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Biggest Dog
From American Natural History, 1826-28 by Alexander Rider, German-American artist
(In U.S. c. 1808-1850)
 he Philadelphia physician and naturalist John D. Godman quoted the Lewis-Biddle description of the typical Indian dog of the northwest coast, and recounted Thomas Pennant's characterization of the "Eskimaux" dog. The only other canid that warranted Godman's attention was the Newfoundland, which, he asserted,
. . . is remarkable for its sagacity, size, strength and beauty, and in external characters differs almost entirely from the Eskimaux and Indian dog. The Newfoundland dog has a broader and more expressive visage, and a blunter nose than either of the dogs yet mentioned, the orbits of his eyes have more prominent superciliary ridges, the ears are broad, soft and pendulous, and the whole body is more robust, and covered with long, soft and glossy hair. On the tail the hair is still longer than on the body and forms a handsome brush, which appears to greater advantage when the animal is in motion, as it is then carried slightly curbed upwards at its extremity. The Newfoundland dog is very fond of the water, and swims with great ease. 1
Godman could not have known that Lewis took a dog along on the expedition, since Biddle did not mention it in his 1814 paraphrase of the journals. The so-called Eastern Journal, which covers the period from August 30 to December 12, 1803, and contains Lewis's earliest remarks about his canine companion, was not rediscovered until 1913. The signature at lower left, "Rider Del[ineavit]" — "Drawn by Rider" — is that of Alexander Rider, an otherwise undistinguished and seldom remembered German-American who created all of the illustrations for Godman's book. He also provided some of the artwork for Charles Lucien Bonaparte's supplement to Alexander Wilson's landmark American Ornithology in the mid-1800s. A portrait of Rider, drawn in about 1808, is among the works of the renowned French-American artist Charles Saint-Memin. |
Seaman's Voice  arking just for the noise of it is not natural to the Newfoundland. "The Newfoundland Dog in his native country, seldom barks," wrote an anonymous essayist in the Cabinet of Natural History, "and that, only when much provoked."2
Knight, the Newfoundland 
Courtesy of Danette Paige and Knight, Missoula, Montana. |
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Indeed, it is very difficult to tease a Newfoundland into barking for no apparent reason. Knight, five months of age when this photo was taken, would woof a few times when the doorbell rang, or when something unfamiliar entered his environment, but his master was present, so he was quickly at ease making friends with the stranger. "His utterance," the author continued in the Cabinet, "appears an unnatural exertion, producing a noise between a bark and a growl." That may have been true of the Newfoundlands within that author's acquaintance, but it doesn't sound so in this instance. In any case, even Knight's gruff, resonant, barrel-chested puppy-voice  would probably have sounded ominous compared with the feisty Indian cur's shrill racket, which Lewis likened to the barking of coyotes . Retriever  ewis's "very active strong and docile" canine companion also possessed another of the breed's much-vaunted attributes, a "partiality for water, in which he appears in his proper element, diving and keeping beneath the surface for a considerable time."3
 arge webbed paws on sturdy legs beneath muscular shoulders qualify Newfoundlands as not only willing but strong swimmers, equal to the challenges of fast rivers or heavy surf.
Courtesy of Danette Paige, and Knight. |
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On the day (5 July 1804) the expedition "came to for Dinner at a Beever house," Seaman, apparently unbidden, "went in & drove them out." It may have been the dog's very presence in the water that spooked the rodents, but it could be he actually dove down to one of the submerged entrances and stuck his head in to browbeat them into flight. Seaman surely earned his keep with his affinity for water. He swam into swarms of migrating gray squirrels crossing the Ohio river, picking off a few fat ones for his master's dinner. He chased and caught a pregnant pronghorn doe in "a fair race." He caught another "goat" swimming across the Missouri, "drowned it and brought it on shore." He retrieved wounded deer on several occasions. Waterfowl were enticing challenges: "My dog caught several [geese] today, as he frequently dose," Lewis remarked offhandedly. On another occasion Seaman's eagerness nearly caused him to bleed to death when a wounded beaver bit him on a leg and punctured the artery. The downside of the Newfoundland's primary talent is a tendency to be undiscriminating about which rescues are desirable. The painter Landseer illustrated that with his amusing "Friends" (1824), in which a dripping-wet all-black Newfie proffers his frowning mistress a child's toy sailboat he has just fetched from a nearby pond. Big Dog  erhaps another feature that impressed the Shoshones on that August day in 1805 was Seaman's size — compared with most Indian dogs. Although Lewis had occasionally mentioned Indian dogs on the way up the Missouri, they must have been rather ordinary-looking, for he took no pains to record any details. Later he penned a concise description of the typical Indian dog west of the Rockies: It was, wrote Lewis,
unusually small, about the size of an ordinary cur; he is usually parti-coloured, amongst which, the black, white, brown, and brindle are the colours most predominant; the head is long, the nose pointed, the eyes small, the ears erect and pointed like that of the wolf; the hair is short and smooth, excepting on the tail, where it is long and straight, like that of the ordinary cur-dog.4
An "ordinary cur" 
he cur dog, wrote the British naturalist Thomas Bewick,"is a trusty and useful servant to the farmer and grazier. . . . They are larger, stronger, and fiercer than the Shepherd's Dog; and their hair is smoother and shorter. They are mostly black and white colour. Their ears are half-pricked [i.e., the lower half is erect, the upper half flopped forward]; and many of them are whelped with short tails." Above all, Bewick emphasized, "their sagacity is uncommonly great."5 The cur was a domestic canid brought from across the Atlantic by early settlers as pets, intruder-alarms, and rodent exterminators, as well as for hunting small game such as rabbits, squirrels, and some game birds. Curs did not comprise a distinct race or species, but were often deliberately bred to enhance certain qualities as they emerged, such as an ability to herd cattle. This is the breed that for more than a century after the fact was associated with the expedition. In his 1814 paraphrase of the journals, Nicholas Biddle had quoted Lewis's passing remark of 14 April 1805 that a dog, presumably a stray from a recently abandoned Assiniboin camp, had joined them that morning. In 1904 Olin Wheeler, in his travelers' guide to The Trail of Lewis and Clark, reinforced the assumption that this was the expedition's mascot by saying the "Assiniboin dog" scared grizzlies away from the Corps' camp at White Bear Island. Not until 1913, when a rediscovered journal of Lewis's was published — the one he kept on the Ohio in the fall of 1803, — did anyone have an inkling that the company's one and only dog was Lewis's sagacious Newfoundland. |
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The zoological history of Indian dogs was still a murky subject among naturalists at the time, and the study of it was considered a matter of obvious importance. Benjamin Smith Barton, in an article on "Native Dogs of North America" concluded: "We are not yet prepared to give an exact genealogical history of the Indian Dog. We are compelled to mix conjecture with fact. The anatomical structure of the animal should be examined. But whatever may have been the origin of this breed of dogs, I am disposed to think, . . . that the savages found it in the woods, and that it has existed as a distinct species, or breed, for a very long period of time."6 Lewis left us no clues as to Seaman's physical features, but in the late 1820s John Godman compared a typical Newfoundland with Lewis's description of the Indian dog. The Newfoundland dog, he concluded, has a broader and more expressive visage, and a blunter nose, . . . the orbits of his eyes have more prominent superciliary ridges, the ears are broad, soft and pendulous, and the whole body is more robust, and covered with long, soft and glossy hair. On the tail the hair is still longer than on the body and forms a handsome brush, which appears to greater advantage when the animal is in motion, as it is then carried slightly curbed upwards at its extremity.7
From a human's perspective, those "prominent superciliary ridges," or eyebrows, undoubtedly lent the dog's countenance a more serious, intense — even thoughtful — expression than that of more ordinary dogs. An anonymous contributor to an early issue of the American Cabinet of Natural History gave some typical measurements of a Newfoundland, and indicated their significance: A full sized Newfoundland Dog, from the nose to the end of the tail, measures about six feet and a half, the length of the tail being about two feet; from one fore foot to the other over the shoulders, three feet four inches; round the head across the ears, two feet; round the upper part of the fore leg, ten inches; length of the head, fourteen inches. . . . This Dog is not remarkable for symmetry of proportions, and his motions are heavy; consequently, he is not distinguished for speed.8
Furthermore, the author asserted, specimens of the breed were to be found in various sizes, possibly a result of cross-breeding. The British traveler Edward Chappell, claimed that by 1818 "the . . . true breed has become scarce, and is rarely to be found, except upon the coast of Labrador."9 "The generality of the Dogs known under the name of Newfoundland, both in England and this country, are only half bred." Lewis left us no specific information from which we might deduce Seaman's size, but he did remark (6 November 1803) that he had paid $20 for him — half a month's salary for an Army captain — which suggests that the dog was a purebred. Lewis seemed to know dogs well enough. He noticed that the sea otter "when fully grown is as large as a common mastive [mastiff] dog."10 He likened badgers to "ternspit" dogs — long-bodied, short-legged canids, possibly basset hounds, that were often used to run in treadmills attached to roasting spits with pulleys. Unfortunately, he never compared Seaman with any other breed. William Guthrie, in 1815, quoted Patrick Gass regarding the Sioux Indians' use of dogs, which he had observed on 27 September 1804: They yoked a dog "to a kind of car, which they have to haul their baggage from one camp to another." Their dogs, Gass wrote, "are not large, much resemble a wolf, and will haul about 70 pounds each." Some authorities have maintained that the Newfoundland originated in Canada in the 1700s when large ships' dogs bred with wolves. Another theory was that the Newfoundland was "a mongrel, allied to the Esquimaux and Indian; but this opinion is evidently erroneous, as he differs from those varieties in the form of his head, and the general robustness of his figure." On the other hand, the Newfoundland was known to breed "with all the known varieties of the domestic dog, and also with the common wolf.”11 Seaman went missing at the mouth of the Yellowstone on 25 April 1805, and because of it Lewis must have spent a wakeful night. "My dog had been absent during the last night," Lewis recalled painfully, "and I was fearfull we had lost him altogether, however, much to my satisfaction he joined us at 8 Oclock this morning." Back down the river a ways they had seen wolves herding some bison. And after all. . . . --Joseph Mussulman, 10/05 1. John D. Godman (1794-1830), American Natural History; Part 1, Mastology, 3 vols. (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Carey, 1826-28), 1: 254. The discussion of the "Esqimaux" dog by Thomas Pennant (1726-1798) is in his Arctic Zoology, 2 vols., 1784 (Reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1974), 1:39-41. Further, Pennant wrote of the dogs of Newfoundland in general: "It is not certain that there is any distinct breed: most of them are curs, with a cross of the mastiff: some will, and others will not, take the water, absolutely refusing to go in. The country was found uninhabited, which makes it more probable that they were introduced by the Europeans." His conjecture remains arguably acceptable by some authorities. Pennant, 1:41. Desmond Morris, Dogs; the Ultimate Dictionary (North Pomfret, Vermont: Trafalgar Square Publishing, 2001), 670. 2. Cabinet of Natural History and Rural American Sports, 3 vols. (Philadelphia, 1830-33), 1 (1830): 54. 3. Ibid., 1: 54. 4. This is Biddle's paraphrase of Lewis's original entry for 16 February 1806, which is all anyone had to go on until Thwaites published the complete journals in 1904. Actually, Lewis himself wrote "usually," not "unusually." 5. Thomas Bewick (1753-1828) and Ralph Bellby (1743-1817), A General History of Quadrupeds (Newcastle on Tyne, 1790), 286. 6. [Barton] The Philadelphia Medical and Physical Journal (Philadelphia: J. Conrad & Co., 1804-1808), vol. I, part 2, p. 3. Quoted in William Guthrie, A New Geographical, Historical, and Commercial Grammar; and Present State of the Several Kingdoms of the World, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Johnson & Warner, 1815), 1: 294. 7. Godman, 1: 254. 8. Cabinet of Natural History, 1 (1830): 53. In the mid-18th-century mongrel denoted both a mixed-breed dog or specifically the offspring of a wolf and a dog. 9. Edward Chappell, Voyage of His Majesty's Ship Rosamond to Newfoundland and the Southern Coast of Labrador.... (London: J. Mawman, 1818), 141. 9. Godman, 1: 254. 10. William Guthrie, A New Geographical, Historical, and Commercial Grammar; and Present State of the Several Kingdoms of the World, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Johnson & Warner, 1815), 2: 294. The Newfoundland, "as a watch Dog...is far more intelligent, and more to be depended on than the mastiff." Cabinet of Natural History, 1 (1830): 54. 11. Cabinet of Natural History, 1 (1830): 53.
Funded in part by a grant from the NPS Challenge-Cost Share Program.
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