THE NORTH AMERICAN CERVID^E. 



GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL, Ph. D. 



THE deer family includes the most important of our large game 

 animals. Deer, of one species or another, are found through- 

 out the whole of North America, from within the Arctic circle 

 south to Mexico. They are most numerous in the northern United 

 States, where the Arctic forms and those inhabiting more temperate 

 regions overlap, and here two of the most magnificent represen- 

 tatives of the family — the moose and the elk — are found. The 

 value of the deer to the aborigines of this continent can scarcely be 

 over-estimated. In many sections of country, the natives formerly 

 depended for animal food almost wholly upon the deer at certain 

 seasons ; and at the present day the Esquimaux rely, for several 

 months of the year, entirely upon the reindeer for subsistence. Until 

 some time after the settlement of this country by the whites, the 

 clothing of the natives was manufactured chiefly from deer-skins. 

 Shirts, leggings, and moccasins were and are made from the dressed 

 skins of the red, the mule, and the black-tail deer ; while the coarser 

 and heavier hides of the moose and elk were used for covering lodges, 

 for robes and blankets, and for moccasins, as well as in the manufact- 

 ure of ropes and lines and for a variety of other purposes. At 

 present, blankets and cheap cotton cloths have, to a considerable 

 extent taken the place of buckskin in the manufacture of Indian 

 garments. But to-day, the clothing of the Innuit is made almost 

 entirely from the skins of the reindeer, dressed with the hair on, the 

 garments worn next to the skin being made from the summer hides, 

 on which the hair is short and fine, and the outer ones from skins 

 taken later in the season, and therefore coarser. 

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