THREE YEARS' TREK.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21076, 9 January 1932, Page 11

THREE YEARS' TREK.

HERD OF REINDEER. FOOD FOR ESKIMOS. BIG CANADIAN SCHEME. [FROM OT7B OWN CORRESPONDENT.] VANCOUVER. Dec. 9. Canada's first herd of reindeer, numbering approximately 3000, which has been on the hoof for nearly thre6 years from Western Alaska, where they were purchased by the Dominion Government from Messrs. Lomen Brothers, noted reindeer ranchers, has arrived at the delta of the Mackenzie River, where it will form the nucleus of vast herds to be planted across Northern Canada to provide a permanent supply of food and clothing for the Eskimo. Four families of Lapps, who recently arrived from Finmark, a Norwegian province, have reached Kittigazuitt, in the Mackenzie Estuary, having done the last stage of their journey in a scow specially built for them at Fort Smith, headquarters of the North-west Territories Administration. Accompanying the little Lapp colony was Mr. A. E. Porsild, a Dane, who, with his brother, has carried on all negotiations for the Canadian Government of the purchase, transport and settlement of the first reindeer in the Canadian Arctic. When the present herd is assimilated to its new surroundings, it is intended that tha stock will be replenished by further drafts until the supply is strong enough to provide a basis for natural increase that will be gradually trekked eastward until the last base is established east of Hudson Bay. thereby consummating one of the most notable achievements in the history of Canada. Future o1 Arctic Natives. Behind this ambitious scheme is the anxiety of the Dominion Government for the future of the Eskimo. The white man's high-powered rifle drove the caribou, the former food and clothing supply of the Arctic natives, to change their migration. Then the Eskimo took to trapping, traded his product for the white man's food and acquired his bodily ills, losing traditional resistance to the rigors of the Arctic. Igloos are becoming rare as Eskimos acquire white men's log shacks. The Government hopes that, by spreading the reindeer across the Far North, the Eskimo will settle in ranching colonies and that the birth-rate, reduced by years of semi-starvation, will overhaul the death-rate and enhance the natural increase. Sir Richard Grenfell, who has a small herd of reindeer in Labrador, thus illustrates their prospective value when their numbers increase:—"The fresh milk of the does has supplied us with what is a real vital necessity and one obtainable in Labrador in no other way, while the excellent and easily-made cheeses afford a means of storing nutriment in a palatable and assimilable form without any outlay for & preserving plant." Encouraging the Eskimos.

The Government of Canada intends to encourage the Eskimos to own their own reindeer ranches. Approximately 600,000 reindeer in Alaska—two-thirds of the territory's stock—are owned by 10,000 Eskimos. Mr. E. W. Sawyer, who made an investigation into the reindeer meat industry for the United States Government last year, prophesied that a huge export trade will be built up through cooperative marketing associations, similar to the grain pools of the Middle [West. He recommended that Eskimos be given land grants to develop production and that existing grazing leases be extended inland from the Alaska coast, to which breeding has hitherto been confined. Mr. Sawyer's views are endorsed by the leading Alaska breeders. Mr. Leonard Baldwin, a New York financier, who has extensive reindeer interests in Alaska, says the industry has now a payroll of about £200,000. The Government of Canada has made a thorough investigation of developments in Alaska and intends to profit by American experiments in its endeavour to establish a prosperous community of Eskimo reindeer ranchers in the Canadian Arctic.