phrase on the internet, you'll be reminded that the dog days are particularly hot and muggy. You might even find a very common derivation of the term, from the rising and setting of the bright star sirius in the constellation canis major (big dog) with the Sun during the summer. In ancient egypt, the first "dog day" coincided with the beginning of the nile inundation. At root the expression is firmly rooted in the northern hemisphere, specifically its temperate zones in northern africa and europe. But when you hear plains First Nations people talking about the dog days, chances are good that they aren't talking about trying summer weather or an event from someone else's agricultural calendar.

Brule Lakota man with a dog travois, from Paul Dyck's ethnography that includes late 19th century illustrating photos like this one, 'Brule: The Sioux People of the Rosebud.' Brule Lakota man with a dog travois, from Paul Dyck's ethnography that includes late 19th century illustrating photos like this one, 'Brule: The Sioux People of the Rosebud.'
Brule Lakota man with a dog travois, photo by John A. Anderson, 1881. Source websites for this photograph are native-languages.org and Tanis C. Thorne's archive of Anderson's photos.

The preeminent image of "The Indian" is based on a surreal combination of the later horse-riding cultures of the plains, especially Lakota, with a number of costume elements from the traditional garb of western african nations, like the headband with a feather or two stuck in it. In fact, that infamous head band may not even be african, but an invention of men making spaghetti westerns. Yet mainstream histories still insist that the horse riding version of plains Indigenous cultures in north and south america wasn't invented until horses were brought back to the americas by europeans. Never mind that this really doesn't make any sense, especially in light of powerful research completed by Yvette Running Horse Collins, enforcing a major rewrite of this article and its cousin, The (Re)introduction of the Horse? Originally I wrote that horses never made it to the north american plains until the 1700s, naively basing that on the mainstream story. But, the truth is, it is europeans who did not make it to the north american plains until the early 1700s, barely three centuries ago. They travelled along the environmental paths of the fur trade, which tended to keep them in the parklands to the north and south. So they saw a great deal at first of peoples who for a variety of practical reasons like food availability, used dogs as their pre-eminent pack animal. Horses can't eat the fish that formed and often still forms a staple of the diet of northern working dogs. For peoples who lived in further south, they could pursue a strategy that took advantage of the availability of hay and land suitable for growing corn, beans, squash, and other Indigenous domesticates. Furthermore, they could send parties onto the plains to hunt bison.

In the subarctic and all the way south to areas like the north saskatchewan valley, most people walked, and the dogs pulled travois, A-shaped frames with netting or cloth stretched between the sides to carry goods. They were also sometimes used to carry people. These dogs were quite large, ideally larger than Inuit sled dogs because one dog would drag one travois at a time. Some pictures showing plains people travelling with their dogs show the animals happily trailing after them or maybe walking a little ahead. It wasn't quite so easy, as you might expect from personal experience with a pet, or as Elder Mary Madeline Marcel learned in the late 1930s when Athabasca Chipewyan people still went out as families to hunt, using travois to move their goods. Some of her family's dogs got away and went running for nearby water or after rabbits on the trip, travois still attached, resulting in quite a few soaked blankets and clothes. It was important to keep the burden dogs on leash and in hand. These dogs were ideally large, but not too large. The point was they were critical to transportation by dogsled during the winter and could still draw travois effectively in the irregular and sometimes extremely wet lands their people lived in and travelled through. Horses' hooves don't respond well to being constantly wet or cold, as would be a real risk for them in muskeg regions. On the other hand, dogs were used as pack animals on the plains too, as a complement to horses. It would also make sense for pack dogs to be the special responsibility of older children learning how to take part in packing and moving camp and gathering and moving food and goods.

A theme pursued for awhile by anthropologists has been to try to show how Indigenous modes of travel and cargo transport did not leave behind longterm signs on the land. If nothing else, this is a great opportunity to do experimental archaeology. Norman Henderson in particular has carried out a range of practical studies in order to understand how fast travois can travel whether drawn by dogs or horses, the impact on the land they might have, and so on. The lack of impact on the land caused by travois is actually a key point in their favour, but don't let this persuade you that no trails and paths could have been worn in and survived into the invasion period. These paths and trails were worn in in many places by peoples' feet, and across the plains by Métis Red River carts, and soon laid out the lines of the major highways across the americas. What made the difference was that Indigenous people developed habits discouraging the creation of deep ruts, those infamous dangers of unpaved and paved european-style roads.

Photograph of a Kainai woman with her horse and travois, taken by A. Rafton Canning, 1910. Photograph of a Kainai woman with her horse and travois, taken by A. Rafton Canning, 1910.
Photograph of a Kainai woman with her horse and travois, taken by A. Rafton Canning, 1910. Source library and archives canada, identification number PA-029769.

The summer was a great time to hunt, but this meant it was also a time for hard work. Walking for one or more days was one challenge. The next was stalking and killing game, which involved women and men alike as hunters. There were also berries and important plants to be gathered for medicines and dried supplies, and pemmican to make and bag. The bags were often being made from the skins of the animals just killed, whose bones, horns, and sinews were applied to yet other uses.

The summer was also a great time for gatherings and ceremonies like the Sun Dance. But there were various meetings and chances to dance, feast, and sing throughout the year, since each community travelled along established and well-used trails with stops at common gathering places. People simply had a good time at these events, relaxing from work, visiting with family members they hadn't seen for awhile. Different communities and larger Nations might renew their alliances or make new ones, and trade goods were moved back and forth. As yet, the effects of european goods and the presence of european people was still minimal, although smallpox had already struck. A widescale epidemic wouldn't occur until later, when the plains peoples would no longer be able to disperse widely for parts of the year. Times of dispersal could be a mixed blessing in the early days, when on one hand groups infected with smallpox might be effectively isolated and therefore unable to spread the disease. But at the next gathering, it was possible that no one would survive to tell the tale, and the group would simply be gone.

All this said, it is very important to note that actually, there is one major draught animal brought to the americas by europeans that was not present before, and it definitely made it to the northern plains in the 1700s. That draught animal is the ox. Domesticated asian cattle species were not present in the americas until europeans insisted on bringing them, and it must have been a strange thing for Indigenous people to encounter creatures at once so bison-like and yet comparatively docile. Oxen are much slower than horses, but are easier to feed and can pull more weight for longer periods. If that was all it took to cause a cultural efflorescence, then we should see evidence of it for this strange new cousin of the bison. The more aggressive, uncastrated bulls, oxen, cows, and calves should all feature in their different ways. They don't. Even later on, when Indigenous communities began pursuing work in ranching both on reserve and off, becoming the majority of those so commonly referred to as "cowboys," with rapidly developing rodeo competitions including bull riding and calf running, no "cattle culture." Lacking millennia and more long relationships with Indigenous peoples, there was nothing there to effloresce.

Copyright © C. Osborne 2024
Last Modified: Monday, January 01, 2024 01:26:36