52 U. S. BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 
the supply of Yukon salmon should become seriously curtailed wide- 
spread suffering and death would in many seasons be visited on the 
natives. 
The question of furnishing food for the whites is less. urgent, but 
is not without importance. It was brought to our attention that with 
the price of all articles of food rapidly rising, while wages in the 
interior of Alaska have shown practically no increase during recent 
years, the presence of a cheap source of food is of value. 
But one of the most important phases of the salmon question, 
which concerns whites and natives alike, is in relation to the dog. 
The whole scheme of things in the sparsely populated Yukon wilder- 
ness is predicated on the dog, and the use of the dog necessitates 
dried salmon. The winter is the only time for travel except along 
the waterways of Alaska, and winter travel is impossible without the 
dog team. Dogs are equally indispensable as draft animals and pack 
animals. Transportation of the winter mails over thousands of miles 
of the interior of Alaska must be accomplished by dog team. Men 
of the Army and the Signal Corps, like all other people in Alaska, 
are dependent on the dog whenever business makes it necessary for 
them to undertake winter travel. Fort Gibbon alone needs 40 tons 
of dried salmon each year to feed the dogs that they find indis- 
pensable in their work. Prospectors need them to carry their sup- 
ples into the hills. Wood choppers require them to haul in the 
wood. Indians must have them on their long hunting and trapping 
expeditions, and without them can neither secure meat for their 
families nor furs to exchange for the other necessaries of life. 
The dog is as essential in Alaska as is the horse in other regions, 
and the only acceptable dog feed is dried salmon. Various substi- 
tutes have been tried out when salmon could not be procured. They 
were used extensively by the “dog-mushers” of 1919, when dried 
salmon often could not be had at any price. Fresh meat was used, 
and enormous numbers of caribou and moose were slaughtered for 
this purpose. But it is impossible to carry sufficient meat for many 
days, and the supply is precarious. Furthermore, the dogs do not 
thrive and work well on this diet. A diet of cereals and fat in some 
form wasextensively used. Stocks of rice, flour, corn meal, and bacon 
were heavily drawn on. Dogs traveled well on a ration of corn meal 
and bacon, but the expense was almost prohibitive, and there was the 
labor of cooking up each night in camp a meal for the dogs after the 
exhausting travel of the day with the temperature perhaps 50° 
below zero and a weary famished team waiting to be fed. Dried 
salmon forms a light condensed food which contains all the elements 
needed to keep a hard-working team in excellent condition, and it is 
always ready to be fed without preparation. There is no acceptable 
substitute, and there is not in Alaska any divergence of opinion on 
this subject. No single need in the interior of Alaska is more gen- 
erally or more urgently felt than dried salmon for its various uses. 
It is clear, then, that the Yukon and the Kuskokwim offer salmon 
problems which are not pressing on any other Alaskan rivers with 
the exception of the Copper River. These streams drain the far 
northern interior districts of Alaska with long severe winters and 
the briefest of summers. The inhabitants are few in number and 
are distributed widely over a wilderness which is largely without 
