Editor’s Note: This is the fourth post in Part IV of the Visual Cultures of the Circumpolar North series edited by Isabelle Gapp and guest edited by Jonathan Peyton.
In the 1880s and 90s, the American traveller, missionary and educationalist Sheldon Jackson undertook a series of expeditions across Alaska. The purpose of these expeditions was to establish new churches and religious educational institutions throughout the region. During these expeditions, however, Jackson observed what he considered to be a dire economic situation unfolding amongst the various Indigenous communities he encountered. As he explained, “[A] process of slow starvation and extermination has commenced along the whole Arctic coast of Alaska. Villages that once numbered thousands have been reduced to hundreds.”1
Jackson was clear in the reasons behind this apparent “extermination.” He argued that the non-Indigenous whalers operating in the Bering Strait had depleted the number of whales and other sea mammals to such an extent that Iñupiat communities situated along the Alaskan coast were facing severe difficulty in sourcing sufficient amounts of food. As his report on the situation somewhat dramatically concluded; “It does not take long to figure out the end. They will die off more and more rapidly as the already insufficient food supply becomes less and less.”2 Guided by his devout Presbyterian morals, and driven by a “civilising” missionary mindset, Jackson was unable to let this seemingly catastrophic situation continue. He therefore devised an ambitious plan to “rescue” the Iñupiat from their apparent plight.
The foundations for the plan lay across the shallow waters of the Bering Strait. Having observed the reindeer herding practices carried out by Siberian Chukchi communities during his travels, Jackson planned to transfer this form of subsistence economy into Alaska.3 As he explained in the first in a series of reports written for the United States Government documenting these ambitions:
There is a better, cheaper, more practical, and more humane way [to support Iñupiat communities], and that is to introduce into Northern Alaska the domesticated reindeer of Siberia, and train the E****o young men in their management, care, and propagation.4
The map shown in Figure 1 below accompanied Jackson’s report and visually demonstrates the reasoning behind the plan. On the Siberian side of the Bering Strait, the labels that read “Herds of Domesticated Reindeer / Land of the Tchuckchees” indicate an abundance of animal and human resources available in these regions. On the Alaskan side meanwhile, the labels reading “Good Pasturage for Reindeer” signify that the region was ripe for the introduction of these animals. Based on the logic conveyed in this map then, Jackson’s plan was seemingly infallible.
The map was not the only form of visual material presented in the reports. There was, in fact, an array of images featured across the series of sixteen “reindeer reports” that Jackson produced during his involvement in the scheme from 1890 to 1906. These fascinating materials require closer analytical attention, not only for the intriguing glimpses they offer into the ambitious yet troubling reindeer project as it developed, but because they also reveal important insights into Jackson’s desperation for the project to succeed.
The first set of images contained in the reports is a series of photographs which document the initial stages of the reindeer scheme’s implementation. The photos show Chukchi herders being shipped over to Alaska (Figure 2) and establishing the reindeer herding station at Teller (Figure 3). By supplementing the written reports with these photographs, Jackson was able to provide updates on the scheme using this relatively novel – and notably persuasive – visual medium. Jackson presumably hoped these photographs would demonstrate that the plan was being executed successfully and would in turn bolster his requests for much needed financial support from sponsors in the South.
A second, more intriguing, set of visual materials also feature in Jackson’s reports. Accompanying the photographs above are a series of hand drawn illustrations (Figures 4-8). Importantly though, it is immediately apparent that Jackson was not the artist that created them. As a tantalising passage in the introduction to the 1894 report reads:
As illustrating the native skill in drawing and their methods of travel and hunting the wild reindeer I inclose [sic] a few pencilings made by E****os at the Reindeer Station.8
It seems Jackson had arranged for a series of drawings created by members of the Iñupiat community to be reproduced within these “official” government publications. It is also worth noting that he would have had to cover the substantial costs that such reproductions would have incurred. The usual decision to include these fascinating drawings within the reindeer reports demands further attention.
First of all, the drawings presented in the reports should be considered as a means for Jackson to communicate valuable ethnographic information. We can see this in Figures 4 and 5 which feature (stereo)typical depictions of Iñupiat life; figures are shown traversing the mountains of the Alaskan uplands and using dogs and sleds to travel across the Arctic landscape. We must remember that at the time of Jackson’s travels, Alaska had only recently come under the political jurisdiction of the United States and that still little was known about this vast region within the metropolitan centres of power such as Washington DC and New York. Any knowledge pertaining to the region – and importantly its inhabitants – was therefore incredibly desirable. Jackson was thus keen to communicate all the information he could gather to his colleagues, sponsors and political backers in the South, not only to fill this significant knowledge gap, but to also represent himself as a leading expert on this “unexplored” region.
The series of illustrations also serve a second purpose. Looking closely at the sketches, it is clear that many of them are focused on members of the Iñupiat community carrying out traditional practices of caribou hunting. In Figure 6, for example, we can see an Iñupiat hunter stalking a caribou, while in Figure 7 we can see arrows being fired at the animals by an Iñupiat figure. Figure 8 meanwhile shows the results of a successful hunt with a member of the community carrying a deceased caribou on his shoulders.
The sketches were therefore not simply a series of (pseudo)ethnographic vignettes. Like the photographs above, they were in fact a tool used by Jackson to demonstrate that his ambitious reindeer herding scheme was feasible. By reproducing drawings that the community themselves had produced, Jackson was able to convey Iñupiat familiarity with caribou and demonstrate their skills in interacting with and hunting the animal. The series of drawings thus convey a clear message to the reader that the community would respond well to Jackson’s reindeer herding intervention. Readers are led to believe that Iñupiat would simply require instruction on how to interact with these animals in new ways, and could easily be taught to do so by their Chukchi neighbours shown in the photographs above.
Jackson’s reindeer reports, and the visual materials they contain, were therefore as much about conveying the viability of the Alaska reindeer herding scheme as they were about recounting the events that had unfolded. They presented a carefully mediated set of visual materials intended to present Jackson as an authority on the region, and by doing so added credibility to a scheme which might otherwise have been considered an ambitious folly. Jackson’s plan in many ways typifies the ways in which non-Indigenous peoples have historically intervened into the lives of various Arctic inhabitants – both human and non-human. There were in fact various attempts to introduce both reindeer and other animals across the Arctic throughout the nineteenth century, often with the intention of transforming indigenous lives and livelihoods.14 Yet the reindeer reports also provide an important reminder that these interventions rarely garnered unwavering support. They needed to be promoted and celebrated in order to secure further funding, and their aims and ambitions needed to constantly be defended and justified. Finally, we must also remember that while Jackson’s plan proved to be relatively successful and reindeer herding did continue in Alaska for many years, ambitious imperial interventions such as this were regularly prone to failure. In too many instances, these hubristic failures were to have catastrophic consequences for the very Indigenous Arctic peoples they were designed to support.15
Notes
[1] Sheldon Jackson, Introduction of Reindeer into Alaska: Preliminary Report of the General Agent of Education for Alaska to the Commissioner of Education. (Washington, D.C.: Government Print Office, 1890), p.5.
[2] Jackson, 1890, p.6.
[3] Sheldon Jackson, ‘The Arctic Cruise of the United States Cutter “Bear”’, National Geographic Magazine 7 (1896): 27–31.
[4] Jackson, 1890, p.6.
[5] Sheldon Jackson, Report on Introduction of Domesticated Reindeer into Alaska (Washington, D.C.: Government Print Office, 1893), p.16.
[6] Sheldon Jackson, Report on Introduction of Domesticated Reindeer into Alaska (Washington, D.C.: Government Print Office, 1894), p.49.
[7] Jackson, 1894, p.49.
[9] Jackson, 1894, p.93.
[10] Jackson, 1894, p.89.
[11] Jackson, 1894, p.69.
[12] Jackson, 1894, p.64.
[13] Jackson, 1894, p.81.
[14] Dolly Jørgensen, ‘Moving Muskoxen as an Arctic Resource in the Twentieth Century’, in The Cambridge History of the Polar Regions, ed. Adrian Howkins and Peder Roberts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023); Peder Roberts and Dolly Jørgensen, ‘Animals as Instruments of Norwegian Imperial Authority in the Interwar Arctic’, Journal for the History of Environment and Society 1 (2016): 65–87; Andrew Stuhl, ‘The Experimental State of Nature: Science and the Canadian Reindeer Project in the Interwar North’, in Ice Blink: Navigating Northern Environmental History, ed. Stephen Bocking and Brad Martin (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2016).
[15] Søren Rud, Colonialism in Greenland: Tradition, Governance and Legacy (Springer, 2017); John S. Milloy, A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residential School System (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2017); Frank Tester and Peter Kulchyski, Tammarniit (Mistakes): Inuit Relocation in the Eastern Arctic, 1939-63 (Vancouver, BC: UBC Press, 2011).
Feature image: Member of Iñupiat community carrying a deceased reindeer. Image: Sheldon Jackson, Report on Introduction of Domesticated Reindeer into Alaska (Washington, D.C.: Government Print Office, 1894), 81.
Peter R. Martin