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 

 ifar more abundant and its distribution was more extensive 

 lan at the present time, as the records of the earlier ex- 

 )lorers and navigators prove. It extended from the Arctic 

 lores of Alaska on the west to the Hudson Bay and Lab- 

 rador on the east, and from the islands of the Arctic in the 

 lorth it ranged as far south as the northern fringe of thes 

 timbered areas of northern Alberta and Saskatchewan. In 

 lis vast area enormous herds of hundreds of thousands 

 loved back and forth like the tides of an enormous sea of 

 limal Hfe, at the bidding of some strange wandering im- 

 )ulse; and this ceaseless semi-annual movement continues 

 rear after year. 



From the Arctic coasts of Alaska the caribou have virtu- 

 illy disappeared. When the American traders and whalers, 

 risiting those regions, armed the Eskimos for the purpose of 

 lunting meat for the whaling-fleets, the fate of the caribou 

 las 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 ihe purchase of domestic 

 reindeer skins imported from western Alaska and northeastern 



