68 INTKODUCTION OF DOMESTIC REINDEER INTO ALASKA. 



to become good herders they must first become nomads and take an 

 interest in handling, watching, and being among the animals all the 

 time. They also appear not to understand that when an order is given 

 to them to lemain in camp for a certain length of time, the intention 

 is that they must not run away from tlie herd every other day to see 

 what is being done at the station. It has been necessary to administer 

 many a disagreeable reprimand on account of the violation of this 

 order. On the other hand, it must be stated that it has been very diffi- 

 cult for the apprentices to obey our rules, since they were so accustomed 

 to look upon tlie station as their headquarters. 



To keep them in camp various means have been resorted to, but with- 

 out any other result than that they would return to the station and 

 have to be sent back again. We, of course, refused to give them food 

 when they came from the camp. My last resort was to set them to doing 

 hard work when they came to the station, and as they have a dread for 

 this sort of punishment they usually dropped the work quickly and ran 

 back to the camp. Sometimes they run away to some Eskimo village 

 instead of going to the herd. They may stop for a day or two in the 

 village and spend a day with the herd, and then come back to the sta- 

 tion with an artega, "a coat,'' a boot, mitten, or sock torn, as an excuse 

 for k'aving the herd. 



On reading this you may probably say, "Send them off," and this I 

 have tiionght of doing, but as their time has so nearly expired, and as 

 they have been kept thus far and by my predecessors, it seemed to me 

 that they might be tolerated a few months longer. It is unfortunately 

 a fact that the apprentices here mentioned are chiefly such as have 

 come iVom some mission station and there have obtained their taste for 

 warm rooms. 



I do not say this with a view of finding the least fault with the mis- 

 sion stations or with the work of tiie missionaries among the Eskimos. 

 On the contrary, the missicmaries surely, here as elsewhere among 

 heathens, do all in their power to civilize these people and to win them 

 away from dirt and ignorance. And it is not the fault of the mission- 

 aries that the Eskimo boys ignorantly make up their own minds about 

 matters, especially before they have been at a station long enough to 

 be able to form a higher estimate of life. The apprentices who are 

 taken directly from the Eskimo population, and from the Eskimo hut, are 

 far better, for they understand that they are better off both for the pres- 

 ent and for the future if they take hold earnestly and do their best to 

 become good reindeer lierders. Although this is a matter which I shall 

 discuss more fully later on, I take the liberty of calling your attention to 

 it here in connection with the employment of new apprentices. 



Hitherto it has appeared that the married men — that is, those who 

 have families here — are the most reliable, and they seem to have some 

 idea of the responsibility in regard to what they do, and at the same 

 time they are the cheapest for the station, inasmuch as the additional 

 food required by the wives and children is compensated for by their 



