To the minds of most children and a good many older persons, reindeer suggest Santa Claus, and no more. But the reindeer is one of man’s very necessary domestic animals; it affords a means for reclaiming vast sub-Arctic regions that now lie waste; and in Alaska the government of the United States has introduced reindeer and encouraged the raising of them, till now they are a source of wealth to the territory. To tell the story of the reindeer in our northerly territory is the purpose of the present little volume. Mr. William T. Lopp, the author, has been concerned with the government’s work in giving the reindeer to the natives of Alaska since the work was begun in the ’90’s, and it was he who drove a herd of reindeer seven hundred miles for the relief of the whalers at Point Barrow in 1897. This story of White Sox is, then, the work of an authority on the reindeer; and the publishers feel that it is worthy of its place in Animal Life Series beside Matka, Dr. David Starr Jordan’s classic story of the fur seal

ALS: LWS—1

Copyright 1924 by World Book Company
Copyright in Great Britain
All rights reserved

PRINTED IN U. S. A.

CONTENTS

PAGE
Introduction (Elmer Ellsworth Brown)[vii]
CHAPTER
I.Astray from the Herd[1]
II.A Taste of Wild Life[7]
III.White Sox Learns Many Things[14]
IV.A Race for Life[21]
V.White Sox Travels through a Blizzard[28]
VI.Under the Arctic Moon[34]
VII.Mother Reindeer’s Story of White Feet[40]
VIII.The First Human Friend[46]
IX.White Feet Finds a Way of Serving Man[53]
X.The Hunter Becomes a Herder[60]
XI.How Mother Reindeer Came to Alaska[65]
XII.White Sox Learns His Last Lesson[71]

INTRODUCTION

This story will be read by boys and girls in Alaska who know their fathers’ herds of reindeer “like a book,” or better than a book; and it will be read by other boys and girls who never saw a reindeer and think of them only as strange and wonderful creatures that live among the snows in a far-off northern region. I hardly know whether we enjoy more hearing the story of our own domestic animals or the story of strange animals that we have never seen. So I can hardly guess whether this story will be read with more interest in Alaska or in Maine and Florida and California. But it will be read with lively interest wherever it may go.