SIBHIST

The Siberian Husky was developed over a period of 3000 years by the Chukchi and related peoples of northeastern Siberia, the breed evolved to fill a distinct niche in the Chukchi life and culture. These dogs could travel in large teams of as many as twenty or more out over the ice to allow a single man to ice fish and return with his catch, sometimes covering as much a 100 miles in a single day, there small frames maximized endurance and low engery consuption.
These dogs became a intergal part of there chukchi lives and became a central part of both the enconomy and religous life of the Chukchi, only the richest members of the community had the best dogs, and they were rich precisely because of this.
Regilious ceremonies and iconography revolved around the dogs, two of which were reported to guard the gates of heaven, turning away any who had shown cruelty to a dog during there lives.
In the nineteenth century the Chukchi faced the Czarist troops sent on a mission to open the area to the fur trade and on an all out genocide of the Chukchii people in the process, but again the dogs saved them able to outrun the Russian reindeer cavalry with their sleds.
The Chukchi finally gained independence from the Russians through a treaty the only tribe ever to do so after defeating them in battle.
In the twentieth century the Soviets opened free trade with Chukchi, but eventually the introduction of small pox into the tribe decimated them. With a diabolical understanding of the place of the dogs in the Chukchi culture, the soviets executed the village leaders who were of course the dog breeders and replaced it with their own breeding program designed to obliterate the native gene pool with a much larger freighting dog designed to accommidate the fur trade in the region.
Fortunately the reputation of the little Chukchi dog had already spread throughout the world long before the Soviets intervention, by the turn of the twentieth century polar exploration and adventurers had captured public imagination worldwide.
Adventurers came to the yearly Markova Fair on the Siberian pennisula where tribes came to trade these included the Chukchi and other dog breeding tribes such as the Koryak ( all of whom probably had some part in the pool of animals the eventually became the Siberian Husky).
In 1908 Russian fur trader Goosak acquired a team here and in 1909 took them across the Bering Strait to race in the All Alaska Sweepstakes a 408 mile race first ran in 1908. This race was across every conceivable terrain including a valley almost always engulfed by blizzards.
About half the weight of the local sled dogs the siberian entry was given little chance on on competing, but the team finished third and astonished everyone.
This then inspired a scot named Fox Maule Ramsey to acquire some seventy dogs from across the Bering Strait from them he split them into three teams winning first, second and fourth place finishes in the 1910 race.
The driver was John " Iron Man" Johnson he then won again in 1914.
Leonhard Seppala was born in Skjervoy, Norway and came to Alaska in 1900 he worked at various jobs in the minig camps until in 1914 his employer Jafet Lindeburg acquired what was left of the first Siberian imports and their offspring a proposed gift for Captain Roald Amundsen who was planning a dash to the North Pole, Seppala was entrusted with the care and training of the dogs, World War I broke out and Seppala ended up in possesion of the dogs.
Seppala entered the All Alaskan Sweepstakes in 1914 but did not win, but the next year he trained hard and won the 1915,1916 and 1917 sweepstakes.
Seppala and his dogs became legend in Alaska hauling freight and supplies setting new records mid - distance races.
It wasn't until 1925 however that Seppala and his Siberians came to national prominence with the famous " Serum Run" that save Nome from a diphtheria epidemic. Seppala and his famous lead dog Togo covered 340 miles to save the community of Nome unfortunately Togo became permanently lame from this run and sadly ironic that one of Seppala's scrub dogs Balto who only travelled the alst 50miles should have gotten the most credit - the newspaper writers simply liked his name better.
A statue was erected in New York City's Central Park dedicated to the sled dogs that ran the Serum Run.
The plaque attached to the statue read: