Chapter 9: Distribution of the Ritual: Dog Feasting and the White Dog Sacrifice

Dogs, when available, were a favored food among many if not most North American natives (Delâge 2005). The members of the Lewis and Clark expedition came to enjoy and prefer dog meat. Reports of natives using dogs as pack animals and also eating them are known from the colonial period (Browne 1890, VIII: 515). In their superlative study of every aspect of the use of dogs by native peoples in the Northeastern Woodlands, Butler and Hadlock (1949) provide an unsurpassed review of the literature. The absence of any evidence for the sacrifice of dogs in New England is notable. Beauchamp's (1888: 203, nl) note referring to Cotton Mather's Magnalia, implying that a WDS is noted therein, is incorrect. Mather describes the native killing of dogs, supposedly as a sacrifice to the devil, but actually only to silence the dogs of the colonists to prevent them from warning of an attack (Mather 1855 (1702], I: 560, Butler and Hadlock 1949: 22-23, n67). Mather's observations in New England is remarkably similar to a 1642 account in the Jesuit Relations in which a dog was publicly offered to the Demon of then killed and eaten. As we can see in the foregoing compendium, Tooker's belief (1970: 84, 102) that human (prisoners) and dog sacrifices for the New Fire were related to war is in no way supported by any aspect of the evidenceConsumption of the meat of the dog, or dogs, sacrificed in the WDS is nowhere reported, except as part of the ritual during a transitional phase just after 1800 CE. Later reports of the WDS represent a specific and evolved ritual with a very limited distribution among tribes of the League of the Iroquois. The direct evidence suggests that, like so many customs among the Five Nations Iroquois, the custom of ritual sacrifice, as distinct from simple consumption of dog meat, was specific to only two tribes: the Seneca and Onondaga.Popular accounts commonly confuse the eating of dog with the WDS (Fig. 10). An illustration by William Thomas Smedley (1858-1920) that appears in a popular Canadian tourist book depicts a group of Native men gathered around the bodies of two dogs. The caption reads:59 The Feast of the Dog is celebrated once a year when the Indians meet to receive their treaty money. Conducted with the utmost gravity by the principal medicine man, a dog is slain, cut up, cooked and eaten. White dogs are preferred, but a dog of any other shade will answer the purpose(Grant 1882: 340)Smedley depicts a simple dog feast or meal. The common disjuncture between an illustration and its caption is evident in this figure. Two dogs are shown but only one is specified in the caption. The preference for a white dog suggests the writer was aware of the WDS, but that is irrelevant to this meal. The caption to this same illustration as it appears in a reprint of this volume (1975) is entirely different.What appear to be true dog sacrifices are seen in two photographs generated in 1920 by Frederick Wilkerson Waugh (1872-1924) during fieldwork among the Ojibway on the Whitefish River, Lac Seul, Ontario. Both are described as Midewiwin deposits in bush round trees, with dog sacrifice: Photo CD file numbers CD96-631 (PCD no. 5798-1631-0110-010 [& Oil]) 48871. The dog in each photograph appears to have been left on the ground to decay.Archaeological EvidenceThe documentary and historical evidence demonstrates that few of the Haudenosaunee, and none of their near neighbors, practiced the WDS. Consideration of the evidence for these rites from an archaeological perspective provides us with no single trait that might be discovered through excavation. Archaeological finds of dog burials, however, are common throughout North America (see Oberholtzer 2003; also Delâge 2005), but there is nothing to associate the remains of dogs recovered through archaeology with the WDS.Of some interest is what may be the few finds of dog burials in the Core Area of wampum use (Fig. …

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