Did you click on the link to the origin race? The St. John’s water dog?
Some good research on the history of the Newfoundland here. It’s not at all clear what the breed even looked like hundreds of years ago. It’s easy to see how some dogs brought from Europe lived alone in the wild for a time and when discovered by new settlers were believed to be indigenous or the descendants of dogs left by Viking explorers, but all the facts point at a European origin.
By “indigenous to the island” the article means that the breed originated there, not that it was there before Europeans brought dogs there post-1500.
I assume you mean this part:
Interesting. I will have to go and look at gasp paper books. I have a fair number of books on the Newfoundland dog (I researched the breed before getting one). I posted the Wiki link because most Newfoundland breed pages will say the same thing: that the dogs were descended from indigenous dogs. mea culpa
I will have to go back and check for the nuance that Colibri points out. Thank you.
It looks like Newfie’s are now considered to be of European origin, but they don’t know how the presumed European (Tibetan mastiff type) dog got there. Theories range from fishermen to Norse travelers to landbridge. It appears that each of these theories has been discredited by someone, so it’s not entirely clear. They also theorize that the mastiff type dogs may have inter-bred with native dogs to create the resulting breed. References to the breed dates back to the early 1600’s.
Sources: AKC website and Jo Ann Riley’s, “The Newfoundland”
Apologies for muddying the thread. My own ignorance was fought at least. 