AGRICULTUKAL 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. 10. — 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 blocd of the wild caribou could be used to good advantage in 
building up the reindeer herds. There is evidently need of Avork 
along this line. It is said that with lack of care in the selection of 
