The famous gold rush at the end of the 19th century to the Klondike district in Alaska brought to light various hardened and talented characters. For example, the reputation of the American writer of adventure novels and animal stories Jack London (1876-1916) is inextricably linked to that period. The same applies to the fate of the Siberian Husky. If no gold had been found in Alaska, we probably would never have heard of this dog. But more on that later.
The term husky, or ‘hoarse’, applied to all sled dogs used by the Indians and the Eskimos.
The Siberian Husky breed, which is part of that group of sled dogs, originates from the far northeast of Asia, specifically from the Chukchi Peninsula. The Eskimo people living there, the Chukchi or Chukchee, were deprived of any contact with Western civilization. Little is known about this people and the way they bred dogs. What has been discovered is that the Chukchi included the dogs in the family circle and that they applied a real selection.
These Eskimos killed most of the females shortly after birth and kept the most robust specimens. The males were castrated, except for those chosen for breeding. These were, of course, the bravest males. Due to this practice and the extremely harsh climatic conditions and the isolation of the Eskimos, a very typified and pure dog population could emerge. The discovery of gold in Alaska would bring the Siberian Husky out of its isolation.
Gold Rush Brings Husky Out of Isolation
In July 1896, enormous gold nuggets were discovered at the confluence of two rivers in the Klondike district. The result was an unexpected influx of emigrants from all over America to Alaska.
The gold seekers quickly discovered that it was not so simple to survive in the cold, darkness, and silence of the far North. Since they initially had no contact with the Indians and Eskimos, and therefore did not know the native dogs, they had to seek help elsewhere for, for example, transporting their loads.
Everyone who seemed strong enough and apparently could withstand the climate was enlisted. This meant, among other things, that the sleds with tools, food, and iron stoves were pulled by all kinds of dogs. For that heavy work, Collies, shepherd dogs, and Setters were mainly used, but the wisest chose dogs of the Saint Bernard or Newfoundland type.
A few managed to get hold of native dogs, and they proved to be superior when it came to pulling sleds. However, it was not so easy to get these dogs, as the local population needed them too much themselves. Moreover, it turned out to be particularly difficult to control them. That the local sled dogs slowly but surely managed to secure a permanent place and were eventually generally recognized by the pioneers was probably thanks to the fur traders.
The Mushers
Long before the gold rush took place in Alaska, fur traders had settled there. They were also called ‘musher’, a term derived from the command ‘marche’ that the French-Canadian fur traders gave to their teams. For English speakers, that became ‘mush’ because of the sound.
In the time of these mushers, the robust dogs of the Mahlemuts, an Eskimo tribe in Alaska, spread. Because these dogs were able to pull the heaviest loads over the greatest distances, they quickly became famous.
They also came into the hands of the settlers, and they were inspired by the Malamutes (as the dogs were called) to cross them with Saint Bernards. From these crosses came the Blossom, a still famous type. Later, people aimed more for strength than speed, and therefore the Malamute was crossed with lighter Western dogs, such as Setters or shepherd dogs.
But back to the mushers. Following the Indians and Eskimos, they came up with the idea of comparing the performances of their teams with each other. To this end, they organized competitions between the villages, events on which heavy betting also took place. That these competitions quickly expanded is easy to explain.
According to an Alaskan saying, the far North knows four seasons: June, July, August, and winter. This is meant to indicate that all activities are concentrated in the three summer months and that everyone shuts themselves off from the outside world for the rest of the year. The then obvious boredom was perhaps the cradle of the success of the sled races.
Nome Kennel Club
It is not surprising that the popularity of the sled races led to the founding of the Nome Kennel Club in 1907. The initiators were the musher Allan Scott and the lawyer Albert Fink, who wanted to give the competitions a serious basis and make them a recurring event.
The name Nome refers to a hamlet on the coast of the Seward Peninsula, in the far northwest of Alaska. This remote corner owes its existence only to the discovery of gold nuggets on the beach. Initially, it was not even thought of giving this hamlet at the end of the world a name, and precisely because it had no name (no name), it was called Nome.
Nome became the center of the sled races. In 1908, the Nome Kennel Club organized the All Alaska Sweepstakes, a race over a length of 650 km. As a result, the search for the best dogs and the selection of the best-performing teams took on a new dimension, and the Siberian Husky also came into the picture.
The Siberian Husky
The Husky did live in Siberia, but in fact, that is not so far from Alaska. The Bering Strait, which separates Alaska from Siberia, is no more than 100 km wide. Moreover, Alaska had ties with the Asian continent, if only because a large Russian colony lived in Alaska. This had already settled there before 1867, the year in which Tsar Alexander II sold Alaska to the United States for seven million dollars.
When the sled races expanded further and further, a fur trader of Russian descent, William Goosak, was the first to come up with the idea of bringing a few Huskies from Siberia. His intention was to use these dogs in the All Alaska Sweepstakes. Initially, people were somewhat skeptical about these sled dogs because they were smaller than the others. However, it did not take long before they were taken seriously, as the team of Siberian Huskies finished third.
This led to a wealthy Scot bringing no less than 60 Huskies from the Chukchi along the Anadyr River. He entrusted a team to John Johnson, who made a name for himself in 1910 by convincingly breaking the race record. Johnson, who was also called ‘iron man’, repeated his performance in 1914.
Then it was Leonhard Seppala’s turn to win the race three years in a row. This Norwegian was without a doubt the greatest musher of all time, and with him, the most glorious period in the history of the Siberian Husky began. The stock of the breed was formed by the very valuable import of Huskies from Siberia. The last time dogs were imported during that period was in 1930 and was credited to Olaf Swenson.
The Siberian Husky Known in America
In 1925, a dramatic event ensured that the reputation of the Siberian Husky reached all of America. In January of that year, Nome fell victim to a diphtheria epidemic. The only doctor in the then only 1450-inhabitant town had no more than a few doses of diphtheria antitoxin, and they had been there for five years.
So urgent help from outside was needed. From Anchorage, the necessary serum was quickly sent via the new railway (from Anchorage to Fairbanks) to Nenana. However, Nenana was still more than 1000 km away from Nome. Due to the usual weather conditions at that time of year, the old airplanes available could not take off, so there was nothing left but transport by sled.
To get the precious medicine to its destination, 19 teams of Huskies took turns. They were met by Leonhard Seppala, who had left Nome, and he was in turn relieved by Gunnar Kasson. Eventually, the leader of his team, the dog Balto, managed to reach Nome, and that in the middle of a snowstorm, in freezing cold, and in almost complete darkness. This ‘race against death’ lasted a total of 127 hours, so about five and a half days.
The news of the heroic deed soon became known throughout America. A statue was even erected for Balto in Central Park in New York. The admiration and interest in Siberian Huskies were so great that Seppala went on a tour of the United States with his dogs.
Part of the American population of the breed came from the dogs he parted with during that tour. The Siberian Husky was recognized as a breed by the American Kennel Club in 1930.
That not only the sled dogs but also the sled sport gained popularity is evident from the fact that sled races were allowed as a demonstration sport at the 1932 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid.
The Siberian Husky Club of America, founded in 1938, established the first official standard, although a first draft had already appeared in 1932.
In 1939, the Canadian Kennel Club also admitted the breed. Everything went smoothly, except in Alaska itself. Life in Alaska began to change from the 1920s. The era of the small gold seekers was almost over and was followed by the industrial era. This also had consequences for transportation. In addition to the train, people increasingly used airplanes. Today, one in 30 Alaskans has a pilot’s license, and one in 50 owns a private plane.
Furthermore, a first economic recession in 1923 drove the last adventurers to flee. That was a preview of the great world recession that hit Alaska particularly hard. Sled transport, therefore, decreased, and with it the use of sled dogs, although there were still exceptions here and there. For example, the famous Hudson Bay Company would still use sleds for mail delivery until 1963, while the Canadian police would continue to use the dogs until 1969. The Indians and Eskimos in Alaska, however, still use sleds and still hold competitions between the villages.
The « Fur Rendez-vous »
After a period of neglect of the sled sport, there was a revival in 1946 when the ‘Fur Rendez-vous’ of Anchorage was established. But there were clearly changes made in the sport.
It was no longer about the famous races from the heroic era, but rather about speed races over distances of a few dozen kilometers per day. As a result, the dogs also changed.
Indian mushers, such as the famous George Attla, still used Huskies, but others soon realized that they could get much faster dogs by crossing the Siberian dogs with hunting dogs and even with Greyhounds. Such crossings took place so often at one point that many ‘Alaskan Huskies’ could no longer be called northern dogs.
It took until the 1970s before people realized that the dogs became faster through the crossings, but that this came at the expense of their robustness and endurance. The Huskies of Alaska only became real polar dogs again when the Iditarod was introduced in 1973, a race over a distance of 1800 km that must be completed in 11 days (with one day of rest).
Of course, the Siberian Husky had meanwhile lost its homogeneity. It had actually become one of the Huskies descended from Indian, Eskimo, and Western dogs. However, the Siberian Husky has not completely disappeared from Alaska, as its blood still flows through the veins of many Alaskan Huskies. It is also still able to compete as a pure breed, as breeder and musher Earl Norris has proven.
The Husky in Europe
The advancing development of the sled sport and the associated selection of racing dogs have only recently manifested in Europe. The first impetus was given by enthusiasts who went to watch races in Alaska and the United States and then brought very well-performing Huskies to Europe.
However, the Siberian Husky was already seen in France during the First World War. At that time, it proved impossible to supply certain strategic positions in the Vosges with ammunition and food via horses, mules, or people. After all, they were under intense rifle fire. So the idea arose to use dogs for that purpose.
Among the approximately 400 dogs brought in from Nome and Canada for this purpose, there were about 100 Siberian Huskies. They were trained by the famous musher Scotty Allan. The rest of Europe only became acquainted with the breed in the 1950s, first in Switzerland and Norway, and later in the other Scandinavian countries, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
The Siberian Husky was recognized by the Fédération Cynologique Internationale in 1966. Since then, this dog has achieved enormous success, obviously because of its appearance, but certainly also because of its sporting qualities.
It is certain that the wolf-like appearance of the Siberian Husky has attracted attention. Its blue eyes naturally formed an attractive aspect.
Moreover, because a lot of attention was paid to the breed by the written press and the necessary film stars, more admirers of the Husky emerged every year. Everyone wanted to have such a special dog.
People quickly realized that the rather unusual appearance of the Husky matched its equally unusual character. And because pulling sleds turned out to be its specialty, people naturally also came up with the idea of holding competitions.
The Siberian Husky is often pitied because it has become a companion dog, but that is not always necessary. Many owners realize that this dog has a special character. They still use and train it as a sled dog and, in the absence of snow, put it in front of the cart instead of the sled.
Links
Do you want to know more about the Husky? Read our other articles at: Siberian Husky
Read reviews from Husky owners at this link.
