The British founded Fort Jamestown in 1607. It was their first permanent settlement on North American soil, located on a peninsula on the banks of the James River, in the Chesapeake Bay (Virginia). The newly arrived settlers built it in just one month after a tough journey across the Atlantic on the ships Susan Constant, Goodspeed and Discovery.
Just three years later, after overcoming several skirmishes with the Native Americans of the Powhatan tribe, a virulent famine killed up to 200 people. Barely 60 inhabitants of a colony in which cases of cannibalism were widespread survived.
Added to the especially harsh winter was the usual violence in the midst of open warfare with neighboring tribes (who came to besiege Jamestown for six months), drought, poor harvests, and lack of supplies.
Researchers from the universities of Iowa and Illinois have analyzed the ancient remains discovered in Jamestown and have come to the conclusion that the British ate indigenous dogs during that period of scarcity at the beginning of the 17th century, as explained in an article published in the magazine American Antiquity. .
This discovery, archaeologists say, changes the understanding of how indigenous communities negotiated their relationship with rising colonial powers and suggests that early European settlers depended on local communities for their survival, especially during the initial settlement period.
The specialists analyzed ancient DNA from dogs buried at the fort between the years 1609 and 1617. At least six of these dogs showed “unequivocal evidence” of Native American ancestry and shared mitogenomic similarities with dogs from the Hopewell, Mississippian, and late forestry cultures. from eastern North America.
The six dogs were consumed by Jamestown residents, suggesting that there were “complex forces at play before, during and after the famine, which influenced the presence of these animals at the fort and led settlers to consume “dogs with indigenous ancestry.”
“This consumption suggests that Jamestown residents faced multiple periods of severe famine during the initial occupation of the site. Although eating dog meat in modern Western societies is considered taboo, there is a long history of this practice during periods of stress in England and other parts of Europe,” the study authors write.
Unlike the English, the Powhatan tribes – to which Pocahontas belonged – did not eat their hounds, although some historical sources written by the colonists themselves reveal that they sacrificed them in rituals.
Genetic analyzes also reveal insights into the social intertwining between colonizers and Native Americans. Dogs connected and created tension between European and indigenous cultures, reflecting the complicated and rapidly changing social landscapes that existed during this era.
Relations between the British and local peoples were complex, but not always in conflict. As reported by the Spanish ambassador Pedro de Zúñiga to the king of Spain, between 40 and 50 men from Jamestown had native wives in 1612.
The loss of indigenous dogs is a little explored aspect of colonial impacts in America. The timing and pace of replacement of these dogs also has implications for understanding the ecological and cultural changes in Native American ways of life with the arrival of European breeds.
“Dogs of predominantly European ancestry – mastiffs and greyhounds – suggest that the British and Powhatan groups prevented their hounds from interacting with each other to maintain specific behaviors or observable phenotypes important to that group,” explains Ariane E. Thomas, lead author of the study.
The English recorded that the local dogs were “like wolves that could not bark, but howl” and were used to hunt land birds such as turkeys. Colonists compared them to small breeds from England (such as the Scottish terrier or beagle) that chased rabbits, rats or foxes near their burrows.
Previous analyzes had already shown that European colonization caused the death and replacement of almost all mitochondrial lineages of North American dogs sometime between 1492 and the present. Historical records indicate that colonists imported dogs from Europe and that they became an object of trade since the 17th century.
