450 bulletin: museum of comparative zoology. 



"lower two-thirds reddish brown; then a ring of white, and a black 

 tip." This pattern gives "a most curious speckled look" to the 

 bristling neck of an enraged dog. Coues (1873) was equally impressed 

 by the general resemblance of these dogs of the Plains Indians to 

 coyotes and considered the two animals essentially the same in struc- 

 tural points, though he thought if" unnecessary to compare the skulls." 

 Indeed, he accepted it as unquestionable that in every Indian com- 

 munity mongrel dogs are found, shading into coyotes in every degree. 

 Such crosses he says, are obtained by picketing female dogs over night 

 at proper times, thus allowing them to cross with coyotes. Morton 

 (1851) quoting a letter from Dr. Cooper, Fort Duncan, Texas, speaks 

 of ever}- ranch having a dog resembling a coyote, "and a bitch to 

 which no dog had had access, produced whelps, evidently a cross with 

 the Coyote^ Wortman, also (in Cope and Wortman, 1884, p. 8, foot- 

 note) after extended travel in the western United States corroborates 

 Coues — but from hearsay evidence, however. He found among the 

 Umatillas, Bannocks, Shoshones, Crows, Arrapahoes, and Sioux, 

 mongrel dogs, " which to one familiar with the color, physiognomy 

 and habits of the coyote, have every appearance of blood relationship," 

 if they are not " in many cases, this animal itself in a state of semi- 

 domestication." All such evidence, however, is unsatisfactory, and 

 rests on general resemblances in fonn, color, and characteristics that 

 may be common to both animals. A comparison of skulls and teeth 

 would perhaps reveal more significant tokens of the true relationship, 

 but hitherto nothing has been published as to the cranial characters 

 of such animals. Yet, in his much-quoted paper on the origin of the 

 American varieties of the dog, Packard (1885) appears to have been 

 influenced by Coues's belief, and agrees with him in considering these 

 dogs as merely tamed coyotes. In a journey through provincial 

 Mexico he was struck by the general resemblance of the native dogs 

 to these animals, and again, in 1877, on the upper Missouri took 

 special note of the dogs of the Crow Indians, describing them as of 

 wolf-like appearance, of the size and color of a coyote — a whitish 

 tawny — but less hairy and with less bushy tails. Lord (1866, 2, 

 p. 221) found a number of dogs with a little tribe of Indians at Sweltza, 

 a small lake west of the Cascades, near which the boundary of British 

 Colmnbia passes, " that were hardly in any degree altered from the 

 cayote" in exterior appearance. He speaks of their burrowing 

 deeply into the ground to bring forth their young, but this trait is 

 found in dogs as well as in coyotes. From these accounts it is clear 

 that the general appearance and coloration of this dog are strikingly 



