Here is an unusual photo of the Laplanders who brought reindeer from the northern part of Sweden and Finland to Alaska in 1898. The entire endeavor (Sheldon Jackson’s idea) proved to be a failure with most of the reindeer dying, but it must have been a grand adventure for the Lapps!
This is always attributed to Jackson, when in fact he saw the devastation when he accompanied Capt. Michael Healy on the Revenue Cutter The Bear to the Arctic. I have read some of Healy’s accounts of that trip and he indicates they discussed it and it was the Revenue Dept. that provided the funds for the reindeer. So there!
Thanks Dimitra, I was just going on my vague memory there, there is a whole book on the subject and you’r right about the Federal Government wanting to get involved and saw this as an easy solution to the “starving American miners” in Canada. As I recall, it involved many thousands of wasted tax dollars, not to mention the poor reindeer.