Multiple studies have demonstrated that European colonization of the Americas led to the death of nearly all North American dog mitochondrial lineages and replacement with European ones sometime between AD 1492 and the present day. Historical records indicate that colonists imported dogs from Europe to North America, where they became objects of interest and exchange as early as the seventeenth century. However, it is not clear whether the earliest archaeological dogs recovered from colonial contexts were of European, Indigenous, or mixed descent. To clarify the ancestry of dogs from the Jamestown Colony, Virginia, we sequenced ancient mitochondrial DNA from six archaeological dogs from the period 1609–1617. Our analysis shows that the Jamestown dogs have maternal lineages most closely associated with those of ancient Indigenous dogs of North America. Furthermore, these maternal lineages cluster with dogs from Late Woodland, Hopewell, and Virginia Algonquian archaeological sites. Our recovery of Indigenous dog lineages from a European colonial site suggests a complex social history of dogs at the interface of Indigenous and European populations during the early colonial period.

多项研究表明，从公元 1492 年至今，欧洲对美洲的殖民统治导致几乎所有北美狗的线粒体谱系死亡，并被欧洲线粒体谱系所取代。历史记录表明，殖民者早在十七世纪就将狗从欧洲进口到北美，在那里它们成为人们感兴趣和交换的对象。然而，目前尚不清楚从殖民背景中发现的最早的考古犬是欧洲人、土著人还是混合血统。为了澄清来自弗吉尼亚州詹姆斯敦殖民地的狗的血统，我们对 1609 年至 1617 年期间六只考古狗的古代线粒体 DNA 进行了测序。我们的分析表明，詹姆斯敦犬的母系血统与北美古代土著犬的血统关系最为密切。此外，这些母系血统与来自晚期伍德兰、霍普威尔和弗吉尼亚阿尔冈昆考古遗址的狗聚集在一起。我们从欧洲殖民遗址恢复的土著狗谱系表明，在早期殖民时期，土著和欧洲人口交界处的狗有复杂的社会历史。