THE GAME ANIMALS OF CANADA 59 
Greenland caribou (Rangifer groenlandicus). The North 
American caribou are closely related to the reindeer of 
northern Asia and Europe, from the common ancestral 
stock of which they are probably derived. 
Distribution.—The barren-ground caribou was formerly 
far more abundant and its distribution was more extensive 
than at the present time, as the records of the earlier ex- 
plorers and navigators prove. It extended from the Arctic 
shores of Alaska on the west to the Hudson Bay and Lab- 
rador on the east, and from the islands of the Arctic in the 
north it ranged as far south as the northern fringe of the 
timbered areas of northern Alberta and Saskatchewan. In 
this vast area enormous herds of hundreds of thousands 
moved back and forth like the tides of an enormous sea of 
animal life, at the bidding of some strange wandering im- 
pulse; and this ceaseless semi-annual movement continues 
year after year. 
From the Arctic coasts of Alaska the caribou have virtu- 
ally disappeared. When the American traders and whalers, 
visiting those regions, armed the Eskimos for the purpose of 
hunting meat for the whaling-fleets, the fate of the caribou 
was sealed. The coastal herds of caribou were exterminated 
about twelve years ago, and now the caribou herds are very 
scarce west of the Mackenzie River, and as far east as 
Langton Bay. With the disappearance of the caribou in 
that area the native inhabitants have been compelled to 
leave, and many migrated eastward to the Mackenzie 
delta. And now, I am informed by Doctor R. M. Ander- 
son, who has spent seven years in that region (1908-12 
and 1913-16), that, owing to the scarcity of caribou east 
and west of the Mackenzie delta, the Eskimos of that 
region have for some time been unable to supply themselves 
with more than a small portion of the skins needed for their 
clothing, the deficit being made up by the purchase of domestic 
reindeer skins umported from western Alaska and northeastern 
