TROUBLE AHEAD
Traders began to visit the Eskimos in Alaska a long time ago. The Eskimos sold them caribou meat to eat and sealskins—and whalebone. When the traders explained what the whalebone was for, the Eskimos could hardly stop laughing.
Women down in the warm world wanted whalebone to stiffen their corsets, so they would look thin where they weren't. You can imagine how silly this seemed to the Eskimos, who thought people looked best when they were plump all over. But the white men traded them guns and cloth and stoves and tea for whalebone, so they caught many whales.
a whalebone corset
For a while the Eskimos got along very well with their trading. Then things changed. Most of the whales had been killed off by white men whose ships could follow the whales all the way as the great sea animals migrated from the Arctic Ocean down toward the South Pole. Most of the walruses were gone, too. The whalers killed them for oil and for their ivory tusks. Next, the caribou began to disappear. Eskimo hunters had killed most of them so that white men could have meat.
Some Eskimos taught reindeer to pull sleds.
By now, Eskimos had learned to need the things they got from traders, and they were almost starving because so many of their food animals were gone. They needed a new way to make a living. What could they do?
At last the head of the American school for Eskimo children had an idea. He thought of bringing reindeer from Siberia to Alaska. Reindeer are a kind of caribou that has been trained to live with men.
Laplanders from Scandinavia came to teach the Eskimos how to herd reindeer.
He persuaded the government and some individual people to try his plan. The reindeer could eat the grass that grew thick in the hot Alaskan summer. In winter they could use their horns and hoofs to dig down through the thin Arctic snow and eat lichens. A reindeer was a sort of combination horse and cow! It provided meat to eat, milk to drink and strength to pull heavy loads. Its skin was valuable, too.
Alaskan Eskimo children often wear dresses to keep their fur clothes clean.
Reindeer were first brought to Alaska in 1891. Now there are many, many thousands of them.