THE REINDEER EXPERIMENT
Labrador will never be a "vineland," a land of corn and wine, or a
country where fenced cities will be needed to keep out the milk and
honey. But though there may be other sections of the Empire that can
produce more dollars, Labrador will, like Norway and Sweden, produce
Vikings, and it is said that the man behind the gun is still of some
moment.
In past years we have made quite extensive experiments in trying to
adapt possible food supplies to this climate. I had seventeen bags of
the hardiest cereal seeds known sent me. They consisted of barley from
Lapland, from Russia, from Abyssinia, Mansbury barley and Finnish
oats. All the seeds came from the experimental station at Rampart,
Alaska, and were grown in latitude 63 deg. 30', which is two degrees north
of Cape Chidley.
I find in the notes of one of my earliest voyages my satisfaction at
the fact that a storm with lightning and thunder had just passed over
the boat and freshened up some rhubarb which I was growing in a box.
It had been presented to me by the Governor to carry down to Battle
Harbour, and I was very eager that it, my first agricultural venture,
should not fail.
Everywhere along the coast the inability to get a proper diet, owing
to the difficulties of successful farming even on ever so small a
scale, had aroused my mind to the necessity of doing something along
that line. In one small cottage I saw a poor woman zealously guarding
an aged rooster.
"Have you got a hen?" I asked her.
"No, Doctor; I had one, but she died last year."
"Then why ever do you keep that rooster?"
"Oh! I hopes some day to get a hen. I've had him five years. The last
manager of the mill gave him to me, but you'se sees he can't never go
out and walk around because of the dogs, so I just keeps he under that
settle."
Pathetic as were her efforts at stock farming, I must admit that my
sympathies were all with the incarcerated rooster.
The problem of the dogs seemed an insurmountable one. The Moravians'
records abound in stories of their destructiveness. Mr. Hesketh
Pritchard writes: "Dr. Grenfell records two children and one man
killed by the dogs. This is fortunately a much less terrible record
than that shown farther north by the Moravian Missions. The savage
dogs did great harm at those stations one winter." Among other
accidents, a boy of thirteen, strong and well, was coming home from
his father's kayak to his mother. After some time, as he did not
arrive, they went to search for him and found that the dogs had
already killed and eaten a good part of him. A full-grown man, driving
to Battle Harbour Hospital, was killed by his dogs almost at our
doors.
The wolves of the country only pack when deer are about. As a contrast
to our dogs, wolves have never been known to kill a man in Labrador,
so it would be more correct to speak of a doggish wolf than a wolfish
dog. It is an odd thing and a fortunate one that in this country,
where it is very common to have been bitten by a dog, we never have
been able to find any trace of hydrophobia.
A visitor returning to New York after a summer on the coast wrote as
follows: "One of my lasting remembrances of Battle Harbour will be the
dreadful dogs. The Mission team were on an island far removed, but
there were a number of settlers' dogs which delighted in making the
nights hideous. Never before have I seen dogs stand up like men and
grapple with each other in a fight, and when made to move on, renew
the battle round the corner."
Our efforts at agriculture had taught us not to expect too much of the
country. A New Zealand cousin, Martyn Spencer, a graduate of Macdonald
College of Agriculture, gave us two years' work. His experience showed
that while dogs continued to be in common use, cattle-raising was
impossible. Of a flock of forty Herdwick sheep given by Dr. Wakefield,
the dogs killed twenty-seven at one time. Angora goats, which we had
imported, perished in the winter for lack of proper food. Our land
cost so much to reclaim for hay, being soaked in humic acid, that we
had always to import that commodity at a cost which made more cows
than absolutely essential very inadvisable. Weasels, rats, hawks, and
vermin needed a man's whole time if our chickens were to be properly
guarded and repay keeping at all. An alfalfa sent us from Washington
did well, and potatoes also gave a fair return, though our summer
frosts often destroyed whole patches of the latter. Our imported plum
and crabapple trees were ringed by mice beneath the snow in winter. At
a farm which we cleared nine miles up a bay, so as to have it removed
from the polar current, our oats never ripened, and our turnips and
cabbage did not flourish in every case. We could not plant early
enough, owing to the ground being frozen till July some years.
On the other hand, when we looked at the hundreds of thousands of
square miles on which caribou could live and increase without any help
from man, and indeed in spite of all his machinations, our attention
was naturally turned to reindeer farming, and I went to Washington to
consult Dr. Sheldon Jackson, the Presbyterian missionary from Alaska.
It was he who had pioneered the introduction by the United States
Government of domestic reindeer into Alaska. At Washington we received
nothing but encouragement. Reindeer could make our wilderness smile.
They would cost only the protection necessary. They multiply steadily,
breeding every year for eight or ten years after their second season.
A selected herd should double itself every three years.
The skins are very valuable--there is no better nonconductor of heat.
The centre of the hair is not a hollow cylinder, but a series of air
bubbles which do not soak water, and therefore can be used with
advantage for life-saving cushions. The skins are splendid also for
motor robes, and now invaluable in the air service. The meat is tender
and appetizing, and sold as a game delicacy in New York. The deer
fatten well on the abundant mosses of a country such as ours.
Sir William MacGregor, the Governor of Newfoundland at the time, had
samples of the mosses collected around the coast and sent to Kew
Botanical Gardens for positive identification. The Cladonia
Rangiferina, or Iceland moss, proved very abundant. It was claimed,
however, that the reindeer would eat any of such plants and shrubs as
our coast offers in summer.
As long ago as the year 1903 my interest in the domestication of deer
had led me to experiment with a young caribou. We had him on the
Strathcona nearly all one summer. He was a great pet on board, and
demonstrated how easily trained these animals are. He followed me
about like a dog, and called after me as I left the ship's side in a
boat if we did not take him with us. He was as inquisitive as a monkey
or as the black bear which we had had two years before. We twice
caught him in the chart-room chewing up white paper, for on his first
raid there he had found an apple just magnanimously sent us from the
shore as a delicacy.
Friends, inspired by Mr. William Howell Reed, of Boston, collected the
money for a consignment of reindeer, and we accordingly sent to
Lapland to purchase as many of the animals as we could afford. The
expense was not so much in the cost of the deer as in the transport.
They could not be shipped till they had themselves hauled down to the
beach enough moss to feed them on their passage across the Atlantic.
Between two hundred and fifty and three hundred were purchased, and
three Lapp families hired to teach some of our local people how to
herd them. When at last snow enough fell for the sledges to haul the
moss down to the landwash, it was dark all day around the North Cape.
Fifty years hence in all probability the Lapps will be an extinct
race, as even within the past twelve or fifteen years, districts in
which thousands of domesticated reindeer grazed, now possess but a few
hundreds.
The good ship Anita, which conveyed the herd to us, steamed in for
southern Newfoundland and then worked her way North as far as the ice
would permit. At St. Anthony everything was frozen up, and the men
walked out of the harbour mouth on the sea ice to meet the steamer
bringing the deer. The whole three hundred were landed on the ice in
Cremailliere, some three miles to the southward of St. Anthony
Hospital, and though many fell through into the sea, they proved hardy
and resourceful enough to reach the land, where they gathered around
the tinkling bells of the old deer without a single loss from land to
land.
One of our workers at St. Anthony that winter wrote that "the most
exciting moment was when the woman was lowered in her own sledge over
the steamer's side on to the ice, drawn to the shore, and transferred
to one of Dr. Grenfell's komatiks, as she had hurt her leg on the
voyage. The sight of all the strange men surrounding her frightened
her, but she was finally reassured, threw aside her coverings, and
clutched her frying-pan, which she had hidden under a sheepskin. When
she had it safely in her arms she allowed the men to lift her and put
her on the komatik." When the doctor at the hospital advised that her
leg would best be treated by operation, the man said, "She is a pretty
old woman, and doesn't need a very good leg much longer." She was
thirty-five!
An Irish friend had volunteered to come out and watch the experiment
in our interest--and this he did most efficiently. The deer flourished
and increased rapidly. Unfortunately the Lapps did not like our
country. They complained that North Newfoundland was too cold for them
and they wanted to return home. One family left after the first year.
A rise in salary kept three of the men, but the following season they
wanted more than we had funds to meet, and we were forced to decide,
wrongly, I fear, to let them go. The old herder warned me, "No Lapps,
no deer"; but I thought too much in terms of Mission finances, the
Government having withdrawn their grant toward the herders' salaries.
Trusting to the confidence in their own ability of the locally trained
men, I therefore let the Lapp herders go home. The love of the Lapps
for their deer is like a fisherman's for his vessel, and seems a
master passion. They appeared even to grudge our having any deer
tethered away from their care.
To us it seemed strange that these Lapps always contended that the
work was too hard, and that the only reason that they were always gone
from camp was that there were no wolves to keep the herd together.
They claimed that we must have a big fence or the deer would go off
into the country. They, of course, both when with us and in Lapland as
well, lived and slept where the herd was. They told us that the deer
no longer obeyed the warning summons of the old does' bells, having no
natural enemy to fear; and one told me, "Money no good, Doctor, if
herd no increase." Reindeer seemed to be the complement of their
souls.
Meanwhile the Alaskan experiment was realizing all of Dr. Jackson's
happiest hopes; but it had a strong Government grant and backing and
plenty of skilled superintendence. The lack of those were our
weaknesses. Our deer thrived splendidly and multiplied as we had
predicted. We went thirty miles in a day with them with ease. We
hauled our firewood out, using half a dozen hauling teams every day.
Every fortnight during the rush of patients at the hospital in summer
we could afford to kill a deer. The milk was excellent in quality and
sweet, and preserved perfectly well in rubber-capped bottles. The
cheese was nourishing and a welcome addition to the local diet. At the
close of the fourth year we had a thousand deer.
A paper of the serious standing of the "Wall Street Journal," writing
at about that time, under the title "Reindeer Venison from Alaska,"
had this to say: "At different times in the past twenty years the
Government imported reindeer into Alaska--about twelve hundred in
all--in hopes to provide food for the natives in the future. The plan
caused some amusement and some criticism at the time. Subsequent
developments, however, have justified the attempt. The herds have now
increased to about forty thousand animals, and are rapidly becoming
still more numerous. The natives own about two thirds of the number.
Shipments of meat have been made to the Pacific Coast cities. Last
year the sales of venison and skins amounted to $25,000. It is claimed
that the vast tundra, or treeless frozen plains of Alaska, will
support at least ten million animals. The federal authorities in
charge are so optimistic of the future outlook that the prediction is
made that within twenty-five years the United States can draw a
considerable part of its meat supply from Alaska." What can be done in
Alaska can be done in Labrador, and with its better facilities for
shipping and handling the product, the greater future ought to be the
prize of the latter country.
In the spring of 1912 there were five hundred fawns, and at one time
we had gathered into our corral for tagging no less than twelve
hundred and fifty reindeer. Of these we sold fifty to the Government
of Canada for the Peace River District. There they were lost because
they were placed in a flat country, densely wooded with alders, and
not near the barren lands. We also sold a few to clubs, in order to
try and introduce the deer. These sales would have done the experiment
no injury, but with the fifty to Canada went my chief herder and two
of my other herders from Labrador. This loss, from which we never
recovered, coincided with an outbreak of hostility toward the deer
among the resident population, who live entirely on the sea edge. Only
long afterwards did we find out that it was partly because they feared
that we would force deer upon them and do away with their dogs. The
local Government official told me only the other day that the second
generation from this would have very little good to say of the
short-sightedness of these men who let such a valuable industry fail
to succeed.
With the increasing cares of the enlarging Mission, with Lieutenant
Lindsay gone back to Ireland, and no one to superintend the herding,
the successful handling of the deer imperceptibly declined. The tags
on the ears were no longer put in; the bells were not replaced in the
old localities. The herd was driven, not led as before--was paid for,
not loved. These differences at the time were marked by increasing
poaching on the herd by the people. Here and there at first they had
killed a deer unknown to us; and finally we caught one hidden in a
man's woodpile, and several offenders were sent to jail.
We appealed to the Newfoundland Government for protection, as to be
policeman and magistrate for the herd which one held in trust was an
anomalous position. I was ordered by them to sit on the bench when
these cases were up, as I did not own the deer. The section of land on
which we had the animals is a peninsula of approximately one hundred
and fifty square miles. It is cut off by a narrow, low neck about
eight miles long. During all our years of acquaintance with the coast
not a dozen caribou had been killed on it, for they do not cross the
neck to the northward. But when we applied for a national preserve,
that no deer at all might be killed on the peninsula, and so we might
run a big fence across the neck with a couple of herders' houses along
the line of it, a petition, signed by part of the "voters," went up to
St. John's, against such permission being granted us. The petition
stated that the deer destroyed the people's "gardens," that they were
a danger to the lives of the settlers, whose dogs went wild when they
crossed their path, and they claimed that the herd "led men into
temptation," because if there were no reindeer to tempt men to kill
them, there would be none killed. The deer thus were supposed to be
the cause of making cattle-thieves out of honest men! The result was
that a law was passed that no domestic reindeer might be shot north of
the line of the neck for which we had applied, and which we
intended to fence. This only made matters ten times worse, for if the
deer either strayed or else were driven across the line, the killing
of them was thus legalized.
[Illustration: A PART OF THE REINDEER HERD]
[Illustration: REINDEER TEAMS MEETING A DOG TEAM]
The deer had cost us, landed, some fifty-one dollars apiece. Three
years of herding under the adverse conditions of lack of support from
either Government or people had not lessened the per caput expense
very materially. If we had shot some one's fifty-dollar cow, our name
would have been anathema--but we lost two hundred and fifty deer one
winter. In addition to this, when we moved the deer to a spot near
another village on a high bluff, over a hundred died in summer,
either--according to the report of the herders--from falling over the
cliffs driven by dogs, or of a sickness of which we could not discover
the nature, though we thought that it resembled a kind of pneumonia.
The poaching got so bad that we took every means in our power to catch
the guilty parties. But it was a very difficult thing to do. A dead
deer lies quiet, keeps for weeks where he falls in our winter climate,
and can be surreptitiously removed by day or night. The little Lapp
dogs occasionally scented them beneath the snow, and many tell-tale
"paunches" showed where deer had been killed and carried off.
I had been treating the hunchback boy and only child of a fisherman
for whom I had very great respect. His was the home where the
Methodist minister always boarded, and he was looked upon as a pillar
of piety. After a straightening by frame treatment, the boy's spine
had been ankylosed by an operation; and as every one felt sorry for
the little fellow, we were often able to send him gifts. One day the
father came to me, evidently in great trouble, to have what proved to
be a most uncommon private talk. To my utter surprise he began:
"Doctor, I can no longer live and keep the secret that I shot two of
your reindeer. I have brought you ninety dollars, all the cash that I
have, and I want to ask your forgiveness, after all you have done for
me." Needless to say, it was freely given, but it made me feel more
than ever that the deer must be moved to some other country.
It was about this year that the Government for the first time granted
us a resident policeman--previously we had had to be our own police.
Fortunately the man sent was quite a smart fellow. A dozen or so deer
had been killed along the section of our coast, and so skilfully that
even though it was done under the noses of the herders no evidence to
convict could be obtained. It so happened, however, that while one of
the herders was eating a piece of one of the slaughtered animals which
he had discovered, and that the thieves had not been able to carry
off, his teeth met on a still well-formed rifle bullet of number 22
calibre. This type of rifle we knew was scarcely ever used on our
coast, and the policeman at once made a round to take every one. He
returned with three, which was really the whole stock.
A piece of meat was now placed at a reasonable distance, also some
bags of snow, flour, etc., and a number of bullets fired into them.
These bullets were then all privately marked, and shuffled up. Our own
deductions were made, and a man from twenty miles away summoned,
arrested, and brought up. He brought witnesses and friends, apparently
to impress the court--one especially, who most vehemently protested
that he knew the owner of the rifle, and that he was never out of his
house at the time that the deer would have been killed. In court was a
man, for twenty-seven years agent in Labrador for the Hudson Bay
Company--a crack shot and a most expert hunter. He was called up,
given the big pile of bullets, and told to try and sort them, by the
groove marks, into those fired by the three different rifles. We then
handed him the control bullet, and he put it instantly on one of the
piles. It was the pile that had been fired from the rifle of the
accused. This man, in testifying, in order to clear himself, had let
out the fact that his rifle had not been kept in his house, but in the
house of the vociferous witness--whom we now arrested, convicted, and
condemned to jail for six months or two hundred dollars fine--the
latter alternative being given only because we knew that he had not
the necessary sum. Protesting as loudly as he had previously
witnessed, he went to jail; but the rest let out threats that they
were coming back with others to set him free. We had only a frame
wooden jail, and a rheumatic jailer of over seventy years, hired to
hobble around by day and see that the prisoners were fed and kept
orderly. We announced, therefore, that our Hudson Bay friend, with his
rifle loaded, would be night jailer.
A few days passed by. The prisoner did not like improving the public
thoroughfare for our benefit, while those "who were just as bad as he"
went free. Our old jailer took good care that he should hear what good
times they were having and laughing at him for being caught. Indeed,
he liked it so little that he gave the whole plot away--at least what
he called the whole. This landed four more of his friends in the same
honest and public-spirited occupation which he was himself pursuing;
though all escaped shortly afterwards by paying fines to the
Government which aggregated some eight hundred dollars--which sum was
largely paid by others for them.
There was no way, however, definitely to stop the steady decrease in
the numbers of the herd; and though we moved them to new pastures
around the coast, and fenced them in such small mobile corrals as we
could afford, they were not safe. On several occasions we found dead
deer with buckshot in them, which had "fallen over the cliffs." Twice
we discovered that deer had even been killed within our own corral.
One had been successfully removed, and the other trussed-up carcass
had been hidden until a good opportunity offered for it to follow
suit. I do not wish to leave the impression on the minds of my readers
that every man on this part of the coast is a poacher. Far from it.
But the majority of the best men were against the reindeer experiment
from the moment that the first trouble arose. A new obligation of
social life was introduced. This implied restraint in such trifling
things as their having to fence their tiny gardens, protect small
stray hay-pooks, and discriminate into what they discharged their
ubiquitous blunderbusses.
Meanwhile the steadily increasing demand for meat, especially since
the war began, caused outside interest in the experiment; and both the
owners of Anticosti Island, and a firm in the West who were commencing
reindeer farming on a commercial basis, opened negotiations with us
for the purchase of our herd. In the original outlay, however, the
Canadian Dominion Government had taken an interest to the amount of
five thousand dollars, so it was necessary to get their opinion on the
subject. Their Department of Indian Affairs happened to be looking for
some satisfactory way of helping out their Labrador Indian population.
They sent down and made inquiries, and came to the conclusion that
they would themselves take the matter up, as they had done with
buffalo, elk, and other animals in the West.
In 1917 all preparations for transferring the deer were made, but war
conditions called their steamer away and transport was delayed until
1918. Again their steamer was called off, so we decided to take the
deer across ourselves in our splendid three-masted schooner, the
George B. Cluett. She, alas, was delayed in America by the submarine
scare, and it was the end of September instead of June when she
finally arrived. It was a poor season for our dangerous North coast
and a very bad time for moving the deer, whose rutting season was just
beginning. My herders, too, were now much reduced in numbers. Most of
them had gone to the war, and as one had been sick all summer,
practically only two were available. To add to the difficulty, many
small herds of reindeer were loose in the country outside the corral.
However, we felt that the venture must be attempted at all hazards,
even if it delayed our beautiful ship taking a cargo of food to the
Allies--as she was scheduled to do as soon as possible--and though it
was a serious risk to remain anchored in the shallow open roadstead
off the spot where the deer had to be taken aboard. The work was all
new to us. The deer, instead of being tame as they had previously
been, were wild at best, and wilder still from their breeding season.
The days went by, and we succeeded in getting only a few aboard. We
were all greenhorns with the lassoes and lariats which we improvised.
A gale of wind came on and nothing could be done but lie up.
Then followed a fine Sunday morning. It was intensely interesting to
note the attitude which my crew could take toward my decision to work
all day after morning prayers. We talked briefly over the emphasis
laid by the four Evangelists on Christ's attitude toward the day of
rest, and what it might mean, if we allowed a rare fine day to go by,
to that long section of coast which we had not yet this year visited,
and which might thus miss the opportunity of seeing a doctor before
Christmas. As since this war has begun I have felt that the Christ
whom I wanted to follow would be in France, so now I felt that the
Christ of my ideal would go ashore and get those deer in spite of the
great breach of convention which it would mean for a "Mission" doctor
to work in any way, except in the many ways he has to work every
Sunday of his life. The whole crew followed me when I went ashore,
saying that they shared my view--all except the mate, who spent his
Sunday in bed. Idleness is not rest to some natures, either to body or
mind, and when at night we all turned in at ten o'clock, wet
through--for it had rained in the evening--and tired out, we were able
to say our prayers with just as light hearts, feeling that we had put
sixty-eight deer aboard, as if we had enjoyed that foretaste of what
some still believe to be the rest of heaven. Rest for our souls we
certainly had, and to some of us that is the rest which God calls His
own and intends shall be ours also. When later I spoke to some young
men about this, it seemed to them a Chestertonian paradox, that we
should actually hold a Sunday service and then go forth to render it.
They thought that Sunday prayers had to do only with the escaping the
consequences of one's sins.
I still believe that we were absolutely right in our theory of the
introduction of the deer into this North country, and that we shall be
justified in it by posterity. That these thousands of miles, now
useless to men, will be grazed over one day by countless herds of deer
affording milk, meat, clothing, transport, and pleasure to the human
race, is certain. They do not by any means destroy the land over which
they rove. On the contrary, the deep ruts made by their feet, like the
ponies' feet in Iceland, serve to drain the surface water and dry the
land. The kicking and pawing of the moss-covered ground with their
spade-like feet tear it up, level it, and cut off the dense moss and
creeping plants, bring the sub-soil to the top, and over the whole the
big herd spreads a good covering of manure.
Reindeer-trodden barrens, after a short rest, yield more grass and
cattle food than ever before. No domesticated animal can tolerate the
cold of this country and find sustenance for itself as can the deer.
It can live as far north as the musk-ox. Peary found reindeer in
plenty on the shores of the polar sea. The great barren lands of
Canada, from Hudson Bay north of Chesterfield Inlet away to the west,
carry tens of thousands of wild caribou. Mr. J.B. Tyrrell's
photographs show armies of them advancing; the stags with their lordly
horns are seen passing close to the camera in serried ranks that seem
to have no end.
Our own experiment is far from being a failure. It has been a success,
even if only the corpse is left in Newfoundland. We have proved
conclusively that the deer can live, thrive, and multiply on the
otherwise perfectly valueless areas of this North country, and furnish
a rapidly increasing domesticated "raw material" for a food and
clothing supply to its people.