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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.