INDIAN DOGS, SO CALLED. 217 
natives, is not by any means clear. ‘Traditions 
still exist amongst the Indians, near the mouth of 
the Columbia, of strangers having once been 
amongst them, long before they had seen Euro- 
peans ; and still more confirmatory of the story’s 
probability, words undoubtedly of Japanese 
origin are still used in the jargon spoken on the 
coast called Chinook. If this is true, then I 
can see nothing very extraordinary in dogs 
having been on board the ship or junk visiting 
the coast, that they became the property of the 
natives, and that the art of weaving was 
learned from those who brought the dogs. More 
than this, the first possessors of these white dogs 
were, as far as it is possible to trace it, Chinook 
Indians, a tribe once very numerous, and living 
near the entrance to the Columbia river; thence 
the dog reached Puget’s Sound, and eventually 
must have been carried to Nainimo across the 
Gulf of Georgia. Supposing it not to have been 
brought from Japan, the only other way it 
could have come must have been from the north, 
which is far from likely. That the dog was not 
indigenous, I am quite sure. 
An immense variety of dogs are at present 
called ‘Indian dogs,’ but nearly all of them, 
wherever the Indians have been in trading com- 
