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Previous scientific studies have shown that North American dog lines were replaced by European ones between 1492 and the present. To better understand the timing of this replacement, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of Iowa sequenced mitochondrial DNA from archaeological dogs. Their results suggest a complex social history of dogs during the early colonial period.

Europeans and Native Americans valued their dogs as pets and used them for similar work and as symbols of identity. Consequently, the dogs reflected the tension between European and indigenous cultures – settlers referred to indigenous dogs as mongrels to reinforce the perception that indigenous peoples neither bred nor owned their dogs. Indigenous peoples viewed European dogs as a direct threat to their existence and took measures to restrict the use of European dogs.

“Previous studies had suggested that there were many indigenous dogs in the continental United States and that they were being wiped out,” said Ariane Thomas, who recently earned her doctorate in anthropology from the University of Iowa. “We wanted to understand what that meant: when did it happen, were they killed, was it due to competition with European dogs, or was it a disease?”

The researchers focused on the Jamestown colony in Virginia because of its abundance of dog bones and evidence of indigenous influence. Working with Jamestown Rediscovery, they identified and analyzed 181 dog bones belonging to at least 16 individual dogs. Of these, the team selected 22 bones that spanned multiple dates of early settlement at Jamestown between 1607 and 1619. They extracted the DNA in the Ancient DNA Laboratory at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology Core Facilities. The researchers then sequenced the data at the Roy J. Carver Biotechnology Center in Illinois to better understand the ancestry of these dogs.

“This project is a great example of the kind of team science we do at IGB, where people from very different fields come together to answer questions by using complementary skills,” said Alida de Flamingh, a postdoctoral fellow in the Malhi lab (CIS/GSP/IGOH/GNDP).

Based on body size estimates alone, the team found that most of the Jamestown dogs weighed between 10 and 17 kg, comparable to today’s beagles or schnauzers. In addition, many of the dog bones showed signs of human-caused damage, including burns and cuts.

“The cut marks and other slaughter marks we found on them show that some of these dogs were eaten. This suggests that when the colonists came here, they did not have enough food and had to rely on the native dogs in the area,” Thomas said.

In addition, DNA sequences showed that at least six of the dogs showed signs of indigenous North American ancestry. “Our results show that there were indigenous dogs in the area and they were not immediately eradicated when Europeans arrived,” Thomas said.

Although the identification of dogs with indigenous ancestry is not surprising, the results suggest that the colonists and indigenous tribes may have traded dogs and probably gave little thought to possible interbreeding. The researchers are interested in expanding their research to other sites and obtaining more high-quality DNA samples and dog body size reconstructions to find out if these dogs had entirely indigenous ancestry or if they were the product of mating with European dogs.

Reference: Thomas AE, Jr MEH, Stricker L, et al. The dogs of Tsenacomoco: Ancient DNA proves the presence of native dogs in the Jamestown Colony in the early 17th century. American Antiquity. 2024. doi: 10.1017/aaq.2024.25

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