Reindeer, Gold, and Scandal

Abstract

by KENNETH O. BJORK 5 Reindeer, Gold, and Scandal IN tle, 1893, saw great H. C. economic Wahlberg, possibilities a businessman in Alaska. in Seat- It tle, saw great economic possibilities in Alaska. It should, he thought, become to the Pacific Coast and to America what the Lofoten Islands and Finnmark were to Norway, and he urged the founding of a Norwegian or Scandinavian colony in the territory. He and others who expressed similar views in the early 1890s and spoke of another "Land of the Midnight Sun" or a "New Norway " were thinking of the rich harvest of the sea and a mixed economy of fishing, farming, and logging in southeastern Alaska. At a much later date, in 1944, C. L. Andrews, in a chapter titled "The Alaska of the Future," maintained that the territory "is the Greater Scandinavia ," with vastly more resources than Sweden, Denmark , Norway, and Finland combined, but with only a tiny population.1 In dozens of letters written by Norwegians and Norwegian Americans in the late 1890s and the early 1900s the expressions "New Norway" and "New Scandinavia " appear as naturally, if not as frequently, as comments about weather, the sea, mountains, forests, and tundra. Unlike John Scudder McLain, who visited Alaska in 1903 with a party from the Senate committee 130 REINDEER, GOLD, AND SCANDAL on territories, the Norwegian writers say very little about agricultural possibilities in the Far North, despite the fact that they were fully aware of similarities between their homeland and Alaska.2 It was the discovery of gold in the Klondike and Alaska that brought the north country into the full consciousness of the Norwegians and their Scandinavian cousins, not the views of farsighted men considering the total economy of Alaska. The lure of gold in the many rivers and creeks of the territory caused an increasing number of them to travel northward, and the rich findings in the Cape Nome area greatly stimulated the process and gave a strikingly Scandinavian coloring to the Alaska story. If the gold fields near Nome were to become the magnet drawing argonauts of varied origin to Alaska, their discovery was the result of a quite different story, in which motivations were other than the search for the golden fleece. This story deals with the introduction of domestic reindeer into Alaska and is inseparably woven into the tale of greed and scandal that followed. I In 1884, Dr. Sheldon Jackson, who had served as a Presbyterian home missionary in Wisconsin and Minnesota and later in the Rocky Mountain area, sailed to Alaska as superintendent of missions in that territory. A year later he was also appointed federal superintendent of education for Alaska, and was charged with the responsibility of establishing a free school system. To this task he devoted the next two decades; in addition, he assisted in creating mail routes, aided in organizing the government of the territory, and was active in political life as leader of the so-called "missionary party."3 During his travels in the area of the Bering Sea, Jackson observed that the wholesale slaughter by whites of 131 Kenneth O. Bjork whales, walrus, even caribou and deer - together with irresponsible fishing - was rapidly destroying the very basis of life for the Eskimo. He visited native villages where the people were dying of hunger, and gradually came to the conclusion that there could be little hope for a school system until the Eskimo had the essentials for a normal existence. After careful study of the situation, he came to the further conclusion that the introduction of domestic reindeer would be the best solution to the problem of providing food, clothing, and necessary tools in the future. Jackson secured the first few reindeer from the Chukchi (Chuckchees), the herders of eastern Siberia, with funds first raised by private subscription in the American East and later appropriated by Congress. The task of introducing and caring for the animals was given to the Office of Education in the Department of the Interior . This task was not easy, as events soon revealed that adequate buildings and corrals had to be provided and grazing land surveyed in an area extending from Bristol Bay to...