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How did a dog travois work?

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Plains style — Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains Dancers at the Totah Festival Powwow performing the Northern Tradition dance, a dance inspired by Plains traditions, on September 1, 2007, in Farmington, New Mexico.

A travois was a simple, effective vehicle used by Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains to transport goods before the introduction of the horse.12

The device consisted of two long poles arranged in a V-shape. The narrow, closed end of the V was positioned near the animal, while the open ends of the poles trailed behind and dragged along the ground. A platform or net was secured between the two poles to hold the load, which allowed the animal to pull the weight rather than carrying it on its back.32

Before the arrival of horses, dogs were the primary draft animals used to pull the travois. Because of the physical limitations of using dogs and human labor for transport, travel was generally more restricted during this period. Even after horses became common, dogs continued to be used for mundane, short-distance tasks, such as hauling firewood or water, as horses were considered too valuable for such routine work.21