South American dogs in Chile
Chile can be grouped into three large cultural areas: the North, with
Incan influence, the Central-South zone, dominated by the Mapuche
peoples, and the Southern region, associated with coastal
hunter-gatherer cultures, which includes Patagonia. We discuss South American dogs in Chile in the
sequence of these three cultural areas from north to south. However, the
evidence for prehispanic dogs in each zone is relatively weak.
In Arica (northern Chile), eight mummified dogs, dated to circa 1450-
500 ya, were found by Allison et al. (1982), belonging to the San
Miguel, Inca, Cabuza, Alto Ramirez and Maitas Chiribaya phases and
periods. These are terrier-like dogs 46-52 cm high, apparently similar
in form to the Moche hunting dogs discussed by Vásquez Sánchez et al.
(2009).
It is commonly held in Chile, as well as recorded by historians (Vial
2010) and the ethnographer Ricardo Latcham (1822) that the contemporary
Mapuche indigenous people of the center-south of Chile previously had
two words for one or more kinds of dogs that they had: thegua or tregua and munutru . Mapuche dogs may have been obtained
from Argentinian Patagonia pre-Columbian populations (Prates et al.
2010), or from the Inca (Uribe & Sánchez 2016). According to Latcham
(1822, p. 62), munutru refers to a dog with long curly hair on
its face, or any “small ugly dog”, similar to what is today called a
“quiltro ”, usually translated as “mutt”, (ibid p. 62), and is
reported by contemporary Mapuche people to mean anything with an “ugly
face” (Loncon, E. pers. comm. 2019), while tregua simply means
“dog.” Some contemporary dogs in areas of central Chile, where
indigenous populations persisted for several centuries after
colonization, are “small ugly dogs”, with bulbous foreheads and eyes,
and short floppy ears, but no curly hair (pers. obs. MR-B). Perhaps
these resemble the munutru or another indigenous dog morphotype.
However, no specimens of Mapuche dogs are known to us either in the present day nor the archeological record.
The case of Patagonia in the extreme south of Chile also does not
have good biological evidence about dogs. Ethnohistorical records of the
19th and 20th Century (Coiazzi 1914)
mention the presence of dogs in societies that had little or no contact
with the Spanish or other colonists. Coiazzi documents the coexistence
of C. familiaris with hunter-gatherer societies of southern
Patagonia, in particular the Selk’nam (also known as Ona), who used dogs
to hunt guanacos among other animals. Martin Gusinde, famous Selk’nam
etnographer, also recognized the presence of, at least in some form,
domesticated dogs in Selk’nam encampments. These dogs, described as
loud, aggressive, and with a pointed snout (Gusinde 1951), were very
appreciated by the natives for their loyalty and protection, and as
Gusinde described “In each house there are at least four of these
acrimonious and irreconcilable dogs”. Gusinde also described Selk’nam
using dogs to hunt guanacos, even apparently picking up and following a
scent in packs, just like hunting scent hounds in the UK and other areas
with a tradition in hunting (Gusinde, 1951). The initial Spanish
colonization of Chile only extended to Chiloé, which
does not rule out a European origin of Selk’nam dogs via long-distance
trade, but also makes it plausible that these dogs had a previous origin
in pre-Columbian trade networks or migrations. Coiazzi (1914) suggests
that the Selk’nam dogs had displaced the populations of a native canid
similar to a fox, though whether he means by competition (cf. Vanak &
Gompper 2009) or as a favoured domesticate is unclear. Carlos R.
Gallardo (1910) also wrote about the relationship between Selk’nam
people and domesticated, supposedly native, dogs, described as
“Canis (Pseudalopex) lycoides”, also described as an important
part of guanaco hunting. These domesticated dogs are described
thouroughly in his book “The Onas”:
“The fuegian dog is a not very big, wild looking animal. Some of them
retain such a striking similarity to their ancestors, one can easily
mistake them for a big fox, but (…) There are some of yellowish
grey colour, of clear and almost white background, and with dark tints
from black to ashen yellow. They have a broad forehead, straight,
pointy, and fairly large ears, the eyes are somewhat oblique, the snout
is long and even pointy, the neck is short, and the legs are notable for
having very developed membranes between the fingers. The tail is long,
covered in also long hair that coats the rest of the body as well.”
Some of this description can be seen in Figure 1, from the same book (Gallardo 1910). In this context and with such
characteristics, the possibility of a native canid being domesticated in
Tierra del Fuego by Selk’nam is certainly more plausible. In addition to
this, the study by Petrigh and Fugassa (2013), in which they genetically
identified a taxidermized canid belonging to native people of the area
showed that this specimen was closely related or identical to L.
culpaeus.