AGEICULTUKAL DEVELOPMENT IN ALASKA. 



23 



As long ago as 1851, in a paper printed in the agricultural report 

 of the United States Commissioner of Patents, Prof. S. F. Baird ex- 

 pressed strongly the opinion that the American caribou of both groups 

 were as capable of domestication as the European species, and he sug- 

 gested that such a step would be of vast benefit to the Indians of the 

 North and that success would at once place these people beyond the 

 vicissitudes which are so rapidly sweeping them off. In the end they 

 might become a pastoral people and possibly, in time, as agricultural 

 as the nature of the seasons would admit. But to avoid loss of time 

 in attempts to domesticate a wild species, Prof. Baird suggested the 

 importation of the domesticated European reindeer. 



This suggestion was made 15 years before the purchase of Alaska 

 by the United States, and in 1887, 20 years after the purchase, Charles 

 H. Townsend advised that the Government import the reindeer and 



Fig. ]0. — Herd of domesticated Alaskan reindeer. (Photographed by Dobbs.) 



teach the natives how to care for and to use the animals. But not 

 until 1891 was the suggestion acted on, when the late Dr. Sheldon 

 Jackson, general agent in Alaska of the Bureau of Education, aided 

 by donations from private sources, purchased a small herd of Euro- 

 pean reindeer, which arrived in Alaska in 1892. Other importations 

 were made, totaling 1,280 head. In 1907 the number had increased 

 to 15,889, and at the present time it is estimated that the number of 

 domesticated reindeer in Alaska is not less than 30,000 (fig. 10). 



While no systematic effort has been made to test the matter, it ap- 

 pears that there have been instances of crossbreeding between the 

 domesticated reindeer and the native animals, and it is thought that 

 the blood of the wild caribou could be used to good advantage in 

 building up the reindeer herds. There is evidently need of work 

 along this line. It is said that with lack of care in the selection of 



