This is NOT a trick question.  The fact of the matter is, the answer depends on what point in time you’re talking about - before or after the indigenous people of Siberia were subjugated.  This first article is designed to provide historical background on the various peoples and what was happening to them as a result of the Cossack invasion. Descriptions of their dogs by scientists and travellers over 100 years before the first sled dogs were brought to Nome are interesting.  Obviously, there were no photographs taken in the late 1600’s - the best we have are drawings like the one above.

A present-day Kamchatka male from the Petropolovsk area. The coat is VERY dense, the eyes VERY oblique. Color is white and cream with dark saddle. The head is relative wide at the eyes and the ear set is wider than you would expect. The ear leather is VERY thick. This dog is about 22 inches tall or less and weighs about 45 to 50 pounds (he is heavier than he looks). The bone would be considered on the light side of medium.

No doubt there was a point in time when the Koryaks, the Iukagirs, the Chukchis, the Kamchadals, and other paleo-Siberians lived fairly isolated lives and perhaps their dogs were substantially - maybe even genetically - different.  Krasheninnikov and Stellar mention repeatedly that the different peoples were unaware of each other. Their lifestyles were quite different; totally dependent upon the terrain they inhabited - climates varied considerably; there were almost as many dialects as settlements.

The Kamchadals lived in the southern part of the Kamchatka Peninsula and were made up of at least two nations - a northern (along the Kamchatka River and along the rivers of the Bering Sea from the mouth of the Uka south to the Nalacheva) and a southern (coast of the Bering Sea from the Nalacheva River to Cape Lopatka; coast of the Sea of Okhotsk from Cape Lopatka north as far as the Chariuzova River.)  Stellar noted that “All the tools and household utensils which they use are different from those of other nations. . . . An example is the manner in which they use dogs to pull their sleds.”

The Koryaks (Koriaks) lived north and west of the Kamchadals - the nomadic Koryaks moved with their herds of reindeer; the settled Koryaks lived along the rivers. The different clans referred to themselves according to the river they lived on - the Uka Koriaks lived along the Uka River.  The two groups spoke very different languages.

The Chukchi, Lamuts, Tungus and Iukagirs (Yukagirs) lived along the Anadyr River and all through the region of Cape Chukotsk and west to the Kolyma River. (ed. note: At the time Krasheninnikov wrote his book, the Anadyr River served as the boundary between the Koriaks who were subject to Russia, and the Chukchi who were not.)

The Cossacks came to Siberia in the 1600’s from the west and east (Dezhnev shipwrecked at Anadyr in 1647) and by the early 1700’s the indigenous people were fighting back.  The major rebellion occurred in 1731, when the Cossacks “put everyone they encountered to the sword.”

Cossacks - a social, rather than ethnic class of men, included many nationalities, deserters, criminals, vagabonds and freebooters.  They were hired as mercenaries by the Stroganov family in the late 1500’¹s to help fight the Tatars and gain control of Siberia and the fur trade for Russia.

   Forts were built, tributes (iasaks) were assessed, and dogs were sold.  Krasheninnikov mentions that “one could not buy a sled with even poor dogs and the necessary equipment for less than ten rubles.”  Elsewhere he states that he had met one Kamchadal who spent sixty-two rubles for four dogs.

Krasheninnikov writes that the Kamchadals and Koriaks were trading the necessities of life by 1735:  “They supply the Koriaks with sables, fox skins, and long-haired white dog pelts . . .They exchange the things which they have in abundance for those which they need, such as dogs, boats . . .

   E.A.P. Crownhart-Vaughan translated and wrote notes to Explorations of Kamchatka, North Pacific Scimitar, by Stepan Petrovich Krasheninnikov, Report of a journey made to explore eastern Siberian in 1735-1741 by order of the Russian Imperial Government.  This work, reprinted by the Oregon Historical Society in 1972, is described as “monumental.”  The Society’s version is the only complete and unabridged English translation.  Below are the several descriptions of the dogs contained in this work by Krasheninnikov:  

Photograph taken at Khavarovsk prior to 1907. Khavarovsk is about 400 miles north of Vladivostok, near the Amur River - far, far southwest of Kamchatka. These dogs have docked tails. Are they Koryak or Kamchadal?

“The dogs of Kamchatka are not the least different from those of our peasants.  They are generally white, black, spotted black, or gray, like wolves; one sees fewer which are fawn-colored or other shades.  They are said to be very wiry and to live longer than other dogs, which can be attributed to their light diet, which consists only of fish.

“The Kamchadals and the Cossacks use dogs instead of horses for transportation, as has already been mentioned.  The dogs of Kamchatka are not in the least different from ours.  They are generally of medium size, of various colors, but most commonly they are white, black, and gray.  The dogs of Kamchatka that are used to pull sleds are castrated; generally four are used to pull one sled, two next to the sled and two ahead.  These four dogs are called a narta, just as we call several horses harnessed to one carriage, a team.

“Dogs also take the place of sheep in this country; their skins are used for every kind of garment, as has already been mentioned.  The people are very fond of the fur of the long-haired white dogs; they use it for borders on their cloaks and wraps, no matter what materials the garment is made of.

    “Four dogs can pull a load of about five puds, not counting the provisions for the driver and the dogs.  When the trail is open and packed down, even with this load they can make about thirty versts a day, or one hundred and fifty without a load, especially at the beginning of spring when the surface of the snow is covered with ice and is very hard, and when bone runners are put on the sleds.

 ed note:   Pud (pood) is a Russian weight equal to 36.113 pounds.  A Verst is two-thirds of a mile or 1.067 km.

   “In the autumn, the men are busy fishing and killing geese, swans, ducks, etc.  They harness their dogs to carts and prepare wood for making sleds and other things.  In winter the men hunt sable and fox; they make fishnets, and use their sleds to carry to their iurts wood and other supplies . . .”

   In Voyages and Travels in Various Parts of The World during the years 1803, 1804, 1805, 1806 and 1807 by G. H. Von Langsdorff, he states:

“The Kamschadale dogs have a long sharp snout, erect pointed ears, and a long tail with very thick hair.  In their form, figure, size, and whole external appearance, they resemble the wolf very strongly:  the European dogs which they most resemble are the shepherd’s dogs, as they are called, with pointed noses.  The hair of some is strait and short, of others long and soft; a few have the skin covered with a positive wool, which, if properly washed and prepared, may be spun like the wool of sheep.  The dogs which have this wool, or the long and fine hair, are called magnates, or hairy, and their skins are exceedingly sought after for making warm winter garments, or for trimming the clothes.  These kind of dogs are not very good for travelling; they can indeed scarcely be used in fresh fallen snow, or if the snow is very deep, since in either case it often hangs about the fine hair, and gets entangled with it, where it freezes, and impedes the animal’s running very essentially.  The tall-legged and thinly haired dogs are the best for drawing a light sledge.  Some few of the dogs bark like ours, but the greater part never bark, only howl.  Their colours vary exceedingly; they are black, white, grey, red, and almost all spotted in a great variety of ways.

“This soup should be given to them milkwarm, never hot.  Thus fed, they grow very strong and large, and those that eat heartily are always expected to turn out strong, useful dogs.  The largest boned animals, with a high and broad foot, long pointed and erect ears, a widely opening mouth, extremely peaked at the end, and thick made at the back of the head and breast, are always considered as the best built for work.
   

“A second operation, which the draught dogs must undergo, is to have their tails docked.  As in their natural state the tail is very long and the hair very thick, it would be a great incumbrance to them in running.  Like the English horses, therefore, there are few Kamschadale dogs to be seen that are not docked.  This operation is not performed till the dog is considered as having arrived at his full growth, and that is not till it is between two and three years old; it is supposed that performing it sooner would impede the animal’s growth.

 “Every dog has a name given him when he is young, which is commonly taken from his colour, or some peculiar property about him; for instance, short-ear, long-ear, hanging-ear, sharp-nose, red-spot, black-head, white-foot, short-tail, etc.

   “All over Kamschatka are regular post-stations, by which travellers may, in winter, be furnished with dogs as in Europe with horses.  The stations are in general about thirty or forty versts distance from each other, some are fifty, and a few even as far as seventy.  Every traveller has a sledge with six dogs for himself, and is attended by another, in which is a Kamschadale, who carries his luggage, and returns with both sledges to the station whence they were taken.

    “The common rate of going with post-dogs is about ten or twelve versts an hour, the best dogs will, however, go as far as fifteen or even twenty.  The dogs commonly go a trot, and with such an uniform steady pace, that, if the road be tolerably good, they clear almost regularly the same distance within the hour.  At Tigil, a place on the north-west coast of Kamschatka I met an officer who had been sent as a courier, and had travelled fifteen hundred versts in nine days and a half, consequently a hundred and fifty versts every twenty-four hours; he had changed dogs at every station.

Georg Wilhelm Steller was a young German adjunct professor of natural history at the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg and part of the 2nd Bering Expedition.  He died during the trip home, in 1746 and his notes were given to Krasheninnikov, to be included in his report.

The indigenous people had no knowledge of metal; they used bows and arrows and stone, flint or bone-tipped spears.  They were loosely organized, frequently able to understand the dialects only of contiguous tribes, and had no tribal federation - they were no match for the Russians.