Forget the Sheep, Pass the Dog
Photo by Cuveland/ullstein bild via Getty Images
Dogs have long had a place by people’s side, and hundreds of years ago in southern British Columbia, small-sized domestic dogs were particularly abundant although for a rather surprising reason: their fur. Elders from the Nuu-chah-nulth communities on Vancouver Island’s west coast and Coast Salish elders on the island’s east coast and the mainland have an oral history detailing these dogs which were small, white, fluffy, and loved. Women weavers would care for the dogs, who lived isolated on small islands to prevent interbreeding with hunting dogs. They were fed a special diet and a couple of times a year were sheered like sheep for their wool coats, out of which the women made blankets.
March 8, 2021
Exhibition Dates: March 9 – August 14
A coda to the proceeding Follow the Sun: The Holland and Orton Collections exhibition, Follow the River: Portraits of the Columbia Plateau will reframe the museum’s Worth D. Griffin Collection of Native portraiture alongside cultural materials from Plateau tribes including the Palus (Palouse) and Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) whose homelands the Washington State University Pullman campus is located upon.
In the summer of 1936, Washington State College (WSC) Fine Arts Department Chair Worth D. Griffin (with the support of WSC President E. O. Holland and the Board of Regents) began an ambitious series of oil on canvas portraits of “Indians of the Northwest tribes and other historic characters.” This commissioned project focused on prominent pioneers and tribal leaders from the Inland Northwest. It was recommended that Griffin take note of the mid-nineteenth century Pacific Railroad Survey Reports, particularly their illustrat
Exhibition Dates: March 9 – August 14 A coda to the proceeding Follow the Sun: The Holland and Orton Collections exhibition, Follow the River: Portraits of the Columbia Plateau will reframe the museum’s Worth D. Griffin Collection of Native portraiture alongside cultural materials from Plateau tribes including the Palus (Palouse) and Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) whose homelands the Washington State University Pullman campus is located upon. In the summer of 1936, Washington State College (WSC) Fine Arts Department Chair Worth D. Griffin (with the support of WSC President E. O. Holland and the Board of Regents) began an ambitious series of oil on canvas portraits of . » More .
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There was a time when the Indigenous women of the Pacific Northwest’s coastal regions paddled their canoes to small, rocky islands once a day or so to care for packs of small white-furred dogs. The dogs would greet them, yelping and pawing as they implored their keepers for food. The women, in turn, would pet the dogs and dispense a stew of fish and marine mammal bits not scraps, but quality food. Once the dogs (most of them perhaps females, probably in heat) had eaten their fill, the women might linger awhile to sing to them and brush their long white fur. The dogs and their fur were the women’s source of wealth, and the women kept watch to ensure that no village cur crept onto the islands to taint the breed.