ALASKA. 



13 



United States Bureau, most of the missions to 

 Alaska maintain schools teaching general and in- 

 dustrial branches. The Presbyterian Church sup- 

 ports 14 missions, the Sitka Hospital, and the 

 JSitka Training-School; the Protestant Episcopal 

 Church, 10 missions; the Moravians, 3; the 

 Friends, 4; the Baptist Church, 1; the Methodist 

 Episcopal Church, 1 ; the Congregational Church, 

 2; the Swedish Evangelical Mission Covenant, 3; 

 the Roman Catholic Church, 5 and the Dawson 

 Hospital; and the Orthodox Russo-Greek Church, 

 14. 



The Sitka Training-School reports as follows: 

 " Teachers, 9 (2 of whom are natives) ; pupils, 

 boarding, 147; day, 4; total, 151. Salaries, $6,818.- 

 73; current expenses, $8,874.59; total, $15,693.32. 

 Received from tuition, $297.10. During the year 

 the Sitka Training-School for native boys and girls 

 has been successfully conducted. The teachers are 

 well qualified for the positions they occupy, and 

 both in the class room and in the industrial de- 

 partments the work is conscientiously and well 

 done. The carpenter shop and boat-building shop 

 are under the management of two competent 

 mechanics who thoroughly understand their busi- 

 ness. In these the young men are taught trades 

 which will enable them to make for themselves an 

 honest support in the future. The shoe shop, in 

 which is manufactured every pair of shoes worn 

 by the entire school, is under the direction of a 

 native Alaskan, who learned his trade in this 

 school. This shop brings in considerable income 

 from work done for outside parties. The sewing 

 classes, cooking classes, and science kitchen are all 

 under the direction of trained instructors, who 

 are preparing the girls to become good house- 

 wives. As a result, Sitka is turning out numbers 

 of young men and young women who are not 

 only well trained in the industrial arts, but are 

 grounded in Christian principles." 



The Sitka Hospital reports as follows : " Physi- 

 cian in charge and 2 nurses ; in-patients, 179 ; out- 

 patients, 1,751; total, 1,960. Salaries, $1,830.34; 

 current expenses, $744; total, $2,574.34. Receipts, 

 $191.90. Many operations have been performed, 

 all of which have been successful. The Sitka 

 Hospital is widely known, and many natives come 

 from long distances to receive treatment therein. 

 Much good is accomplished by the religious in- 

 struction which is imparted along with the help 

 given to the body." These two institutions 

 the training-school and the hospital are doing 

 much toward the regeneration, education, and ele- 

 vation of the native Alaskans." 



Introduction of Domestic Reindeer. To 

 Dr. Sheldon Jackson and Captain M. A. Healy, of 

 the U. S. revenue cutter Bear, is due the sug- 

 gestion and development % of the interesting and 

 successful experiment of introducing reindeer into 

 central and arctic Alaska, and the training of the 

 natives into herdsmen by the instruction of 

 skilled deer-men brought from Lapland for the 

 purpose. When Dr. Jackson visited arctic Alaska 

 in 1890 for the purpose of establishing schools 

 he found the Eskimo population slowly dying off 

 from starvation. For ages they and their fathers 

 had secured a comfortable living from the prod- 

 ucts of the sea, principally the whale, the walrus, 

 and the seal. These supplies had been supple- 

 mented by the fish and aquatic birds of their 

 rivers, and the caribou that roamed in large herds 

 over the inland tundra. But the whalers, entering 

 the Arctic Ocean fifty years ago, have kept up a 

 ceaseless warfare, killing hundreds and thousands 

 annually and driving the remnant farther and 

 farther north into the Arctic Ocean, where they 

 are no longer in reach of the natives. The walrus, 



a few years ago so numerous that their bellowings 

 were heard above the roar of the waves and the 

 grinding and crashing of the ice-fields, have been 

 so far exterminated for the sake of their ivory 

 that the natives with difficulty procure a sufficient 

 number of skins to cover their boats, and the flesh, 

 on account of its rarity, has become a luxury. 

 The canneries are on their streams, carrying- the 

 food out of the country, and by their wasteful 

 methods destroying the future supply. And the 

 hunter and the miner, with their breech-loading 

 firearms, have killed off the caribou or have 

 frightened them away to the 'remote and more in- 

 accessible regions of the interior. 



To have established schools among this starv- 

 ing people would have been of little service, and 

 to feed them at the expense of the Government 

 would pauperize and in the end as certainly de- 

 stroy them. Some other method had to be de- 

 vised, and this was suggested by the wild nomad 

 tribes on the other side of Bering Straits, who 

 had an unfailing food supply in their large herds 

 of domestic reindeer. To introduce the reindeer 

 into America would afford the Eskimo as perma- 

 nent a food supply as the cattle of the West- 

 ern plains and the sheep of New Mexico and 

 Arizona do the inhabitants of those sections. 

 The vast territory of central and arctic Alaska is 

 abundantly supplied with the long, fibrous white 

 moss, which is the natural food of the reindeer. 

 Taking the statistics of Norway and Sweden as 

 a guide, arctic and subarctic Alaska, by a conser- 

 vative estimate, can support 9,000,000 head of 

 reindeer, furnishing a supply of food and clothing, 

 and a means of transportation, to a population of 

 250,000. The reindeer is to the Eskimo what the 

 bamboo is to the Chinaman: food, clothing, shel- 

 ter, utensils, and transportation. Dr. Jackson's 

 plan was to introduce the deer as a part of the sys- 

 tem of industrial education; to establish- indus- 

 trial schools where the chief instruction should be 

 the management and propagation of reindeer; to 

 loan these in herds of 100 or less to the various 

 missionary stations as industrial apparatus to be 

 used in training the teachable and capable youth 

 as herdsmen and teamsters, on condition that 

 after three years the Government may take from 

 the herd a number of deer in good condition equal 

 to the original number furnished, the stations 

 keeping the increase. This plan has since been 

 extended to apply to capable native apprentices 

 with satisfactory results, and at >the stations as 

 a reward for intelligent and persevering industry 

 two deer are given at the end of the first year's 

 apprenticeship, and five more at the end of the 

 second year's, to develop gradually the sense of 

 individual ownership of property a sense which 

 has never been developed in the tribal relation. 



Dr. Jackson returned to Washington in Novem- 

 ber, 1890, and in his report to the Commissioner 

 of Education emphasized the destitute condition 

 of the Alaskan Eskimo and recommended the in- 

 troduction of the domestic reindeer of Siberia. 

 When the Fifty-first Congress failed to take action 

 upon the bills brought before it in regard to the 

 matter, Dr. Jackson, with the approval of the 

 Commissioner of Education, issued an appeal to 

 the friends of missionary education for a pre- 

 liminary sum to begin the experiment at once, 

 and $2,146 were subscribed. Dr. Jackson thus 

 tells the story of the work of the first years in 

 his report for 1895: 



"As the season had arrived for the usual visit 

 of inspection and supervision of the schools in 

 Alaska, in addition to my regular work for the 

 schools I was authorized to commence the work 

 of introducing domestic reindeer into Alaska. The 



