DOMESTICATION OF RUMINATING MAMMALS 319 



destitute of domestic live stock. A brief summary of the 

 history of this successful industry, for it is no longer an ex- 

 periment, will be of interest. 



Professor S. F. Baird appears to have made the first sug- 

 gestions in regard to the use of reindeer in North America, 

 in 1851, in a paper published in the agricultural report of the 

 United States commissioner of patents. He was strongly 

 of the opinion that the native races of our North American 

 caribou, the barren-ground and woodland caribou, were as 

 capable of domestication as the species in Europe had proved 

 to be. He suggested that such a step would prove of in- 

 estimable benefit to the Indians of the north, who might in 

 time become a pastoral people as a result. In order, how- 

 ever, to avoid loss of time in domesticating our wild species, 

 he advised the importation of domesticated reindeer from 

 Europe. In 1885, eighteen years after the purchase of 

 Alaska by the United States, the desirability of introducing 

 domestic reindeer from Siberia into Alaska was suggested 

 in the report of the U. S. Revenue Marine steamer Corwin. 

 Later, in 1887, Charles H. Townsend recommended to the 

 government the importing of reindeer into Alaska, and the 

 teaching of the natives how to care for and to use the ani- 

 mals. These recommendations were not followed, and it 

 remained for Doctor Sheldon Jackson, general agent of edu- 

 cation in Alaska, to make a beginning in this work, the ulti- 

 mate success of which is a lasting monument to his indom- 

 itable zeal. When he first visited Alaska, in 1890, with a 

 view to establishing schools in that region for the natives, 

 he was impressed with the necessity of introducing and 

 maintaining in Alaska reindeer for domestic purposes and as 

 a means of saving the inhabitants of that region from star- 

 vation. Accordingly, on his return to Washington, he rec- 

 ommended the introduction of Siberian reindeer into Alaska 

 for the relief of the destitute Eskimos, and his recommenda- 

 tion was duly transmitted to the Senate in December, 1890. 



