Who was Chinook?

Chinook 1924 (signed) Arthur T. Walden

Did you know that the official state dog of New Hampshire is a Chinook?  What is a Chinook? For the next few weeks I will be exploring the origins of the Chinook dogs in New Hampshire.  Why? Because I’m the proud auntie of a Chinook dog in Tamworth who is about to have her first litter of puppies.  The history of this breed is fascinating, and there are many family ties to the origins of these dogs, too.

Arthur Treadwell Walden of Wonalancet (a village of Tamworth), New Hampshire founded the breed of sled dogs known as Chinooks. They are considered one of the rarest breeds of AKC dogs.  Walden learned about sled dogs when he went to the Klondike during the 1896 Gold Rush.  He was well known as a breeder, and supplied sled dogs for Admiral Robert Peary’s expedition to the North Pole.  One of Peary’s sled dogs bred with a mixed breed mastiff and St. Bernard mutt and produced his lead sled dog, Chinook.

Chinook, Walden’s dog, became the father and grandfather of this breed of sled dogs.  All known dogs of this breed are descended from Chinook.  He was large, about 100 pounds, and could haul about 150 pound sleds. This new dog was extremely well built for sledding and pulling heavy loads of freight.  It was no surprise that Chinook and 16 of his descendants accompanied Walden and Admiral Richard Byrd to Antarctica in 1928.  Chinook was very popular in the press during the Antarctic expedition, and when he disappeared during the trip to the South Pole the newspapers were full of stories about this faithful and unique dog.

Walden and his dog, Chinook

When Walden returned to New Hampshire after the South Pole expedition, the state wanted to name a highway after him.  He convinced the legislature to name the road after Chinook.  Today Route 113A in Tamworth and Wonalancet is called “The Chinook Trail”.

Arthur Treadwell Walden died in 1947 of a heart attack following a fire at his house in Wonalancet.  After his death the Chinook breed almost went extinct.  By 1965 there were only 125 Chinooks alive, and the numbers went even lower in the following years. By 1981 there were only 28 Chinooks (and only eleven breedable dogs).  A group of Chinook breeders staged a comeback for this dog to save it from extinction.  In 2009 the Chinook became the state dog of New Hampshire, and by 2013 the Chinook joined the AKC as a working dog.  

Today there are about 400 purebred Chinooks registered with the AKC, so the breed is still considered rare.  This summer my puppy “nieces” and “nephews” will be some of the first Chinooks born in Tamworth in many, many years.

In the next few weeks on Thursday I will feature some of the stories and newspaper accounts of Chinook and his descendants here at my blog Nutfield Genealogy.

Genealogical Information:

Arthur Treadwell Walden was born on 10 May 1871 in Indianapolis, Indiana, the son of Reverend Treadwell Walden and Elizabeth Leighton.  He married Katherine Sleeper in 1902 at the farm in Wonalancet, New Hampshire.  He died on 26 March 1947 at the farmhouse after a fire.  He was found dead in the kitchen trying to rescue his wife and the house with buckets of water from the sink. They did not have children.  Katherine and Arthur are buried at the burial ground next to the Wonalancet Union Chapel in Tamworth near the former farmstead. 

Arthur was a descendant of Captain Thomas Walden (Waldin) (1681 – 1724) and Sarah Cotton of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.  Their son, another Captain Thomas Walden (about 1721 – 1768) married Anna Treadwell, the daughter of Jacob Treadwell and Sarah Cotton.  Jacob Treadwell (1699 – 1770) is my 7^th great uncle, born in Ipswich, Massachusetts.  I descend from Jacob's brother, Jabez Treadwell (1713 – 1780).  You can read more about Jabez Treadwell at these two links:  https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2014/03/tombstone-tuesday-jabez-treadwell-died.html  and https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2009/10/jabez-treadwells-will.html 

Katherine “Kate” Sleeper was Arthur’s cousin (by marriage) and wife.  She owned the 1300 acre farm in Wonalancet where they raised their sled dogs.  She was the daughter of Charles Frederick Sleeper and Zilpha Loring Thomas, and the granddaughter of Captain John Sleeper. Mount Katherine in the Sandwich Range was named for Kate Sleeper Walden.  There is also a Kate Sleeper Trail nearby. 

Charles Frederick Sleeper, born 27 December 1826 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, married Zilpha Loring Thomas on 24 October 1855 in Roxbury, Massachusetts.  Zilpha was a descendant of the John Alden and Priscilla Mullins family from the Mayflower.  The Sleepers originated in Hampton, New Hampshire and are the descendants of the immigrants Thomas Sleeper (1607 – 1696) and his wife Joanna.  I’m related to the family of Kate Sleeper through the Sleepers, Sanborns, Batchelders, and other early seacoast New Hampshire families.

For more information on the genealogy of Arthur Treadwell Walden, please see Janice Webster Brown’s article on him at her blog Cow Hampshire:  http://www.cowhampshireblog.com/2006/05/27/wonalancet-new-hampshire-chinook-breeder-dog-trainer-and-antarctica-dog-driver-arthur-treadwell-walden-1871-1947/  

For the truly curious:

Arthur Treadwell Walden wrote two books about his dogs, A Dog puncher on the Yukon, 1928, and also, Harness and Pack, 1935. 

A book by Norman Vaughan and Cecil B. Murphey, With Byrd at the Bottom of the World, 1990, has a lot of good information on Walden and his Chinook dogs. 

The American Kennel Club, Chinook webpage:   https://www.akc.org/dog-breeds/chinook/ 

Chinook Owners Association:  https://chinook.org/   

Wikipedia:    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinook_(dog)  

Chinook Club of America:   http://www.chinookclubofamerica.org/  

“A leisurely hike up Mount Katherine”, March 14, 2014, https://www.conwaydailysun.com/outdoors/a-leisurely-hike-up-mount-katherine/article_32b32540-b81d-57ac-b22e-5199861739b1.html  

And a previous blog post from 2014 about the Chinook dogs:

https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-new-hampshire-state-dog-chinook.html    

"Chinook's Legacy: From Mutt to the New Hampshire State dog" 

https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2020/06/chinooks-legacy-from-mutt-to-new.html  
 

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To cite/link to this blog post:  Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Who was Chinook?", Nutfield Genealogy, posted May 7, 2020, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2020/05/who-was-chinook.html: accessed [access date]).