The introduction of reindeer into Alaska, volume 2 [with] Government Printing Office extracts from Senate records containing texts of volumes 1 and 2

Washington: Government Printing Office, 1893. First edition. Hard cover. Very Good. Octavo (24 cm); 36, 39 pages, text illustrations, 5 half-tone plates and folding map. Half morocco over marbled paper boards, with ownership ink stamp of career diplomat Reed Paige Clark (1878-1958). Autograph of Reed Paige Clark on title page of second title. Very good condition.

Volume two of the annual report on the introduction of domestic reindeer into Alaska, bound together with the GPO extracts, printed in 1904, of the first two volumes of the series, without illustrations or maps. In effect, the extracts (paginated 1091-1128) present volume one in the series, the "Preliminary Report of the General Agent for Education for Alaska to the Coommissioner of Education," along with the repeated text of volume two. After industrial whaling had decimated a traditional food source of the indigenous people of Alaska, the Government Commissioner of Education sought to alleviate mass starvation by transporting domestic reindeer from Siberia to western Alaska. Using funds raised by members of his church, Jackson began by transporting 16 reindeer in 1890, followed by nearly 200 more in 1892. He also hired Siberian herders to teach Alaskans the necessary skills. (These were replaced in short order by Scandinavian Lapp "instructors.") In 1896, Congress began to fund the project, and small herds were distributed to mission schools throughout western Alaska. The program grew in scope as the transplanted population of reindeer took root and grew. Jackson lost Government support after 1906, when investigations revealed that the Scandinavian advisors were taking profits on the program. The population of reindeer in Western Alaska reached a peak in the early 1930s of some 600,000 animals, a number that has since decreased to about 20,000. In volume two of the reports, offered here, Jackson lays out for the Senate the his justification of the program, including an account of the 1891 boatlift of reindeer from Siberia, and a glowing vision of reindeer giving the indigenous Alaskans a permanent food supply, domestic transportation (with sketches fo saddled reindeer), commerce, revenue, and the basis for the repopulation and civilization of a people decimated by starvation.