page_title: Alaska Reindeer Service
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Alaska Reindeer Service / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Teller Reindeer Station herd (Alaska)
context_page_description: Alaska Reindeer Service was established for the benefit of the U.S. territory of Alaska by Congressional action on 3 March 1893. The ARS was an integral part of the educational system of northern and western Alaska. The superintendent of education of Alaska Natives had general supervision of the work. The district superintendents in northern and western Alaska were supervisors of the reindeer industry within their districts. The first annual expenditure for the period of 1893-94 was US$5,998.
  The establishment of the ARS was the earliest Governmental action providing, by the introduction of a new industry, practical vocational training adapted to community needs, guaranteeing assured support, and resulting in training indigenous peoples into independence. The purpose of the ARS was to accomplish the general distribution of the reindeer among the villages as rapidly as the Inupiat and Yupiit could be trained, by means of a system of apprenticeship, to care for and use the reindeer, resulting in the ultimate establishment of the reindeer enterprise upon a self-supporting basis, for the Inupiat of the Seward Peninsula.
context_section_description: Pending the securing of a congressional appropriation for the support of the enterprise, an appeal was made to individuals for a preliminary sum in order that an experiment might be commenced at once. With $2,146 thus secured, 16 deer were purchased in 1891, and 171 in 1892. In 1893, Congress realized the importance of the movement and made the first appropriation of $6,000 for the work of importing reindeer from Siberia into Alaska. It continued its support by annual appropriations ranging from $5,000 to $25,000, the appropriation for the fiscal year 1919—20 being $7,500.
  During nine seasons, the revenue cutter Bear carried agents of the Bureau of Education back and forth between Siberia and Alaska, and transported Siberian reindeer to Alaska. The work was exacting in the extreme, beleaguered, uncharted coast, long delays in dangerous waters, patient bargaining in sign language with Siberians, tedious payment for the reindeer, hard work in transporting deer in the Bear's boats from shore to ship, discomfort on board while on the Way to Alaska, and much labor in the landing of deer on the Alaskan side. The total number of deer thus imported into Alaska from 1892 to 1902, when the Russian Government withdrew its permit, was 1,280.  
  At the commencement of the service, Port Clarence, on the Seward Peninsula, the nearest harbor to northeast Siberia, was selected as the receiving point for the reindeer brought over season after season. As the work grew, Teller Reindeer Station, on Port Clarence, became the base of supply from which winter after winter, herds were sent out over northern Alaska to establish new centers of the reindeer industry. 
  In 1907, William Thomas Lopp, who became superintendent education of indigenous peoples of Alaska, in charge of all the work of the Bureau of Education in Alaska, was called to Washington, D.C. to codify regulations for the reindeer service. During a long period of service in Arctic Alaska, Lopp had traveled widely in that region. He knew the people by name, he spoke their language, and in 1897—98, he had been one of the men to drive a herd of reindeer from Cape Prince of Wales to Point Barrow, in the dead of winter, for the relief of a party of whalers reported as starving at that point.
  The regulations adopted provide for the distribution of the reindeer by a system of apprenticeship, by which promising and ambitious young Alaskans are selected by each local superintendent as apprentices for a term of four years, receiving at the end of each year the number of reindeer prescribed by the regulations. Upon the satisfactory termination of his apprenticeship the apprentice becomes a herder and assumes entire charge of his herd, subject to the supervision of the district and local school authorities. In accordance with the regulations, the herder must in turn employ apprentices and distribute reindeer to them, thus becoming an additional factor in the extension of the enterprise. In order to safeguard the reindeer industry for the natives, the regulations forbid the disposal of female reindeer to others than natives of Alaska.
caption: Reindeer at Teller Station, 1892
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