In my desperation to make this happen, I have discovered that the Beothuk Indians of Newfoundland did NOT keep dogs... kinda cuts into what I was thinking though, cuz I didn't want Newfoundland to be the source of the original European colonies.
I have a story in my head of how to make this happen, and furthermore, the widespread domestication of foxes in North America, but it won't have the kind of effects that I had wanted... oh well.
Uhhh... haha, maybe smaller livestock. Breeding cows, pigs, horses, and sheep is a process. It is faster than humans in terms of they don't take 12 years to reach sexual maturity, but it is by no means so fast that a number of variables cannot prevent the growth of a population of one of the three. Specifically, when you're dealing with native peoples who are hunter-gatherers, explaining the value of livestock might be a little difficult. A hunter-gatherer knows that there is plenty to eat all around, so they may not understand why eating all of your cows/sheep/horses is a problem when there's lots of fish in the sea and caribou running around the island.
Still, the domestication of the caribou was not my initial intent as the taming of moose has been so successful in recent years. I'd have to look at how useful they would be as draft animals. Does anyone have any sources for that?
I don't have a good definitive source for you. It's just a couple of references I've come across - the Animal Traction sourcebook, in passing mentions that Elk (Moose) make relatively poor draft animals. And there was a source on Moose domestication which suggests that Moose aren't as comparatively effective at pulling weights.
I have a private theory that migratory animals, or animals which are habituated to regularly travelling vast distances probably are better candidates for draft animals. Simply put, a migrator builds up long distance power - they're marathoners, capable of putting out a reasonable amount of effort over a long period of time. Migrators are also likely to be more tractable, continually on the move, they're constantly exposed to new and changing environments, which probably gives them a more stable temperament. And in associating heavily in relatively dense populations continually moving through new areas, they're more likely to be immunologically robust.
A Moose on the other hand, while being an extremely powerful animal, is not a long distance critter. It's territorial and moves through a stable territorial habitat, its feats of strength are focused for short intense bursts, outrunning predators, fighting off rivals, etc.
That said, there's enough scattered bits of evidence of Moose domestication, that I'd tend to call them a reversed or abandoned domesticate. What basically eliminated moose as domesticates was that they were browsers, and human agriculture was grazer or grain based.
I would not suggest you abandon your idea for a timeline, but dig much more deeply into the notion and theories of domestication.
For instance, are foxes domesticable as effective verminators? I think so. But for various reasons, cats got into the niche first, and when they did, they occupied it. No room for rival verminators.
But how does domestication occur? Humans are not terribly good at forcing it to happen, in large part I think because historically humans did not understand the phenomenon. I think that domestication is at least partially a mutualist process.
In a sense, animals domesticate themselves by learning to associate with and tolerate humans. The ones who find or fill a useful economic niche become what we call domesticates. Crows, Rats, Raccoons and urban foxes show a high degree of tolerance and habituation to humans, and are very good at exploiting human created food sources.
Unfortunately, no one has ever found a good use for Raccoons, as an example, so they never quite cross over into domesticate territory.
Foxes, in the absence of cats, could autodomesticate. The trick is to figure out a way to keep cats out of the picture. Perhaps the simplest and most subtle means might be a relatively common and innocuous North American rodent virus or parasite to which European cats have no immunity....
But beware of butterflies. You could end up with the virus imported back to Europe on ocean crossing rats. From there, a major cat die off in Europe, vermin populations exploding, granaries and food storage being wrecked, and disease causing rodents producing a new black plague...