This is a very interesting video about dog breeds that were bred by the American Indians, and what happened to them. The video is worth a read, but the short version is that they're gone. Not just gone, but gone. You think the Chihuahua came from Latin America? Maybe, but its ancestral DNA comes from Europe. Same for all of the other supposedly native dog breeds. Only two dogs tested of hundreds had any measurable ancestry that could be linked with pre-Contact dog DNA.
It's as if the dogs raised by the American Indians were all but wiped out, and they bred replacements from European dogs.* The video author lays the blame of this extinction at the hands of disease and European prejudice. You know, as if Europeans were giving smallpox-infected dog beds to the Indians.
I think disease played a role, but the role of European prejudice is overstated. The author forgets that in the pre-industrial world, people worked or they died, and the same was true of dog breeds. Dogs were companions, yes, but they were also bred for work. When they could no longer do useful work, there was no point in keeping them around. Raising purebred dog breeds for the Hell of it is a rich person's game, and therefore simply not done in the pre-industrial era.
There used to be a dog breed called the turnspit dog, which was an ugly, short-legged work dog bred to walk on a treadmill that turned food over the fire. They went extinct around the dawn of the industrial revolution, and we only know of them from written sources and a few drawings.
So what of the extinct American Indian dog breeds? They had no more work to do. The Salish Wool Dog was carefully fed and secluded in caves and islands to produce a wooly fur that the natives could spin into blankets. Once the tribe had reliable access to goat wool and sheep wool from European traders, what was the point of keeping that breed alive?
Same goes for the sled dogs that the Plains Indians bred to haul loads. Horses could carry more and they didn't need to eat meat. Since horses were more efficient beasts of burden, the Plains Indians adopted them and quit breeding the sled dogs.
Anyway. Just an interesting video I thought I'd share.
*There is also CTVT, which is a venereal cancer that is transmitted by dogs. But it's also a dog itself. Its DNA is 100% pre-contact American Indian dog breed. What happened is, about seven thousand years ago a dog had a form of cancer similar to the Henrietta Lacks cell line, and this cancer happened to get transmitted to a mate. And it kept transmitting. This one ancient dog is alive today in the form of a sexually transmitted tumor that plagues dogs across the world.
See what happens when Slaneesh and Nurgle work together? Yeesh.