James Willard Schultz 
The Quest of the Fish-Dog Skin 

‘Schultz takes his readers with him on an interesting journey in ‘The Quest of the Fish Dog Skin, ‘ when his heroes of the plains tribe of the Blackfeet set forth and journey to the far water across the mountains seeking the ‘fish dog’…Indian characteristics and custom with which the author is very well acquainted are carefully depicted, giving the book value as a historical chronicle of a phase of North American life that now only lives in legend.’ -Chicago Tribune, December 13, 1913

J. W. Schultz (1859-1947) was an author, explorer, and historian known for his historical writings of the Blackfoot Indians in the late 1800s, when he lived among them as a fur trader. In 1907, Schultz published My Life as an Indian, the first of many future writings about the Blackfeet that he would produce over the next thirty years. Schultz lived in Browning, Montana.

Originally published in 1913, ‘The Quest of the Fish-Dog Skin’ is by a Rocky Mountain veteran, J. W. Shultz, and is ‘real stuff, ‘ vivid and exciting, with the value that comes from firsthand knowledge.

Spirited account of experiences of a white boy and two Indians in their search for a sealskin on a perilous journey across the Rockies to the mouth of the Columbia river through the territory of hostile Indians. Author, who has lived among the Blackfeet, writes accurately of Indian character and customs. This book as a sequel to ‘With the Indians in the Rockies, ‘ though an independent story.

‘The Quest of the Fish-Dog Skin’ is a story of the adventures of two Indian boys or, rather, of an Indian boy and a white boy, Indian by adoption. These two set forth from the lodges of the Blackfeet, in company with an older Indian who acts as their guide, philosopher, and friend, on a far quest to the salt water to find the medicine-animal that is called ‘fish-dog’ because it lives only in the water, swimming like a fish, yet has the face of a dog and barks like a dog. One of the boys, being of white parentage, knew from books in the little library at home that this strange animal, which we recognize at once as some sort of a seal, frequented the waters of the Pacific Ocean and adjacent rivers.

This boy was, in fact, J. W. Schultz, whose first book, ‘My Life as an Indian, ‘ was published over 100 years ago. As a boy and young man he lived with the Indians on the upper Missouri in the days before the white man had penetrated the far West, and his writings about the Indians are based upon an intimate knowledge of their native life.