On June 29, 1892, Sheldon Jackson visited the head of Port Clarence, Alaska, in search of a suitable location for the establishment of a reindeer station. In making a location, it was important to take into consideration nearness to the coast of Asia, character of harbor, position with reference to future distribution of reindeer, supply of good pasturage and water. Finding that all these conditions were best met at the watering station of the whaling fleet, on the extreme northeast corner of the bay, near Grantley Harbor, Jackson selected that point for the reindeer station, and on the same day put up two tents and landed from the steamer Newport the provisions and supplies for the station.[3]
Since Henry M. Teller, as Secretary of the Interior, in the spring of 1885 authorized the establishment of the common school system of Alaska, and also that since the agitation commenced for the introduction of domesticated reindeer into Alaska, he had taken a leading part in securing the needed Congressional legislation, Jackson named the station the "Teller Reindeer Station". To the north of Grantley Harbor, Muck-a-Charlie Peak rises to the height of 1,600 feet (490m). At the head of the sand-spit between Port Clarence and Grantley Harbor is a large lagoon, and between the reindeer station and the base of the hills on the north are about a dozen fresh-water ponds or small lakes. At the extreme northeast corner of Port Clarence, near Grantley Harbor, and upon a small mountain creek, is the place that Jackson selected for the headquarters of the reindeer station. A few miles to the east of the station on Grantley Harbor was the location of the headquarters, for this region, of the Russian–American Telegraph Expedition of 1865 and 1867. On the bluff above the beach, at the place selected for the reindeer station, stood a log of driftwood upon which had been placed an empty barrel to indicate the location of a watering station. To the top of this post, Jackson's party hoisted the United States flag.[3]
A few days after taking possession, the lumber and building materials for the station having been landed, Captain Healy sent his carpenters and a portion of his crew on shore and erected a substantial frame house, 20 by 60 feet in size. The supply of lumber, however, gave out before it was fully completed, so that it was not as comfortable for an Arctic winter as was intended. Before the completion of the frame building, Miner W. Bruce, the superintendent, had constructed a "dugout" for himself and assistant and another for the Siberian herders. These "dugouts" were occupied during the severity of the winter weather.[3]
Headquarters
During the summer of 1893, additional lumber and material were sent to the station, and Healy again sent his carpenters and sailors on shore to do the needed work of placing the main station building in complete order for comfortable use. The whole house had double sides and double floor, with tarred paper between. A large "lean-to" was erected in the rear of the house for the use of the herders.[3] Jackson's greatest success figured in the 1897 Overland Relief Expedition which saved marooned whalers near Point Barrow.
The winter of 1902 was the coldest since 1894, but proved to be fine weather for the reindeer. There were few hard storms; the fall of snow was light, and there was no thaw during the fall or early winter to cover the pasturage with a coating of ice. Spring 1903 came unusually early and was mild and dry, hence no fawns were lost because of cold and wet weather. Of the 276 fawns born, 240 lived. During the winter the herd was pastured on the Ahgeeopuk River, 5 miles (8km) below the usual winter quarters. During the summer, they were kept 5 miles northwest from the station. From the Government herd at this station, during the winter of 1901-2, two herds were sent to Kotzebue Sound, one for the Friends' Mission and the other for Alfred Nilinia. Leaving the station November 12, they arrived at Kotzebue on December 16, 1901. On January 15, 1902, a herd of 100 reindeer was loaned to Per Spein and sent by the way of Golofnin Bay to Eaton Reindeer Station. On July 22, the Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Synodical Mission at this station loaned to Serawlook, Erlingnuk, and Ahmahkdoolik, apprentices, each 10 deer from the mission herd.[4]
Personnel
Siberian herders at Teller Reindeer Station
At the opening of the reindeer station in 1892, Miner Bruce, of Nebraska, was appointed superintendent, and Bruce Gibson, of California, assistant superintendent. During the season, four Siberians were secured and brought over by Healy as the principal herders. With these were placed several Inupiat men,[5] who were to learn the trade of herding reindeer. Upon June 30, 1893, the incumbency of Bruce and Gibson having terminated, William Thomas Lopp, of the American Missionary Association station at Cape Prince of Wales, was appointed superintendent of the reindeer station. As he could not immediately remove from the mission station to the reindeer station, Healy detailed Lieutenant C.M. White, USRCS, as acting superintendent, until Lopp could take charge. Being unable to secure an assistant from the States, John Grubin, quartermaster on USRC Bear was allowed his discharge papers and made assistant superintendent of the station.[6] The four Siberian herders during the summer were returned to their homes, and one of them, after a visit, returned for a second year. With him, three others were secured who came over for the first time. In the autumn, nine Inupiat apprentices entered upon a course of instruction.[7]
Owing to the murder of Harrison R. Thornton, missionary at Cape Prince of Wales, on August 19, 1893, by two Inupiat, the mission station was closed for the year. Under the circumstances, Lopp, who had accepted the position of superintendent at the reindeer station, felt called upon to offer his services to the American Missionary Association of the Congregational church, and return to Cape Prince of Wales in the summer of 1894, if it was thought desirable. In order to secure some intelligent Norwegian or Swede, accustomed to the methods employed in the care of reindeer in Sápmi, on December 15, 1893, Jackson sent a notice to the Scandinavian papers of the United States, that the reindeer station wished to secure the services of men acquainted with the management of reindeer. The Scandinavian papers entered into the project and gave their space without compensation. About 250 replies were received. From among this number, largely upon the recommendation of Prof. Rasmus B. Anderson, William A. Kjelmann, of Madison, Wisconsin, was selected as the next superintendent of the reindeer station. Upon the selection of Kjelmann, Jackson sent him at once to Sápmi for the necessary personnel and their dogs. The reindeer fund of Congress for 1894 being exhausted, it became necessary to again appeal to private individuals for $1,000, to defray the expenses of sending Kjelmann to Sápmi, and to pay the transportation of Sámi herders and their families to the United States.[7] The Sámi and Inupiat personnel included the Eira, Kemi, Larsen, Nakkila, Rist, Somby and Tornensis families.[8]
Herds
Landing the first herd of reindeer at Teller Station
During the summer of 1892, 171 reindeer were purchased in Siberia and landed at the station. At the time of landing at Port Clarence, two were lost by straying away. Twelve were so injured by transportation from Siberia that they either died or had to be killed. During the year, 13 others died from injuries received while fighting, or slipping upon the ice, making a total loss of 27. There was a gain of 79 fawns, born in the spring of 1893, leaving, on June 30, 1893, 222 reindeer in the herd. During the summer, 127 additional reindeer were purchased in Siberia, of which 124 were safely landed at the station, making a total, in September 1893, of 346. During the winter, the superintendent of the station trained 12 deer to draw sleds, and with his two teams of reindeer, made a successful trip to the mission station at Cape Prince of Wales, 60 miles (97km) distant.[9]
Teller Reindeer Station herd
The presence of the herd attracted attention from the local people, and delegations arrived during the winter to visit and inspect the herd, some of them coming from 300–400 miles (480–640km) inland. The fears that had been expressed, that the reindeer would be destroyed by the native dogs, were not realized. The herders were armed and had strict orders to fire upon any dog interfering with the herd, and then to report the same to the superintendent, who had instructions to send for the owner of the dog and compensate him for the loss. During the entire year of 1893, it became necessary to shoot but five dogs that were interfering with the herd. During the sledge trip of the superintendent to Cape Prince of Wales, two or three times he staked out the deer in the neighborhood of villages with from 100 to 300 native dogs, and in no instance were they molested. Thus the difficulties that were anticipated in the introduction of reindeer into Alaska were met and solved.[9]
The Sámi are the traditionally Sámi-speaking people inhabiting the region of Sápmi, which today encompasses large northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and of the Kola Peninsula in Russia. The region of Sápmi was formerly known as Lapland, and the Sámi have historically been known in English as Lapps or Laplanders, but these terms are regarded as offensive by the Sámi, who prefer the area's name in their own languages, e.g. Northern Sámi Sápmi. Their traditional languages are the Sámi languages, which are classified as a branch of the Uralic language family.
Teller is a city in the Nome Census Area, Alaska, United States. At the 2010 census the population was 229, a decrease from 268 in 2000.
The reindeer or caribou is a species of deer with circumpolar distribution, native to Arctic, subarctic, tundra, boreal, and mountainous regions of Northern Europe, Siberia, and North America. This includes both sedentary and migratory populations. It is the only representative of the genus Rangifer. Herd size varies greatly in different geographic regions. More recent studies suggest the splitting of reindeer and caribou into six distinct species over their range.
Sheldon Jackson was a Presbyterian minister, missionary, and political leader. During this career he travelled about one million miles and established more than one hundred missions and churches, mostly in the Western United States. He performed extensive missionary work in Colorado and the Alaska Territory, including his efforts to suppress Native American languages.
The Seward Peninsula is a large peninsula on the western coast of the U.S. state of Alaska whose westernmost point is Cape Prince of Wales. The peninsula projects about 200 mi (320 km) into the Bering Sea between Norton Sound, the Bering Strait, the Chukchi Sea, and Kotzebue Sound, just below the Arctic Circle. The entire peninsula is about 210 mi (330 km) long and 90–140 mi (145–225 km) wide. Like Seward, Alaska, it was named after William H. Seward, the United States Secretary of State who fought for the U.S. purchase of Alaska.
Samuel Johannesen Balto was a Northern Saami explorer and adventurer. Balto skied with Fridtjof Nansen across Greenland in 1888–89.
The Bering Land Bridge National Preserve is one of the most remote Protected areas of the United States, located on the Seward Peninsula. The National Preserve protects a remnant of the Bering Land Bridge that connected Asia with North America more than 13,000 years ago during the Pleistocene ice age. The majority of this land bridge now lies beneath the waters of the Chukchi and Bering Seas. During the glacial epoch this bridge was a migration route for people, animals, and plants whenever ocean levels fell enough to expose the land bridge. Archeologists disagree whether it was across this Bering Land Bridge, also called Beringia, that humans first migrated from Asia to populate the Americas, or whether it was via a coastal route.
The Overland Relief Expedition, also called the Alaska Relief Expedition or Point Barrow-Overland Relief Expedition, was an expedition in the winter of 1897–1898 by officers of the United States Revenue Cutter Service to save the lives of 265 whalers trapped in the Arctic Ocean by ice around their ships near Point Barrow, Alaska.
William Thomas Lopp, known better professionally as W. T. Lopp, and to his family as Tom Lopp, was a member of the Overland Relief Expedition in Alaska, then a U.S. territory. He was a missionary and advocate of turning native hunters into self-sufficient reindeer herders. Lopp Lagoon, an 18 mi (29 km) long bay near where Lopp lived in Alaska, is named after him.
Sámi cuisine is the cuisine of peoples from the Sápmi territory of the Sámi people, which spans Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Its traditional cuisine of each area has individual traits.
Indigenous peoples of the Subarctic are the aboriginal peoples who live in the Subarctic regions of the Americas, Asia and Europe, located south of the true Arctic. This region includes the interior of Alaska, the Western Subarctic or western Canadian Shield and Mackenzie River drainage area, the Eastern Subarctic or Eastern Canadian Shield, Scandinavia, Western Russia and East Asia. Peoples of subarctic Siberia and Greenland are included in the subarctic; however, Greenlandic Inuit are usually classified as Indigenous peoples of the Arctic.
Sámi politics refers to politics that concern the Sámi ethnic group in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. In a more narrow sense, it has come to indicate the government of Sámi affairs by Sámi political institutions. This article deals with Sámi political structures, with an emphasis on the contemporary institutions.
David Henry Jarvis was a captain in the United States Revenue Cutter Service. During the harsh winter of 1897–1898, Jarvis, then serving as a first lieutenant aboard the U.S. Revenue Cutter Bear, led the Overland Relief Expedition, bringing a three-man rescue team with a herd of about 400 reindeer across 1,500 miles of tundra and pack-ice to Point Barrow, Alaska, to bring needed food to 265 whalers whose ships had become stranded in the ice off the northern Alaska coast.
Sámi Americans are Americans of Sámi descent, who originate from Sápmi, the northern regions of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Kola Peninsula of Russia. The term Lapp Americans has been historically used, though lapp is considered derogatory by the Sámi.
Grantley Harbor is a waterway located at the bay of Port Clarence, Alaska, on the Seward Peninsula in the U.S. state of Alaska. The inner harbor at the entrance to the northeast corner of the bay was named after Lord Grantley.
Changunak Antisarlook Andrewuk was a Inupiaq businesswoman who became one of the richest women in Alaska due to her work in the reindeer industry.
Reindeer in Russia include tundra and forest reindeer and are subspecies of Rangifer tarandus. Tundra reindeer include the Novaya Zemlya (R.t.pearsoni) and Sápmi subspecies and the Siberian tundra reindeer.
Alaska Reindeer Service (ARS) was established for the benefit of the U.S. territory of Alaska by Congressional action on March 3, 1893. The ARS was an integral part of the educational system of northern and western Alaska. The superintendent of education of Alaska Natives had general supervision of the work. The district superintendents in northern and western Alaska were supervisors of the reindeer industry within their districts. The first annual expenditure for the period of 1893-94 was US$5,998.
Reindeer herding is when reindeer are herded by people in a limited area. Currently, reindeer are the only semi-domesticated animal which naturally belongs to the North. Reindeer herding is conducted in nine countries: Norway, Finland, Sweden, Russia, Greenland, Alaska, Mongolia, China and Canada. A small herd is also maintained in Scotland.
References
↑ "Reindeer History in Alaska". Reindeer Research Program, University of Alaska Fairbanks. 16 February 2012. Retrieved 14 October 2014.
This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: S. Jackson's "Report on Introduction of Domesticated Reindeer Into Alaska with Maps and Illustrations" (1894)
This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: U.S. Congress' "Congressional edition" (1903)
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