allen: dogs of the american aborigines. 491 



Hare-Indian Dog. 

 Plate 1, fig. 2. 



i 1829. Canis lagopus Richardson, Fauna Boreali-Amer., 1, p. 78, pi. 5 (not 

 Canis lagopus Linne, 1758, q. e. Alopex). 

 1867. Canis domesticus, lagopus Fitzinger, Sitzb K. akad. wiss. Wien, 56, pt. 1, 



p. 407. 

 Canis faviiliar is orthotus lagopus Reichenhach, Regn. anim., pt. 1, p. 13. 



Characters. — A small, slender dog, with erect ears and bushy tail, 

 feet broad and well-haired. Color white with dark patches. 



Distribution. — Formerly found among the Hare Indians and other 

 tribes that frequented the borders of Great Bear Lake and the banks 

 of the Mackenzie River. 



Description. — This seems to have been a small dog, of the Techichi 

 type. Richardson, who gave a figure and description of it from first- 

 hand acquaintance, characterizes it as slightly larger than a fox but 

 smaller than a coyote, and apparently of rather slender proportions. 

 The head was .small with sharp muzzle, erect thickish ears, somewhat 

 oblique eyes; the tail bushy and sometimes carried curled forward 

 over the right hip, though this does not appear in Richardson's figure; 

 foot broad and well-haired. He describes an individual as having the 

 face, muzzle, belly, and legs white; a dark patch over the eye, and on 

 the back and sides, larger patches of dark blackish gray or lead color, 

 mixed with fawn and white. Ears white in front, the backs yellowish 

 gray or fawn; tail white beneath and at the tip. 



Notes. — It seems probable that this small breed was lost in the 

 early part of the last century. At all events, writers subsequent to 

 Richardson do not seem to have met with it, and those that mention 

 it, seem to have confused it with the Common Indian Dog. Thus 

 B. R. Ross (1861) and Macfarlane (1905, p. 700) clearly had in mind 

 a different animal; and a skull sent by the latter to the U. S. N. M. 

 as lagopus (from Fort Simpson, Mackenzie River) is a large dog, 

 evidently the Common or Larger Indian Dog. Hamilton Smitli 

 (1840, p. 131) takes his description in part from Richardson, and 

 mentions a pair of these dogs as then living in the Zoological Society's 

 Gardens at London. Audubon and Bachman likewise are indebted 

 to Richardson for their account, though their figure, by J. W. Audu- 

 bon, is said to be from a stuffed specimen, perhaps one of those previ - 



