136 



ORDEES OF MAMMALS— HOOFED ANIMALS 



Barren Ground Caribou from the woodland 

 groups have already been pointed out, — smaller 

 size, antlers that are longer in the main beam, 

 less palmated and with fewer points. The fol- 

 lowing forms have been described as independent 

 species of this group; but whether all of them 

 are entitled to specific rank remains to be seen. 



Bahren Ground Caribou Species. 



Greenland Caribou, Rangifer groen-land'i-cits, 

 Greenland Coast. 



Barren Ground Caribou, Rangifer arc'ti-cus, 

 Canadian Barren Grounds. 



Grant's Caribou, Rangifer granti, Alaska Pen- 

 insula. 



Peary's Caribou, Rangifer pearyi, EUesmere 

 Land. 



In view of the tens of thousands of Barren 

 Ground Caribou that have been seen by white 

 men, and the thousands that have been killed 

 by and for them, the scarcity of definite obser- 

 vations upon this group, and of preserved speci- 

 mens is, as a whole, very unsatisfactory. At 

 present, therefore, the many undetermined 

 questions regarding the component parts of the 

 group render it impossible to do much more than 

 to define the assemblage as a whole. 



In general terms it may be said that the aver- 

 age Barren Ground Caribou is a close under-study 

 of the average reindeer of Siberia and Lapland, 

 and also a smaller animal. That all our caribou 

 have descended from the reindeer of Asia, and 

 came to us by crossing Bering Strait on the ice, 

 seems more than probable. 



In surveyor's parlance, the head of Cook Inlet 

 is the "point of departure'' of the woodland 

 caribou from the reindeer — Barren Ground type. 

 It would be difficult to find on land a clearer or 

 sharper line of cleavage between two groups of 

 animals than that between Rangifer granti of 

 the Alaska Peninsula, and Rangifer stonei of 

 the Kenai Peninsula. One moment's examina- 

 tion of the types is sufficient to place those species 

 in their respective groups. The antlers of the 

 Kenai caribou are massive, with many long tines 

 on the terminal half of the main beam. They 

 have 36 points, and a tree-top effect when seen 

 from the front. Grant's caribou, however, has 

 a long and naked main beam running up to a 

 terminal bunch of short tines, a wide-open, arm- 



chair appearance, and only twenty-seven points, 

 all strongly characteristic of the Barren Ground 

 type. The superior size of the Kenai caribou 

 is confirmatory of the testimony of the antlers 

 of both. 



Geographic Range. — The centre of abun- 

 dance of the Barren Ground Caribou group is 

 midway between the eastern end of Great Slave 

 Lake and the southeastern extremity of Great 

 Bear Lake. This, however, is not the geographic 

 centre of its distribution. The great semi-annual 

 migration is about on a line that might be drawn 

 between Capo Bathurst and the eastern extremity 

 of Great Slave Lake, and undoubtedly the great 

 mass of caribou on the mainland east of the 

 Mackenzie assemble along that route. 



Another line of migration, also from north- 

 west to southeast, passes eastward of Dawson 

 City, and sufficiently near it that great numbers 

 of caribou carcasses have been sledded in to the 

 meat markets of that city. In 1901 a search of 

 those markets revealed 6,225 pounds of moose 

 and caribou meat on hand at one time. Along 

 the arctic coast between Point Barrow and the 

 mouth of the Mackenzie, tens of thousands of 

 caribou have been killed by natives, and sold 

 to whaling ships wintering along that coast. As 

 a natural consequence, the herds have nearly 

 disappeared from that locality. 



Up to the time that Alaska was purchased by 

 the United States, the natives had few firearms, 

 or none at all, and caribou were abundant. 

 Along the west coast, caribou once were so nu- 

 merous that a cannon from the fort at St. Michael 

 was fired at a herd that passed within half a 

 mile of the settlement. As usual, we immediately 

 supplied the natives with firearms and ammu- 

 nition; and as a first result, the only caribou 

 now remaining in western Alaska are the few 

 stragglers that the hunters have not yet over- 

 taken. A few herds of Grant's caribou still 

 inhabit the treeless wastes of the Alaskan Pen- 

 insula, but on the Kenai Peninsula, the cari- 

 bou is now believed to be almost extinct. In 

 1903 it was estimated that only thirty individuals 

 remained alive. 



The great herd seen by Mr. Tyrrell at Carey 

 Lake, west of Hudson Bay, will be mentioned 

 in detail later on. On the Labrador Peninsula, 

 there are said to be three distinct herds, on Hud- 

 son Straits, Ungava Bay, and the Atlantic coast 



