We are most of us by now familiar with the type of the Eskimo dog--a large, wolf-like animal with prick ears and a bushy tail curled over its back.

In this carriage of the tail the Eskimo and most other true dogs differ from wolves, with whom the tail droops between the hind quarters.

But there is a small wild American wolf--the coyote--which carries its tail more upright, like that of the true dog; and the coyote seems indeed an intermediate form between the wolf and the original wild dog.

Most of the domestic dogs of the Amerindians[2] (as distinguished from those of the Eskimo) seem to have been derived from the coyote or small wolf of central North America.
[Footnote 2: "The dogs of the Northern Indians are of various sizes and colours, but all of them have a foxy or wolf-like appearance, sharp noses, bushy tails, and sharp ears standing erect." (Samuel Hearne).
Hearne also remarks that the northern Indians had a superstitious reverence and liking for the wolf.

They would frequently go to the mouth of the burrows where the female wolves lived with their young, take out the puppies and play with them, and even paint the faces of the young wolves with vermilion or red ochre.
When first observed by Europeans the unhappy Beothiks (of Newfoundland) had apparently no domestic dogs, only "tame wolves", whom they distinguished from the wild wolves by marking their ears.
They were made more angry by the European seamen attacking and killing the wolves than by anything else they did.