An Arctic Reindeer Industry: Growth and Decline

Abstract

R EINDEER were introduced into Alaska at a crucial period: the beginning of the end of commercial whaling in the Alaskan Arctic. By 1892, when the first Siberian reindeer were transported across Bering Strait, the Eskimo along the coast of Alaska from Bering Strait north to Barrow had had some fifty years of contact with whalers and traders. But perhaps more to the point, the whalers and traders had had some fifty years to affect, directly and indirectly, the game resources basic to native subsistence. Whale populations were seriously depleted-an old story re-enacted by an industry that had already depleted most of the economic whale resources of most of -the world's oceans, at least to the extent that the technology of the time permitted. The walrus, of value for its oil and ivory, proved easy prey, and its numbers, too, were severely diminished. The introduction and rapid spread of the rifle among the natives of coastal and inland Alaska led to depletion of land game, especially the caribou. Added to this, concentration of native populations at newly established trading and whaling stations along the coast resulted in greater pressure on local game resources. Added to this, the epidemics of introduced diseases, when they did not kill, at least debilitated -the native hunter. In ail cases, native subsistence was affected. The depletion of game resources was of primary concern, and it was to remedy such a situation that the introduction of reindeer from Siberia was first proposed.' Sheldon Jackson, the one man most responsible for the reindeer program, pointed out the advantages: