NORTH AMERICA AND THE WEST INDIES 331 



among the Indians and Eskimo west of the Mackenzie, came 

 to the conclusion that the species had not inhabited that region 

 for a very long period. Their western limit, at the close of the 

 nineteenth century, he writes (1900); is "far to the east of 

 Anderson River and Liverpool Bay." In the region about 

 Artillery Lake, where the muskox was common shortly before 

 1901, it was practically exterminated a few years later. Con- 

 tinual hunting by the Eskimo from the coasts and by the 

 Indians from the southern borders of the barren grounds had 

 reduced their numbers still further in the early years of this 

 century, so that Dr. R. M. Anderson, in 1917, believed that 

 they were extinct west of the Tree River and much reduced 

 elsewhere, especially near the accessible regions along the 

 Arctic coasts, 



In 1913 Dr. J. A. Allen well summed up the situation at that 

 time as follows: "With all its natural fitness to survive, the 

 muskox is doomed wherever it can be utilized by man as a 

 commercial asset. The history of its restriction in range and 

 decline in numbers over the western part of its former range 

 during the last quarter of a century . . . indicates clearly 

 its fate wherever it can be reafched by the white man, either 

 directly or through his Eskimo or Indian allies . . . But 

 wherever its range is shared by the Eskimos, as many portions 

 are, the muskox's fate is sealed, as shown by its extermination 

 over the greater part of the large expanse of land known as 

 Victoria Island. It will also rapidly decline over the more 

 accessible parts of Ellesmere Land and Grinnell Land, through 

 intrusions of ambitious sportsmen. It is doomed throughout 

 the mainland of northern Canada unless the Canadian Govern- 

 ment takes the utmost care in restricting the killing . 

 Much could be done to preserve a considerable remnant of 

 these unsuspicious animals if the Danish, Canadian, and other 

 governments would declare muskox peltries contraband and 

 suppress all traffic in them, while the Canadian and Danish 

 governments might set aside reservations within which neither 

 Eskimos and Indians nor white hunters should be allowed to 

 kill them." Fortunately the Canadian Government in 1927 

 established a sanctuary known as the Thelon Game Sanctuary, 

 with an area of 15,000 square miles, northeast of Great Slave 

 Lake, which so far as then known included the last important 

 herd of muskoxen remaining on the mainland of Canada. No 



