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Travois Transport and Field Processing: the Role of Dogs in Intermountain and Plains Food Transport

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Abstract

Domesticated animals have been widely used for transport labor in many societies throughout the Holocene. Domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) used in transporting goods with packs or simple drag-sleds called travois feature prominently in ethnographic and historic accounts of Native American communities in the Intermountain West and Great Plains. Dogs were used to transport shelter and household belongings, firewood, trade goods, and bison meat by Intermountain and Plains foragers. Forager mobility and investment in technology are strongly correlated with environmental unpredictability. The Field Processing Model reveals that travois transport was tenable for food only when processing costs were relatively low and many trips were necessary. These data indicate that dogs were not adapted for use as draft animals in the daily acquisition of food, but rather to facilitate the transport of shelter, equipment, and food reserves that could be used to offset the risk of resource shortfall.

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Notes

  1. Unfortunately, these vertebral spinous process deformations widely cited as evidence for dogs’ use in transport and used in estimating the age of travois transport are currently largely discredited (Latham 2016; Lawler et al. 2016).

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Acknowledgements

I am especially grateful to my mentors and colleagues for their support and comments on various drafts of this manuscript. Thanks are also due to Drs. David Byers and Steve Simms for encouraging me to explore my interests, and Sandra Koch, Britt MacNamara, and Joanne Hughes for their thoughtful edits.

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  1. The Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, 85721, USA

    Martin Hughes Welker

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Correspondence to Martin Hughes Welker.

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Welker, M.H. Travois Transport and Field Processing: the Role of Dogs in Intermountain and Plains Food Transport. Hum Ecol 49, 721–733 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-020-00162-4

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