History

Basenjis are contenders for the title of oldest AKC breed. Paleontologists tell us that the first domesticated dogs looked a lot like Basenjis. They were already well established when they were brought up the Nile from interior Africa as gifts for the pharaohs of ancient Egypt. Basenjis are depicted in ancient Egyptian artifacts, and traces of the breed can also be seen in ancient Babylonian and Mesopotamian art.

These once-mighty civilizations collapsed millennia ago, but the Basenji endured as a semi-wild dog living at the headwaters of both the Nile and Congo rivers. African tribesmen prized Basenjis as versatile hunters with keen eyesight, explosive speed, and a highly developed sense of smell. Basenjis are known expert vertical leapers, a skill developed to scout prey in African grasslands. (An African breed name translates as “the jumping-up-and-down dog.”) Father Jerome Merolla, a 17th-century Catholic missionary to the Congo, left behind this written description of the Basenjis he saw living a feral state: “These dogs, notwithstanding their wildness, do little or no damage to the inhabitants. They are red-haired, have small slender bodies and their tails turned upon their backs.”

Isolated in remote areas of the African continent for thousands of years, the unique Basenji went unaltered by Western fads and fancies. The breed that so impressed the pharaohs was pretty much the same as the breed that was introduced to the West in the late 1800s.

A breeding pair was brought to England by a returning explorer in 1895, but they died soon thereafter. Another pair was brought to England in 1937. They were exhibited as natural curiosities, and this previously unknown breed caused such a sensation with the dog-loving British public that police were called in for crowd control. But, again, tragedy struck: The female and a litter of puppies died, leaving only the male, named Bois.

Bois was acquired by a Boston breeder who had recently obtained a female named Congo. This resulted in the first Basenjis bred in America. More dogs were slowly added to the gene pool until, finally, the Basenji was established in the United States.