sr 
 
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r OL. IV, No. 2 April-June, 1917 
 
 MEMOIRS OF THE 
 
 MERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL 
 ASSOCIATION 
 
 THE REINDEER AND ITS DOMESTICATION 
 
 BY 
 
 BERTHOLD LAUFER 
 
 PUBLISHED QUARTERLY FOR THE 
 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION 
 
 AT 41 NORTH QUEEN ST., LANCASTER, PA., U, S, A. 
 
 Application made for entry at the Post Office at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, as second-class matter, 
 Act of Congress of March 3, 1879. 
 
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THE REINDEER AND ITS DOMESTICATION 
 
 BY 
 BERTHOLD LAUFER 
 

 
THE REINDEER AND ITS DOMESTICATION 
 BY BERTHOLD LAUFER 
 
 THE domestication of the reindeer has not yet been satis- 
 factorily expounded. Some interesting though brief essays 
 on the subject have been contributed by scholars engaged 
 in the research of animal domestication, first of all, by E. Hahn, 1 
 in his admirable work Die Haustiere, whose chapter on the rein- 
 deer is the best hitherto written; then follow C. Keller, 2 R. Miiller, 3 
 L. Reinhardt, 4 and M. Hilzheimer. 5 These various contributions 
 are useful as far as they go; but what we miss in them, above all, 
 are the historical and ethnographical points of view, and the 
 exploitation of the abundant material accumulated by ethnog- 
 raphers who have had occasion to study reindeer-breeding tribes 
 at close quarters. The Russian explorers of Siberia occupy here 
 the first place; and it was one of the writer's chief aims to avail 
 himself of their data, as far as this literature is accessible to him. 
 While the observations of ethnographers working in the field are 
 of prime importance, the interpretations of their data must oc- 
 casionally be subjected to certain modifications, not all ethnog- 
 raphers being sufficiently schooled in the problems of domestica- 
 tion, or familiar with the methods and results of that science. 
 The novel feature of the present investigation lies in the fact that 
 here for the first time early Chinese sources relative to the domesti- 
 
 1 Die Haustiere und ihre Beziehungen zur Wirtschaft des Menschen, eine geogr aphis che 
 Studie (Leipzig, 1896), pp. 262-267. Compare the same author's " Die Transport- 
 tiere in ihrer Verbreitung und in ihrer Abhangigkeit von geographischen Beding- 
 ungen," Verhandlungen des XII. Deutschen Geographentages in Jena (1897), pp. 186- 
 187. 
 
 2 Naturgeschichte der Haustiere (Berlin, 1905), pp. 198-202; Stammesgeschichte 
 unserer Haustiere (Leipzig, 1909), p. 93; also in Kraemer's Der Menken und die Erde t 
 vol. i, p. 257. 
 
 3 Die geographische Verbreitung der Wirtschaflstiere (Leipzig, 1903), pp. 137-148. 
 
 4 Kulturgeschichte der Nutztiere (Miinchen, 1912), pp. 228-237. 
 
 5 Die Haustiere in Abstammung und Entwicklung, pp. 72-73. 
 
 91 
 
 369363 
 
92 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION [MEMOIRS, 4 
 
 cated reindeer are laid under contribution, and that an effort has 
 been made to determine the origin of the domestication more 
 precisely as to time and space. The writer attempts to answer three 
 questions, as far as this is possible in the present state of science: 
 When did the primeval domestication originate? Where was the 
 center of it, and how did it propagate from this center to other 
 culture areas? What was the process that brought the primeval 
 domestication about? 
 
 At the outset two current popular notions connected with the 
 Old-World reindeer should be banished, that the reindeer isT"t 
 exclusively an inhabitant of the tundra of northern Europe and I 
 Asia, and that it is employed exclusively by the peoples inhabiting 1 
 the northern littorals of Europe and Asia. The reindeer haurffs 
 the woods of high mountainous districts as well, and thrives in the 
 forests of the Ural and Baikal regions. The records referring to 
 the woodland reindeer are much older than those pertaining to the 
 tundra reindeer of the maritime coasts. It will be seen that in all 
 likelihood we have to assume an historical relation between the 
 two varieties; that is to say, the woodland reindeer is the first in 
 point of time that was domesticated, and spread from southern 
 into northern regions, gradually developing into the tundra rein- 
 deer through infusion with the blood of wild forms of the tundra. 
 The wild reindeer has the same southern expansion: it abounds in 
 the extensive woods of the governments Vyatka and Perm and in 
 the adjoining northern portion of Kazan, in Russia. Entire herds 
 formerly migrated from the Ural into the afforested region between 
 the Kama and Ufa (56 N. lat.), even as far as the southern wood- 
 land boundary line, almost as far as 52 N. lat. 1 The Bashkir hunt 
 the animal along the Ufa under 55 N. lat. 
 
 1 J. F. Brandt, Zoogeographische und palaeontol. Beitrdge (St. Petersburg, 1867), 
 p. 65. See also A. Nehring, Ueber Tundren und Steppen der Jetzt- und Vorzeit (Berlin, 
 1890), pp. 31, 108. P. S. Pallas (Reise dutch verschiedene Provinzen des russischen 
 Reichs, vol. in, p. 470) reported in 1773, " In the fir-tree woods on the Ufa and through- 
 out the woodlands as far as the Kama, there are, aside from other deer, still many 
 wild reindeer (in Bashkir yusa), frequently wandering in large herds, and, judging 
 from the antlers I saw, somewhat smaller than the northern ones." 
 
LAUFER] THE REINDEER AND ITS DOMESTICATION 93 
 
 HISTORICAL NOTES 
 
 The first and most prominent fact about the domesticated 
 reindeer is that it is entirely lacking in aboriginal America (the 
 artificial introduction into Alaska is of very recent date), and 
 represents an exclusive cultural property of the Old World. North 
 America abounds in wild reindeer (known as caribou) and elk or 
 moose; but the native population only hunted these animals, and 
 never made any endeavor to domesticate them. Consequently 
 the Old-World domestication cannot be a priori of very ancient 
 date, but was accomplished only at a late time, when the population 
 of America was settled. This consideration will be amply con- 
 firmed by the history of the domestication. 
 
 Certain it is that the classical authors have left us no account 
 whatever of the domesticated reindeer. The Danish archaeologist 
 G. F. L. Sarauw 1 has made a very interesting study of the informa- 
 tion contained in the writings of the ancients in regard to elk and 
 wild reindeer, but there is complete silence as to tamed forms. 
 Hahn 2 is quite right in maintaining that the Greeks were not so 
 unfamiliar with the north of eastern Europe that such a striking 
 phenomenon as the tamed harts should not have been known 
 among them in one form or another, had they existed at the time; 
 but all observations of the ancients strictly refer to wild forms. 
 This state of affairs meets its parallel among the Chinese. They 
 were well acquainted with the host of tribes living in the north 
 and northwest of their country, but in no Chinese author of the 
 pre-Christian era do we meet with a single notice of the reindeer. 
 Only at the end of the fifth century A.D. did tidings of a tame stag, 
 used for drawing sledges and for milking, reach the ears of the 
 Chinese. It is well known that the wild reindeer was among the 
 game hunted by paleolithic man of western Europe. There is no 
 evidence that he ever attempted to domesticate this animal. Its 
 domestication manifestly falls within historical times; and, if so, 
 there must be some way of calculating by historical methods more 
 
 1 "Das Rentier in Europa zu den Zeiten Alexanders und Caesars," published in 
 Mindeskrift for Japetus Steenstrup (K0benhavn, 1913), 34 p., 4. 
 
 2 Haustiete, p. 263. 
 
94 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION [MEMOIRS, 4 
 
 exactly the terminus a quo. The students of domestication have 
 usually regarded that of the reindeer as a comparatively recent 
 event, and as the most recent of all domestications; but their 
 impressions naturally have remained of a somewhat vague char- 
 acter. C. Keller 1 remarks: 
 
 The passage into the state of domesticity cannot have taken place at an 
 early date, since neither specific races have as yet been formed, nor is the sub- 
 missiveness to man much developed. The herds graze wherever it suits them; 
 and the business of milking is very complex, as the cows behave stubbornly. 
 
 L. Reinhardt 2 has expressed the following opinion : 
 
 The reindeer wa's elevated by man into a domesticated animal at a very 
 late period, and generally is still domesticated very deficiently. The time when 
 this happened can no longer be determined; however, it cannot have taken place 
 much earlier than five hundred years ago. 
 
 This figure is far too low, and must be multiplied at least by three, 
 as we have Chinese allusions to the domestic reindeer dating in the 
 \/ fifth century A.D. Even without such historical data, Reinhardt's 
 calculation would hardly be acceptable, as the wide geographical 
 distribution of the reindeer would argue in favor of a much earlier 
 domestication. M. Wilcken's assertion 3 that the domestication 
 of the reindeer took place in prehistoric times misses the mark 
 entirely. 
 
 The earliest reference to tame reindeer in western sources is 
 contained in the famous narrative of the Norseman Ohthere, who 
 " said to his lord, King Alfred, that he dwelt farthest north of all 
 Northmen." Ohthere, of whom we unfortunately know very 
 little, was born in Haloga (Helge)-land in Norway, and undertook 
 in A.D. 890 several voyages, one of which was from Norway toward 
 the extreme northern coasts. In the course of his travelings he 
 rounded the North Cape, discovered the White Sea, where he 
 reached the south coast of the Kola Peninsula, and became ac- 
 quainted with the Finn and Biarmians (Beormas) or Permians in 
 the northeast of European Russia. The memorable account of 
 
 1 H. Kraemer, Der Mensch und die Erde, vol. I, p. 257. 
 
 2 Kulturgeschichte der Nutztiere, p. 232. 
 
 3 Grundziige der Naturgeschichte der Haustiere (2d ed. by J. U. Duerst), (Leipzig, 
 1905), p. 172. 
 

 LAUFER] THE REINDEER AND ITS DOMESTICATION 95 
 
 his expeditions was included by Alfred the Great in his Anglo- 
 Saxon translation of the Hormista of Paulus Orosius. 1 Here we 
 read as follows: 
 
 He [Ohthere] was a very rich man in those possessions in which their wealth 
 consists, that is, in wild animals. He still had when he came to the king six 
 hundred tame deer unsold. These deer they call 'reindeer;' six of them were 
 decoy-deer; these are much prized among the Finn, because they capture the 
 wild deer with them. He ranked with the foremost men in the land, though he 
 had not more than twenty cattle, twenty sheep, and twenty swine; and the 
 little that he ploughed he ploughed with horses. 2 
 
 Schlozer 3 and I. A. Sjogren, 4 taking the term " Finn " in Oh- 
 there 's narrative in the sense of " Lapp," have advanced the 
 theory that he lived among Lapp and spoke their language, 5 and 
 that it was Lapplanders, who cared for his reindeer purchased from 
 them. This theory is baseless, and we gain nothing from it. 
 Whether Ohthere had obtained his reindeer from Lapp or Finn or 
 Scandinavians, or had captured them himself, his story can prove 
 little or nothing along the line of domestication; at best, it shows 
 the very first stage necessary in reaching this object. All members 
 of the family Cervidae may easily be driven into enclosures and 
 kept there indefinitely, for which many examples will be cited 
 hereafter. Ohthere does not state that he made any practical 
 
 1 The original manuscript of Alfred's work, beautifully written, is preserved in 
 the Cottonian collection of manuscripts in the British Museum. It was first published 
 by Daines Harrington under the title, The Anglo-Saxon Version from the Historian 
 Orosius, by Alfred the Great. Together with an English translation from the Anglo- 
 Saxon (London, 1773). 
 
 2 J. McCubbin and D. T. Holmes, Orosian Geography, p. 8. J. Bosworth, De- 
 scription of Europe and the Voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan, written in Anglo-Saxon 
 by King Alfred the Great, p. 12, translates: "He had, moreover, when he came to the 
 King, six hundred tame deer of his own breeding." The Anglo-Saxon text of the 
 above passage runs as follows: "J>a deor hi hata'S ' hranas; ' }>ara waeron syx stael- 
 hranas; fta beoS swytSe dyre mid Finnum, for ftaem hjTfoft ba wildan hranas mid." 
 
 3 Allgemeine nordische Geschichte, p. 445. 
 *Gesammelte Schriften, vol. I, p. 314. 
 
 6 This point is rather doubtful. All that Ohthere himself tells us in point of 
 language amounts to this: " The Permians told him many stories both of their own 
 land and of the lands which were around them, but he did not know how much was 
 truth as he did not see it himself. It seemed to him that the Finn and the Permians 
 spoke nearly the same language." This observation does not lend itself to far-reaching 
 conclusions. 
 
96 AMERICAN ATNHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION [MEMOIRS, 4 
 
 use of his deer. In 'all probability, it was merely the venture of a 
 sportsman, who had an aesthetic pleasure in the animals, like a 
 park-owner in fallow deer. Ohthere's account stands perfectly 
 isolated: we read no more about tame reindeer during or after his 
 time. Only as late as the fifteenth century do we hear for the first 
 time about domesticated reindeer from Russian sources. If at 
 Ohthere's time the Finn or the Lapp had really possessed the rein- 
 deer, we should justly expect to find it mentioned in the Kalewala; 
 but this is not the case. The songs of the Kalewala know only of 
 the elk and the wild Tarandus. 
 
 It is stated by Hahn 1 that, according to Lehrberg, in 1499 the 
 Samoyed, besides dog-sleighs, had reindeer on the backs of which 
 they used to ride. C. Keller 2 has adopted this from him, and the 
 " fact " has finally been popularized in H. Kraemer's Der Mensch 
 und die Erde.* It is striking, of course, that the Sajnoyed should 
 have mounted reindeer in 1499, while they never did so at any 
 later time, nor do so at present. In fact, the reindeer is ridden 
 only by the Soyot and Tungus, not, however, by any western 
 tribes. 4 Thus suspicion is ripe that there may be some misunder- 
 standing of the original Russian source on which this deduction 
 is based. Lehrberg's work in the original German is not within 
 my reach, 5 but I have access to a Russian translation of it and to 
 the Russian document on which his data are based. This is re- 
 printed in Shcseglov's Chronological Review of Important Data from 
 the History of Siberia* and relates to the year 1499. In order to 
 
 1 H austier e, p. 265. 
 
 2 Naturgeschichle der Haustiere, p. 201. 
 
 3 Vol. i, p. 257. Here we even read the absurdity that "the oldest accounts of 
 tame reindeer come from Lehrberg, who in 1499 observes that the Samoyed ride on 
 them," a complete misunderstanding. 
 
 4 Hahn himself was struck by this anomaly, stating farther on (p. 266) that "this 
 exception would seem doubtful to him until further confirmation were received." 
 
 6 The work of A. C. Lehrberg bears the title Untersuchungen zur Erlauterung der 
 aelteren Geschichte Russlands (St. Petersburg, 1816). An interesting analysis of his 
 researches has been given by Klaproth, Memoir es relatifs a I'Asie, vol. I (Paris, 1824), 
 pp. 116-146. 
 
 6 1. V. Shcseglov, Xronologiceski perezen' vazn'aisix dannyx iz istorii Sibiri 1032- 
 1882 (Irkutsk, 1883), p. 12, published by the East-Siberian Section of the Imperial 
 Russian Geographical Society. 
 
LAUFER] THE REINDEER AND ITS DOMESTICATION 97 
 
 understand these events, it is necessary to premise that Ivan the 
 Great (1462-1505), after destroying the liberty of Novgorod, began 
 the conquest of northern Russia, and in that year the Russians 
 completed the subjugation of what was called by. them Yugra; 
 that is, the territory of the Ural Mountains, inhabited by Wogul 
 and other Ugrian tribes, and formerly under the jurisdiction of 
 the Republic of Novgorod, in the documents of which Yugra is 
 mentioned as early as 1264. The expedition of 1499 was conducted 
 under the command of the Prince Semyon Fedorovic Kurbski, 
 Prince Pyotr (Peter) Fedorovic Usati and Vasili Ivanovic Zabolot- 
 ski-Braznik. This enterprise is described in detail in the synchron- 
 ous Russian documents, the result being given thus: 
 
 The military chiefs (voyevody} slew fifty men of the Samoyed l on the rock, 2 
 and captured two hundred reindeer. From this Rock they marched for a week 
 as far as the first town, L'apino, 3 covering altogether 465 verst over this territory. 
 Proceeding from L'apino, they met the Yugor princes who came on reindeer 
 from Obdor; 4 but from L'apino the [Russian] military chiefs (voyevody} traveled 
 on reindeer; the army, however, on dogs. 
 
 This is a literal translation, and in the spirit of the Russian language 
 means that they traveled on sledges drawn by reindeer and dogs 
 respectively. The same verb, sl'i (" they went "), is used with 
 the reindeer and with the dogs (na olen'ax, a rat na sobakax) ; and, 
 
 1 The land cf the Samoyed, under the name Samoyad', is mentioned as early as 
 1096 in the chronicle of Nestor as being situated north of Yugra. In 1246 their name 
 is mentioned by Piano Carpini, who styles them "Samogedes," and ascribes to them 
 dog-heads, as the ancient legend of the KvvoKktpoiKoL was alive in his day. The name 
 may be related to Sameyadna, which the Lapp (in Russian Lop', Lopari) confer on 
 their country. 
 
 2 The Rock (Kamen'), also Rocky Girdle (Kamennyi Poyas), is a designation of 
 the Ural, in accordance with the Ostyak term keu, kev (" stone, mountain, Ural "). 
 See B. Munkacsi, Keleti Szemle, vol. in (1902), p. 276. 
 
 3 Small place (also L'apina) on the banks of the Sygwa in the district (okrug) 
 Berezov, now called Vorulsk. The Sygwa is a side-river of the northern Soswa, 
 which falls into the Ob not far from Berezov. 
 
 4 The original document has the misprint Odor. The question is of Obdor prov- 
 ince (Obdorskaya oblast') on the lower Ob. The settlement Obdor is situated not far 
 from the mouth of the Ob. According to A. Castren, Reiseerinnerungen aus den 
 Jahren 1838-1844, p. 279, who has given a very interesting description of the place, 
 this name should be of Syryan origin, meaning "mouth of the Ob." - An account of 
 Berezov and Obdorsk is found also in P. S. Pallas, Reii>e durch verschiedene Provinzen 
 des russischen Reichs, vol. in, pp. 17-24. Reindeer are still kept in this region. 
 
9 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION [MEMOIRS, 4 
 
 since it cannot be supposed that the soldiers rode astride dogs, 
 it is equally out of the question that riding on reindeer is under- 
 stood. 1 The Samoyed have nothing whatever to do with this 
 affair; the Russian documents of that period clearly distinguish 
 between Yugra and Samoyed, and the situation is perfectly clear. 
 It was the Yugor (Yugrian, Ugrian) princes (Yugorskie kn'azi) 
 who were in possession of reindeer-sledges, in the same manner as 
 their Wogul descendants are at the present time. These were 
 duly captured by their Russian conquerors and placed at the 
 disposal of the commanders on their further inroads into the 
 Ugrian territory, while the soldiers were transported on dog- 
 
 1 The Russian text is by no means ambiguous. If the Russian writer meant to 
 express "riding," he would have used the verb yaxat' verxom. The usual question 
 addressed to the winter traveler in Siberia on his arrival is, "In what way did you 
 come? " which is answered by such phrases as, " On horses " (na losad'ax or kon'ax), 
 " On dogs " (na sobakax), " On reindeer " (na olen'ax}] and it is perfectly understood 
 that he traveled on a sledge drawn by horses, dogs, or reindeer. In the same manner 
 Avril, Travels into Divers Parts of Europe and Asia (London, 1693), p. 161, says in 
 regard to the Samoyed that "they travel upon harts and dogs." The text of Lehr- 
 berg (in the Russian translation, p. 14) is quite clear. "Iz L'apina na vstr'acu Russk'im 
 v'axali Yugorskiye kn'az'ya na olen'ax. L'apino zavoyevano, i ot s'uda voisko 
 poslo dal'aye, voyevody na olen'ax, a procie na san'ax, zapr'azennyx sobakam'i." 
 Lehrberg comments in a note that traveling with dogs was in full swing on the Irtysh 
 as early as 1580, and is still practised in northwestern Siberia, horses not being kept 
 under 62 N. lat.; that formerly also west of the Ural in Perm dogs were employed 
 for transportation, in more ancient times even farther west along the Baltic Sea, 
 as shown by the Esthonian and Finnish phrase for "mile," penni koorm, penicuorma 
 (literally, " dog-load "). Karamzin (Istoriya gosudarstva rossiskago, St. Petersburg, 
 1819, vol. vi, p. 286), the eminent Russian historian, has interpreted the document in 
 the same manner by saying, "Each of these princes sat in a long sledge drawn by rein- 
 deer. The voyevody of John likewise drove on reindeer (ydxali na olen'ax), but the 
 soldiers on dogs (na sobakax), holding in their hands fire and sword for the annihilation 
 of the poor inhabitants." Regarding the Russian expedition of 1499 see also Sjogren, 
 Gesammelte Schriften, vol. l, p. 309; and Aleksandra Dmitrieva, "Pokorenie ugorskix 
 zemel'i Sibiri," pp; 87 el teq., Permskaya Starina (Perm, 1894), no. v. In A. Rambaud's 
 Histo/y of Russia (Boston, 1886), vol. i, p. 221, this event is thus narrated: "In 1499 
 the voyevodi of Ustiug, of the Dwina, and of Viatka advanced as far as the Petchora, 
 and built a fortress on the banks of the river. In the depth of winter, in sledges 
 drawn by dogs, they passed the defiles of the Urals, in the teeth of the wind and snow, 
 slew fifty of the Samoyedi, and captured two hundred reindeer; invaded the territory 
 of the Voguli and Ugrians, the Finnish brethren of the Magyars; took forty enclosures 
 of palisades, made fifty princes prisoners, and returned to Moscow, after having re- 
 duced this unknown country." Here the transportation on reindeer-sleighs as too un- 
 important or troublesome to the historian has been passed over in silence, a curious 
 example of history-writing. 
 
LAUFER] THE REINDEER AND ITS DOMESTICATION 99 
 
 sleighs. Let us hope that " the reindeer-riding Samoyed of 1499 " 
 will thus remain buried never to rise again. The document quoted 
 is of importance, for it shows us that the Uralic Ugrians were 
 acquainted with the domesticated reindeer as a draught animal 
 toward the end of the fifteenth century. In regard to the Samoyed, 
 we can assert on the basis of this account only that reindeer were 
 kept by them. 
 
 When Baron Sigismund von Herberstein was ambassador from 
 the Emperor Maximilian to the Grand Prince Vasili Ivanovic of 
 Muscovy in the years 1517 and 1526, he met at the Court of this 
 Prince in Moscow his interpreter, Gregory Istoma, who in 1496 
 had been sent by the Prince to the Court of King John of Den- 
 mark, where he acquired the Latin language. He gave Herberstein 
 an account of his journey, which had taken him over Great Nov- 
 gorod to the mouths of the Dvina and Potivlo. There the party 
 embarked in four boats, and sailed along the right-hand shore of 
 the ocean; and after accomplishing sixteen miles and crossing a 
 certain gulf, they sailed along the left shore. Leaving the open 
 sea to their right, they came to the people of Finlapeia. Although 
 these people dwell in low cottages, scattered here and there along 
 the seacoast, and lead an almost savage life, Istoma reported, yet 
 they are more gentle in their manners than the wild Laplanders. 
 He stated that they were tributary to the Prince of Muscovy. A 
 voyage of eighty miles, after leaving the land of the Laplanders, 
 brought them to the country of Nortpoden, which was subject to 
 the King of Sweden. The Russians call the country Kaienska 
 Semla; and the people, Kaiemai. After having passed two perilous 
 promontories, they sailed up to the country of the Ditciloppi, 
 who are wild Laplanders, to a place named Dront [Drontheim], 
 two hundred miles north of the Dvina. 
 
 They then left their boats and performed the rest of their journey by land, 
 in sledges. He further related that there are herds of deer there, as plentiful 
 as oxen are with us, which are called in the Norwegian language 'rhen.' They 
 are somewhat larger than our stags, and are used by the Laplanders instead of 
 oxen, and in the following manner: they yoke the deer to a carriage made in the 
 form of a fishing-boat, in which the man is bound by his feet lest he should fall 
 out while the deer is at full speed; in his left hand he holds a bridle, to guide the 
 
100 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION [MEMOIRS, 4 
 
 course of the deer, and in his right a staff, with which to prevent the upsetting of 
 the carriage, if it should happen to lean too much on either side. He stated 
 that, by this mode of travelling, he himself had accomplished twenty miles in 
 one day, and had then let loose the deer; which returned of its own accord to 
 its own master and its accustomed home. Having at length accomplished this 
 journey, they came to Berges [Bergen], a city of Norway, quite in the north, 
 amongst the mountains, and then reached Denmark on horseback. 1 
 
 As Herberstein's narrative is based on the report of Gregory 
 Istoma, whose experience dates back to 1496, we are entitled to say 
 that the Lapp were in the possession of sleigh-drawing reindeer in 
 the latter part of the fifteenth century. 
 
 Olaus Magnus, Archbishop of Upsala and Metropolitan of 
 Sweden, who died in 1568, published in Rome, 1555, his famous 
 work Historic, de gentium septentrionalium variis conditionibus ? 
 where a somewhat lengthy and fairly correct description of the 
 reindeer of Lapland is given. Certainly he is not the first author, 
 as asserted by Hahn, who told Europeans about the tame rein- 
 deer, as Baron von Herberstein .preceded him by a generation. 
 Olaus' account is not based on personal experience, but evidently 
 draughted from hearsay. The English naturalist E. Topsell 3 then 
 gave a description based on Olaus, and justly emphasized that the 
 beast was altogether unknown to the ancient Greeks and Romans. 
 
 It is thus shown that the documentary evidence presented by 
 European history does not mention the domestic reindeer before 
 the latter part of the fifteenth century. I regret not having access 
 to ancient Russian chronicles, especially those of Novgorod and 
 Archangelsk, which might contain facts bearing upon the problem. 
 There is a noteworthy negative evidence presented by the Kalewala, 
 the national .epic poem of the Finn. Here we have a true picture 
 of the primeval cultural conditions in which the Finn lived prior 
 to their christianization (A.D. 1151), also a description of their 
 
 1 Notes upon Russia: being a Translation of the Earliest Account of that Country, 
 entitled Rcrum Moscoviticarum Commentarii by the Baron Sigismund von Herberstein, 
 translated by R. H. Major, vol. n, pp. 105-108, Hakluyt Society. 
 
 2 An English translation appeared in 1658 under the title Compendious History of 
 the Goths, Swedes, and Vandals, and Other Northern Nations. His description of the 
 reindeer is on p. 176. Those who have not access to this edition may be referred to 
 E. Phipson, Animal-Lore of Shakespeare's Time, p. 123, where the passage is extracted. 
 
 3 Historic of Foure-Footed Beastes (1607), p. 592. 
 
LAUFER 
 
 THE REINDEER AND ITS DOMESTICATION 
 
 101 
 
 relations to the Lapp. Sledge-driving is most frequently men- 
 tioned, but the sledges are always drawn by horses. The wild 
 reindeer was an object of the hunt, but there is not the faintest 
 allusion to reindeer kept in captivity under the control of man. 
 The period of this ancient Finnish culture is difficult to gauge by 
 exact dates, but it is generally admitted that the beginning of this 
 national poetry falls between A.D. 800 and Pooo. 1 If we assume 
 that the Lapp adopted the domesticated reinaeer from the Samoyed 
 during the eleventh or twelfth century, we shall probably not 
 commit too great an error of calculation. 
 
 Before leaving the European field, it should be remembered 
 that the theory of a Scandinavian origin of reindeer domestication 
 has also been propounded. Its main champion was a Norwegian 
 scholar, A. Frijs. 2 According to him, the Lapp of the ninth century 
 were not yet reindeer-nomads, but merely hunters and fishermen, 
 whose only domesticated animal was the dog. The domestication 
 of the reindeer they learned from the Scandinavians. The evidence 
 for this bold statement is based on philological arguments: it is 
 proved by the language of the Lapp, for only the dog has a genuine 
 Lapp name ; with the reception of the other domestic animals, the 
 Lapp adopted also their designations; the Lapp has no word for 
 " taming," and has therefore accepted the Scandinavian word 
 for it. It is generally known how fallacious such play with alleged 
 linguistic evidence is; in fact, no serious scholar any longer derives 
 historical conclusions from conditions of language. Frijs evi- 
 dently traced Lapp raingo (" reindeer ") to Scandinavian hreinn, 
 but there is as good reason to believe that the latter is based on 
 the former. In fact, no lesser scholar than Jacob Grimm 3 regards 
 the Lapp word as the foundation of the Germanic forms (Anglo- 
 Saxon hrdn, Old Norse hreinn, Swedish ren, Danish rensdyr, German 
 rein, reiner, renn). Be this as it may, neither the one nor the 
 
 1 D. Comparetti, Kalewala, p. 280 (authorized translation from the Italian). 
 It is noteworthy also that Tacitus (Germania, 46), in his notice of the Fenni, the 
 oldest account of some Finno-Ugrian tribe, makes no mention whatever of deer. 
 
 2 Globus, vol. xxn (1872), p. 2, translation of his work En Sommer i Finmarken, 
 Russisk Lappland og Nordkarelen (Kristiania, 1871). 
 
 3 Deulsches Worterbuch, vol. vii, col. 2007. 
 
JO2 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION [MEMOIRS, 4 
 
 other supposition could prove that the domestication is due to 
 Scandinavians, or to any other nation. It is merely indicative of 
 a fact of language, and nothing else. 
 
 In others, the theory of the Scandinavian origin of reindeer 
 domestication may have been inspired by certain efforts in Sweden 
 to tame the elk (Alces alces or Cervus alces). These, however, 
 belong to recent times, and stories relative to them are not well 
 substantiated by historical records. Although Louis Figuier, in 
 his Mammalia, asserts that in Sweden for two or three centuries 
 the elk was used in the harness, but that the custom is now given 
 up, the objection has justly been raised by J. D. Caton 1 that it is 
 difficult to understand why this alleged domestication was aban- 
 doned in a country so well adapted to its use. Sporadic cases of 
 training elks to harness may formerly have occurred in Sweden; 
 but no general attempt to tame the animal, and certainly no 
 " domestication " of it, has ever taken place. 
 
 As a consequence of geographical conditions, the Chinese were 
 far removed from reindeer-breeding localities; and for this reason 
 we cannot expect to find in their records any coherent and compre- 
 hensive accounts, which would permit us to elaborate an intelligent 
 history of the domestication. The expansion of their political 
 power and the extension of their influence over neighboring tribes, 
 however, enabled the Chinese occasionally to get a glimpse of the 
 curious animal; and for lack of any other sources, their casual 
 mentions of it are of capital importance, and at the same time 
 represent the oldest extant references to the reindeer. 
 
 A very curious allusion to reindeer occurs in the Annals of the 
 Liang dynasty in the description of the mythical country Fu-sang. 2 
 In A.D. 499 the Buddhist monk Huei Shen returned to King-chou, 
 the capital of the Liang, and gave a fabulous account of Fu-sang, 
 alleged to have been situated far off in the northeastern ocean. 
 As to means of conveyance, he reported, the people there have 
 vehicles drawn by horses, oxen, and stags; they raise deer in the 
 
 1 The Antelope and Deer in America, p. 278. 
 
 2 Liang shu, ch. 54, p. 12. This work was compiled by Yao Se-lien in the first 
 half of the seventh century from documents of the Liang dynasty, which ruled from 
 A.D. 502 to 556. 
 
LAUFER] THE REINDEER AND ITS DOMESTICATION 1 03 
 
 manner as oxen are reared in China, and make cream 1 from their 
 milk. The allusion to the reindeer is unmistakable: they are 
 plainly described as being kept in the state of domesticity for the 
 purpose of drawing vehicles (that is, sledges) and for milk-con- 
 sumption. Such an economic condition, as described in this text 
 the simultaneous breeding of horse, cattle, and reindeer is not 
 found, however, in any region of the northern Pacific; and if Fu- 
 sang has been identified with America by some fantasists, the 
 fact remains that neither the domestic horse nor cattle nor rein- 
 deer ever existed in pre-Columbian America. Nor are these con- 
 ditions applicable to the Island of Saghalin, which Schlegel put on a 
 par with the Fu-sang country of the Chinese account: horse and 
 cattle were introduced there only by the Russian settlers in the 
 latter part of the nineteenth century; and the reindeer, as already 
 shown by L. von Schrenck, is there likewise a recent introduction 
 going back to a few centuries. We do not even know whether 
 Saghalin was populated at all in the fifth century. Neither can 
 any Tungusian tribe come into question, since the Tungus employ 
 the reindeer only as a beast of burden and for riding-purposes, but 
 rarely for drawing sledges. The Fu-sang account is a fantastic 
 concoction, devoid of any geographical value, pieced together from 
 heterogeneous elements emanating from different sources and 
 quarters. While each of these elements bears a germ of truth, 
 their combination makes an unreal picture. The breeding of 
 horse, cattle, and reindeer combined, in reality, occurs only in the , 
 Baikal region, particularly among the present Soyot; and Huei 
 Shen's account of the reindeer in connection with horse and cattle 
 has doubtless hailed from that quarter. The ethnic and economic 
 
 1 The Chinese term lo 62 denotes any dairy products, as cream, butter, cheese, 
 sour or fermented milk. The former translators of this text have made a liberal choice 
 without being concerned about what products are actually made of reindeer-milk. 
 Bretschneider had butter made from reindeer-milk, but butter is never produced from 
 it by any East-Siberian tribe. Schlegel (T'oung Pao, vol. in (1892), p. 123) decided 
 on a fermented liquor, but such is never made. In fact, reindeer-milk is not made 
 into any product in northern Asia, but is consumed as it is, in its natural state, as a 
 fatty, creamy substance. S. W. Williams (Journal American Oriental Society, vol. xi, 
 (1882), p. 93) therefore was quite right in translating, "and make cream of their 
 milk." 
 
104 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION [MEMOIRS, 4 
 
 condition of this locality, which is of paramount importance for the 
 history of reindeer domestication, will be fully discussed hereafter. 
 Before mentioning the three kinds of vehicles used in Fu-sang, 
 Huei Shen speaks also of a peculiar breed of oxen with very long 
 horns. According to Williams, the horns were so long that they 
 would hold things the biggest as much as five pecks. According 
 to Schlegel, the oxen could carry on their horns loads weighing up 
 to twenty quintals. 1 Schlegel 2 thinks also that the reindeer is 
 intended by this ox, but it is improbable that Huei Shen would 
 first designate the reindeer as an ox and in the following sentence 
 describe it as a deer. Further, loads are never placed on the rein- 
 deer's antlers; and it is equally inconceivable that loads were ever 
 packed on the horns of an ox. 3 
 
 1 The passage is not very clearly worded, and the text presumably is corrupted. 
 In all probability, it means that the people used these horns for carrying loads in 
 them, the horns holding up to twenty corns (hu jty , a measure of capacity). 
 
 2 L. c., p. 142. 
 
 3 There are several other misconceptions in Schlegel's discussion of the subject. 
 The Manchu term kandahan refers to the elk only, not to the reindeer. The Tungusian 
 name for the " reindeer," oron, has no connection with Russian olen', or -vice versa, as 
 asserted by Schlegel. Russian olen' is an old Indo-European word connected with 
 Lithuanian elnis-, alms; Lettic alnis, Old Prussian alne, German elen, Greek eXa<os 
 (from *eln-bhos) and eXXos (from *elnos, " young hart "); Armenian eln (doe); Cymric 
 elain (doe). The Russians, according to Schlegel, do not discriminate between " stag " 
 and " reindeer," and call both indifferently olen'. Russian olen', however, is the 
 general term for cervus, and the reindeer is properly s'dverni olen' (northern deer), 
 abbreviated into olen' when so understood from the context. Neither H. C. von 
 der Gabelentz nor Zacharov, in their Manchu dictionaries, have noted a word for 
 the reindeer. Such, nevertheless, exists, though it is doubtless a loan-word from 
 Tungusian. The Ts'ing wen hui shu (in Manchu: Manju isabuha bithe, ch. i, p. 46), 
 a Manchu-Chinese dictionary published in 1751 by Li Yen-ki, records the well-known 
 Tungusian term oron as the Manchu designation for the reindeer, giving in Chinese 
 the definition, " name of a cervine animal, antlers growing on the heads of both male 
 and female, subsisting on moss, and raised by the deer-hunters." The same lexico- 
 grapher notes oronggo in the sense of " deer-hunter " (the same word signifies other- 
 wise a wild sheep with long and flat horns, resembling the " yellow sheep," Antilope 
 gutturosa; in this sense the word appears also in Mongol) and the tribal name Oronco-i 
 niyalma. It is not probable that Manchu oron (domesticated reindeer) and iren 
 (wild reindeer) are interrelated words, as proposed by W. Schott (" Ueber das altaische 
 Sprachengeschlecht," Abhandlungen Berliner Akademie (1847), p. 366); for Manchu 
 iren is related to the Tungusian forms him and siru (below the Ussuri) and iru (above 
 the Ussuri), in other Tungusian dialects also hirun, ira (W. Grube, Goldisches Worter- 
 verzeichnis, p. 54). Neither is there any likelihood that, as supposed by 'Schott, 
 there is interrelation of Manchu oron and Lapp ronco or ronca (male reindeer), in 
 which the initial vowel should have been eliminated. 
 
LAUFER] THE REINDEER AND ITS DOMESTICATION 1 05 
 
 The Annals of the T'ang Dynasty (618-906) contain an inter- 
 esting notice of a reindeer-breeding tribe, the Wu-huan, then 
 settled in a region east or southeast of Lake Baikal. This notice 
 runs as follows: 
 
 The Wu-huan Jjj $d or Ku-huan ~& ;jtl , also styled Kii |ij or Kiai $$, , 
 live in the northeast of the Pa-ye-ku fX;Ti5 (Bayirku). In their country 
 there are trees, but grass is lacking, while there is plenty of moss. The inhabitants 
 have neither sheep nor horses, but keep reindeer (stags) in the manner of cattle 
 or horses. These animals subsist only on moss. They are trained to drawing 
 sledges (carts). Reindeer-skins, moreover, are utilized as material for clothing. 1 
 
 In the T'ang hui yao 2 this text is worded as follows : 
 
 Traveling for six days in a north-easterly direction from this country (Pa- 
 ye-ku), one arrives in the country Kii, where there are trees, but no grass. While 
 sheep and horses are absent, there are reindeer. In like manner as cattle and 
 horses are employed in China, the reindeer are used there for drawing sledges, 
 which are capable of carrying three or four persons. The people clothe them 
 selves with reindeer-skin. The reindeer subsists on the moss of the soil. 
 
 The fact that in these texts the reindeer is spoken of as a domestic 
 animal is well attested by the use of the verb huan ^ ("to feed 
 domestic animals with grain ") and by the peculiar employment 
 of the animals in the service of man. The T'ung tien* written by 
 Tu Yu (A.D. 735-812) between the years 766 and 801, with refer- 
 ence to the Wu-huan, employs straightway the term " domesti- 
 cated stag " (kia ch'u lu 'JjH ? /jj?). 
 
 The history of the Wu-huan is -well known from the Chinese 
 Annals. 4 In the time of their early history we hear nothing to the 
 effect that they kept reindeer. Their domestic animals were cattle, 
 horses, sheep, and dogs. In the beginning of the Han dynasty 
 (about 200 B.C.) they were broken up by the Hiung-nu, who are 
 usually regarded as identical with the Huns, and, while subject to 
 the latter, paid their annual tribute in cattle, horses, and sheep. 
 
 1 T'ang &hu, ch. 217 B, pp. 7a-b. 
 
 2 Ch. 98, p. i6b. This work was written by Wang P'u, and completed in A.D. 
 961. 
 
 3 Ch. 199, p. i8b. 
 
 4 See Visdelou in D'Herbelot, Bibliotheque orientale (La Haye, 1779), vol. iv t 
 pp. 79-86 ; E. H. Parker, " History of the Wu-wan or Wu-hwan Tunguses of the 
 First Century," China Review, vol. xx, pp. 71-100, and A Thousand Years of the 
 Tartars, pp. 117-125. 
 
106 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION [MEMOIRS, 4 
 
 They were pastoral nomads, roaming about with their herds wher- 
 ever there was grass and water; tents, always faced toward the 
 east, formed their habitations. Each man, from the chieftain 
 downward, possessed his own flocks and managed his own property, 
 nobody serving another. They were skilful horsemen and archers, 
 given to hunting. Flesh and dairy products were their chief means 
 of subsistence; in a small measure they also grew millet. Their 
 garments were made from bird's down, though they understood the 
 preparation of leather and felt. According to the Chinese system 
 of classification, the Wu-huan were counted among the Tung Hu 
 (Eastern Hu or Barbarians), which term has without any reason 
 been identified with " Tungus." 1 
 
 There is no wonder that the early Wu-huan had no reindeer, 
 for in their habitat this animal did not occur. They were first 
 settled in southern Manchuria, and after the Chinese victories 
 over the Hiung-nu in 120 B.C., were transplanted by the Emperor 
 Wu into what is now the northern part of Chi-li Province and Liao- 
 tung, in order to serve as a sort of buffer-state between China and 
 the Hiung-nu. Skilled horsemen, they were organized into cavalry 
 squadrons. From this time onward that tribe did not play any 
 important role in history. In A.D. 207 they were decisively 
 defeated by Ts'ao Ts'ao at Liu-ch'eng. It is somewhat surprising 
 to meet them in the T'ang period (618-906) in a new geographical 
 environment as northeastern neighbors of the Bayirku, a branch 
 of the Turkish Uigur, and in the entirely new economic condition 
 
 1 This theory belongs to the category of paper etymologies. Phonetically there 
 is not a shadow of a coincidence between Chinese Tung Hu and Tungus, except the 
 initial consonants. The word " Tungus," about the antiquity of which nothing is 
 known, would never have been transcribed by the Chinese in that manner. First, 
 it is used at present only by a few clans of Tungusian tribes, and by just those who are 
 so remote from China, that it may well be doubted that they were ever in contact 
 with her. Secondly, the word written by us " Tungus " is pronounced by the natives 
 claiming this name To-nus, as noted by myself in Siberia. There is neither a g nor 
 an h in it, and the guttural nasal opens the second syllable bearing the accent. The 
 Chinese, accordingly, should they have had occasion to hear this name, would have 
 transcribed it To-nu (ngu), or To-fiu-se. The Chinese term Hu is applied to many 
 other peoples also, especially the Iranians of Central Asia, and even to India. Klaproth 
 (Tableaux historiques de VAsie, p. 83) has already observed with correct instinct that 
 it appears not very probable that the name " Tungus " is derived from Chinese Tung 
 Hu. 
 
LAUFER] THE REINDEER AND ITS DOMESTICATION IO/ 
 
 of reindeer-breeders, as which they do not appear in any earlier 
 period. This branch of the Wu-huan appears to have been a 
 scattered horde, which had remained in its ancient seats, and was 
 driven thence farther to the west, presumably as far as the country 
 east or southeast from Lake Baikal, where the natural conditions 
 for the maintenance of reindeer prevail. In all probability, they 
 struck there a tribe which had already domesticated the reindeer; 
 for Huei Shen's report has shown us that the domestication must 
 have been an, accomplished fact in the fifth century. At any rate, 
 there is no valid reason for crediting the Wu-huan with the initiative 
 or with any originality in this enterprise. They were originally 
 horsemen and cattle-breeders; and when they drifted into their 
 new domicile, they adopted what they found, adapting themselves 
 to this novel economy. 
 
 Marco Polo l speaks of a tribe called by him Mescript, and 
 identified by Yule with the Merkit in the country of Bargu, near 
 Lake Baikal: 
 
 They are a very wild race, and live by their cattle, the most of which are 
 stags and these stags, I assure you, they used to ride upon. 
 
 Certainly this is the reindeer. Yule is inclined to think that 
 Marco embraces under this tribal name in question characteristics 
 belonging to tribes extending far beyond the Mekrit, and which 
 in fact are appropriate to the Tungus; and continues that Rashid- 
 eddin seems to describe the latter under the name of Uriangkut 
 of the Woods, a people dwelling beyond the frontier of Barguchin, 
 and in connection with whom he speaks of their reindeer obscurely, 
 as well as of their tents of birchbark, and their hunting on snow- 
 shoes. As W. Radloff 2 has endeavored to show, the Woodland 
 Uryangkit, in this form mentioned by Rashid-eddin, should be 
 looked upon as the forefathers of the present Yakut. Rashid- 
 eddin, further, speaks of other Uryangkit, who are genuine Mongols, 
 and live close together in the territory Barguchin Tukum, where 
 the clans Khori, Bargut, and Tumat, are settled. This region is 
 
 1 Yule and Cordier, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, vol. I, p. 269. 
 
 2 " Die jakutische Sprache," Memoires de I' Academic des Sciences de St.-Peters- 
 bourg (1908), pp. 54-56. 
 
IO8 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION [MEMOIRS, 4 
 
 east of Lake Baikal, which receives the river Barguchin flowing 
 out of Lake Bargu in an easterly direction. The tribal name 
 Bargut (-t being the termination of the plural) is surely connected 
 with the name of the said river. The Persian historian Rashid- 
 eddm, in his history of the Mongols written in 1302, speaks of a 
 tribe styled Woodland Uryangkit living in forests northeast of 
 Lake Baikal. 1 Their clothing consisted of animal skins. Cattle 
 and sheep were not reared by them, but in place of sheep and cattle 
 they kept mountain-oxen (gawi kohl), mountain-sheep (mis), and 
 jur (Saiga antelope). They tamed these animals, milked them, 
 and consumed this milk. During their peregrinations they loaded 
 the mountain-oxen, but never quitted their forests. Wherever 
 they stopped, they made huts and yurts of birchbark. Rashid- 
 eddin, further, narrates how they bored the birches and drank the 
 birch-juice, and how they hunted in the winter on snowshoes, 
 employing snow-sticks, and dragging along the spoils of the chase 
 on sleighs. This text is very interesting, 2 but the Persian author's 
 description of the domestic animals is by no means clear. Radloff 
 infers that he alludes to a reindeer-breeding hunting-tribe, but he 
 fails to inform us by which of the three animals named in the text 
 he wishes to have the reindeer understood. It might not be im- 
 possible that the latter may be hidden under the mountain-ox; the 
 Scandinavians and Lapp, for instance, apply terms like "ox," 
 " cow," and " calf " to the reindeer. 3 On the other hand, how- 
 ever, as the tame yak occurs in the Baikal region, and particularly 
 among the Uryankhai, the descendants of Rashid-eddin's Uryankit, 4 
 
 1 In another passage of his work, Rashid-eddln states that the designation " wood- 
 land peoples " is meant in contradistinction to peoples inhabiting the steppe; but 
 there are many kinds of forest peoples, because one or another yurt of almost every 
 tribe is in the vicinity of a forest, and because some tribes are distant from forests a 
 month's journey, others two months' journey, others again only a day's journey. 
 
 2 It has frequently been translated: d'Ohsson, Histoire des Mongols, vol. i, pp. 9, 
 421; F. von Erdmann, Ueber^icht der Volkerstamme nach Raschid-ud-din (Kazan, 
 1841), p. 124, and Temudschin, p. 191; Berezin, Istoriya Mongolov, socinenie Rashid- 
 eddina, pp. 90, 141; Radloff, 1. c., p. 54 (revised edition of the text reprinted by Sale- 
 mann, p. 84). 
 
 3 Finnish hdrka and Lapp herke mean " ox," and are applied to the tame reindeer. 
 
 4 In the high mountainous portions of the eastern Sayan, cattle are reared in a 
 few specimens by the Soyot up to an altitude of from five to six thousand feet, but 
 
LAUFER] THE REINDEER AND ITS DOMESTICATION 
 
 it may be permissible to think of the yak as well. There remain 
 the sheep and ihejur. The latter is a Mongol word (dsur) referring 
 to the Saiga antelope. That this animal might be tamed and kept 
 in captivity I do not doubt, but that it has actually been done in 
 the region in question is not known to me. It is not plausible, 
 either, that Rashid-eddin should avail himself, for the designation 
 of the domestic reindeer, of a Mongol term, which strictly denotes a 
 wild beast. Thus the word " sheep " (mis) would be the last 
 resort for the reindeer interpretation. 1 The fact that it is not an 
 ordinary sheep becomes evident from the assertion that this people 
 does not rear sheep. Rashid-eddin obviously speaks from hearsay, 
 without entertaining correct notions of the matter, and his terms 
 are evidently chosen in a state of embarrassment. If we are 
 allowed to read from his text that he describes a reindeer-breeding 
 people, it is less his obscure nomenclature that justifies us in this 
 conclusion than the facts that also contemporaneous Chinese 
 records and Marco Polo know of reindeer in this region, and that 
 these still exist there at the present time, together with yak and 
 horse. 
 
 There is another, ethnographical reason, which for a long time 
 caused me to hesitate to believe in Rashid-eddin's reindeer. Rad- 
 loff regards this writer's Woodland Uryangkit as the ancestors of 
 the modern Yakut, chiefly on the ground that a former appellative 
 of the Yakut was Urangkhai (Urangxai) Sakha ; and he looks upon 
 Urangkhai as the original tribal name of the Yakut. Now, accord- 
 ing to Radloff, the Woodland Uryangkit were a typically reindeer 
 tribe; the Yakut, however, are not. 
 
 If, accordingly, RadlofFs theory of a connection of Rashid- 
 
 southward among the Uryankhai and Darkhat they are frequently replaced by Bos 
 grunniens and its bastard forms with the d<^tic cattle, the so-called khailuk. The 
 Buryat prefer the latter to Bos grunniens, which is known to them through the Uryan- 
 khai. Among these Soyot, as it^^ardly occurs otherwise in the south of eastern 
 Siberia, the domestic ox is found, together with reindeer and horse; the reindeer, how- 
 ever, remains for them the m6st important of the three domesticated animals. G. 
 Radde, Reise im Stiden von Ost-Sibirien, vol. I, Sdugetier-fauna (St. Petersburg, 
 1862), p. 270. 
 
 1 In the language of the Koibal, the reindeer is styled " white goat " (ak klk), 
 according to A. Castren, Koibalische Sprachlehre, p. 75. 
 
HO AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION [MEMOIRS, 4 
 
 eddin's Uryangkit with the present Yakut be correct, we are con- 
 fronted with a fundamental contrast between the cultures of the 
 two peoples. The Uryangkit are supposed to have been active 
 reindeer-breeders, milking the animals, and subsisting on their 
 milk; while the Yakut do not milk them at all, and look upon the 
 whole business as an incidental affair of their life and as a foreign 
 invasion. This contradiction has escaped Radloff, but attention 
 should be called to this anomaly. In their present condition, the 
 Yakut have lived at least since the seventeenth century, when the 
 Russians first became acquainted with them. Rashid-eddin wrote 
 in 1302, so that the transition, if it took place, must have been the 
 outcome of some three centuries; but this would be difficult to 
 accept. In all probability, we shall have to interpret the events 
 somewhat differently. While part of the Uryangkit may have been 
 absorbed by the Yakut, this process need not be invoked to explain 
 the entire ethnic composition of the Yakut. It was merely one of 
 the political events that tended to contribute to the formation of 
 this now powerful tribe, but currents from other directions as well 
 have had their share in its ultimate organization. 
 
 Among the Yakut, now numbering about two hundred thousand, 
 the reindeer represents a secondary acquisition, which they received 
 from the Tungus. This borrowing is upheld by the traditions of 
 the Yakut themselves, who assert that the Tungus are acquainted 
 with no other domestic beast than the reindeer, and that the latter 
 is the truly Tungusian cattle, which for this reason they style 
 " foreign cattle." 1 This fact is brought out by the very conditions 
 obtaining among the Yakut in regard to the reindeer. The Yakut 
 are not a people of nomadic habits, but lead a sedentary life, based 
 chiefly on the maintenance of cattle and horses, on agriculture and 
 fishery. Reindeer take only an insignificant share in their culture, 
 and are kept but reluctantly, mainly in the northern districts of the 
 province of Yakutsk. Reindeer-breeders, as are found among the 
 Tungus, Chukchi, and Samoyed, do not exist in their midst. They 
 merely keep small herds, mainly utilized for driving or as pack- 
 animals. Solely among the Dolgan of Turukhansk, who have 
 
 1 V. L. S'arosevski, The Yakut (in Russian), vol. I, pp. 146, 307. 
 
LAUFER] THE REINDEER AND ITS DOMESTICATION III 
 
 adopted the Tungus practice of nomadism, is the reindeer the 
 exclusive domestic animal. The most curious fact is that the 
 Yakut do not milk their reindeer at all, and slaughter it on rare 
 occasions only, so that no reindeer meat is for sale among them. 
 Their aversion toward nomadic life, and their habit of living in 
 blockhouses, impose many restrictions on the keeping of reindeer, 
 which without any doubt they adopted from Tungusian tribes. 1 
 
 There can be no doubt, however, that during the Mongol 
 period (thirteenth century) the reindeer was kept in a state of 
 domesticity in the Baikal region. We have excellent testimony 
 to this effect in the Chinese Annals of the Mongol Dynasty. 2 Here 
 mention is made of the Kirgiz on the upper Yenisei, and, in con- 
 nection with them, of five smaller territories, apparently inhabited 
 likewise by Kirgiz. One of these is styled Han-ho-na, situated at 
 the source of the Yenisei and east of the River Wu-se (Us), an 
 affluent of the Yenisei. 
 
 This region is accessible only over two mountain-passes and abounds in 
 wild game, while domestic animals are scarce. The poor have no regular means 
 of livelihood and erect hovels from birch-bark. They transport their chattels 
 on white deer and consume the milk of this deer. 
 
 This certainly is the reindeer. It is worthy of note that in the 
 same period we have a report from the Chinese traveler Ch'ang Te 
 (1259) to the effect that the Kirgiz used dogs instead of horses for 
 drawing sledges. 3 Accordingly, we are here confronted with the 
 curious fact that a people in the central and southern part of 
 Siberia was familiar with two specific methods of transportation, 
 which we are wont to connect with the cultures of the peoples in 
 the high north and northeast of Asia. Klaproth 4 thinks that the 
 Han-ho-na were of Samoyed stock, presumably because they kept 
 reindeer; and there is certainly a basis for this assumption. It 
 must be considered, however, that the reindeer is not restricted to 
 
 1 The Yakut's power of assimilation is well characterized by A. v. Middendorff 
 (Die Eingeborenen Sibiriens, p. 1561), who says that among Tungusians and Samoyed 
 the Yakut turns a Tungusian or Samoyed within the briefest space of time. 
 
 2 Yuan shi, ch. 42; 63, p. 32 b (K'ien-lung edition). 
 
 3 E. Bretschneider, Mediaeval Researches, vol. I, p. 129. 
 
 4 Memoir es relatifs a I'Asie, vol. I, p. 113. 
 
112 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION [MEMOIRS, 4 
 
 certain ethnic groups, but is first of all bound to certain localities of 
 specific floristic environment. When a tribal movement took 
 place in the Baikal region, it could well happen that the ownership 
 of the reindeer changed hands. The Kirgiz, taken in their entirety, 
 were neither reindeer-breeders nor keepers of sleigh-dogs: neither 
 the T'ang Annals, which have preserved for us the oldest account 
 of this nation, nor Rashid-eddin 1 or Abulgazi, state that it ever 
 maintained herds of reindeer. 
 
 During the eighteenth century the Chinese noticed the reindeer 
 also in the possession of Tungusian tribes like the Oroci, 2 but these 
 recent references are hardly of historical interest. The news of 
 the occurrence of domestic reindeer on Saghalin was then received 
 in Peking as a novelty. 3 
 
 Reindeer have been traced by sinologues in Chinese records 
 where reindeer cannot be discovered by an unbiased mind. The 
 term Ti ^ is one of those general designations under which the 
 ancient Chinese comprised a certain group of barbarous or semi- 
 barbarous tribes occupying the southern part of present Mongolia. 
 Klaproth 4 argued that the word ti signifies also a large wild stag, 
 and concluded that in ancient times the hordes in question availed 
 themselves of reindeer, like their eastern neighbors, and that for 
 this reason they received the name Ti. 5 This argumentation is 
 open to several objections: true it is, ti may denote a wild stag, 
 but it is nowhere explained as a tamed deer or reindeer. There 
 is no such interpretation, as intimated by Klaproth, of the ethnic 
 term Ti on the part of the Chinese, neither is there any record that 
 the alleged eastern neighbors of those Ti ever kept reindeer. 
 
 1 His account of the Kirgiz has been translated by Klaproth, Memoires relatifs a 
 VAsie, vol. in, p. 366. 
 
 2 Huang ts'ing chi kung t'u, ch. 3. In the memoirs of the Manchu Tulishen's 
 embassy to the Kalmuk (1712-15) the reindeer among the Tungus in the region of 
 Irkutsk is briefly described. See G. T. Staunton, Narrative of the Chinese Embassy 
 to the Khan of the Tourgouth Tartars (London, 1821), p. 70. 
 
 3 Compare Du Halde, Description of the Empire of China, vol. n, p. 247. The 
 Japanese traveler Mamia Rinso, who visited Saghalin in 1808, brought the first account 
 of the reindeer to Japan. Ph. von Siebold, Nippon, vol. n, pp. 229-230. 
 
 4 Tableaux historiques de VAsie, p. 102. 
 
 5 According to Klaproth, Memoires relatifs a VAsie, vol. i, p. 188, the term Pei Ti 
 (Northern Ti) would date only from the T'ang period. It is found, however, at an 
 earlier date; for instance, in the Nan shi (ch. 79, p. 8 a). 
 
LAUFER] THE REINDEER AND ITS DOMESTICATION 113 
 
 It is asserted also, after Chinese sources, that the northern 
 Shi-wei should have tamed the reindeer. 1 The text here referred 
 to, however, contains nothing to this effect, but merely says that 
 the country of this people abounded in wild deer. 2 According to 
 the Chinese account, this tribe raised cattle, swine, and dogs as 
 domestic animals, and fish-skin formed their clothing; reindeer 
 nomads certainly wear reindeer-skins. Another group of this 
 people, plainly called Shi-wei, who lived a thousand li north of 
 the Mo-ki or Wu-ki, the center of their territory being in the basin 
 of Kerulen river, subsisted on pork and fish, reared cattle and 
 horses, but lacked sheep; they clothed themselves in the skins of 
 white deer. 3 This " white deer " may have been elk or wild rein- 
 deer. Theophrastus 4 already mentions that the skin of the wild 
 reindeer (tarandus), which according to him occurs in the territories 
 of the Scythians and Sarmatians, is of the thickness of a finger, 
 and is so durable that it is made into thoraxes; and the lexicographer 
 Hesychius (fifth century A.D.) says that the Scythians employed 
 the furs of the tarandus as clothing. 5 
 
 Archaeological monuments do not shed much light on the ques- 
 
 1 J. H. Plath, Die Mandschurey, p. 82, who accepted the translations of the Jesuit 
 missionaries of the eighteenth century. 
 
 2 T'ang hui yao, ch. 96, p. 7. Compare Vasilyev in Trudy of the Oriental Section 
 of the Imperial Archaeological Society, vol. IV (1859), p. 32. 
 
 3 Wei shu, ch. 100, p. 4 b. According to the T'ang Annals (T'ang shu, ch. 219, 
 p. 7), the Shi-wei raised a large breed of swine, the tanned skin of which was used for 
 garments. The so-called Northern Annals give the following notice of this tribe: 
 " The Shi-wei lived a thousand li north of the Mu-ki, subsequently styled Mo-ho, 
 six thousand li from the capital Lo-yang. In speech they were related to the Kitan. 
 They raised cattle and horses, but not sheep, and also kept swine, subsisting on pork 
 and fish. In the summer they led a sedentary life; in the winter they roamed along 
 the river-courses, catching sables. They used the composite horn bows and long 
 arrows. White-deer skins formed their clothing. Corpses were buried in the trees 
 [as still practised by Tungusian tribes and often observed by myself]. They used 
 coracles; and their primeval forests and pasture-lands teemed with a rich fauna, and 
 [unfortunately, as at present] also with mosquitoes" (Pel shi, ch. 94, p. 9 b). Deer- 
 skin clothing is ascribed by the Chinese annalists to several other tribes of Siberia; 
 thus, for instance, the women of the Liu-kuei, a tribe to be located in Kamchatka (see 
 T'oung Pao, 1916, p. 368), employed for their winter costume skins of swine and stag, 
 and fish-skins for summer-dress. 
 
 4 Fragments, 172 (opera, ed. Wimmer, p. 458). 
 
 6 Sarauw, Rentier in Europa, p. 10. * 
 
I 14 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION [MEMOIRS, 4 
 
 tion. Wild deer, particularly the elk, are frequently represented 
 on so-called Scythian and Siberian antiquities of the bronze age. 1 
 In Mongolia many sepulchral stones with figures of stags have 
 been found. 2 A representation of domestic reindeer accompanied 
 by men, of ancient date, has not yet been traced. 
 
 From the preceding notes it becomes manifest that the domesti- 
 cation of the reindeer does not go back to times of a dim antiquity, 
 but is of a comparatively recent date, falling within the historical 
 era. The Chinese account of A.D. 499, as far as we know at present, 
 is the earliest in existence. The reindeer was then milked and 
 employed as a draught-animal; in. other words, its domestication 
 was then an accomplished fact. By calculating several centuries 
 upward of that date, we thus arrive at the primeval period when 
 the initial steps leading to the domestication were taken. The 
 interval required for the process of domestication in its various 
 stages will naturally remain a matter of conjecture and speculation, 
 but a fair compromise may be reached by the formula that the 
 incipient stage may belong to the beginnings of our era. It is 
 obvious also, from a purely historical standpoint, that the domesti- 
 cation is far older in Asia than in Europe, and that consequently 
 the center from which the domestication has taken its starting- 
 point must be sought for on Asiatic soil. 
 
 > 
 
 CENTER OF DOMESTICATION 
 
 All observers agree in regarding the domestication of the rein- 
 deer as an imitative process leaning toward that of horse and cattle. 
 In fact,* the reindeer is utilized by man in exactly the same manner 
 as those two breeds, as a draught, pack, and riding animal. 
 The recent date of the domestication also, brings out its secondary 
 character. One of the most peculiar and uniform features which 
 is apt to illustrate the imitative tendency is the castration of the 
 stags, practised alike throughout the zone of reindeer occurrence. 
 
 1 See Aspelin, Antiquites du nord finno-ougrien, p. 68, no. 307; p. 69, nos. 311, 
 313-315; P- 7i, no. 323- 
 
 2 Inscriptions de V lenissei, p. 16. I. G. Grano, Archdol. Beobachlungen in Siidsi- 
 birien und Nordwest-Mongolei (Helsingfors, 1910), pp. 49, 53; and Geogr. Verbreitung 
 der Alter tiimer in der Nordwest-Mongolei (ibid., 1910), pp. 37, 45. 
 
LAUFER] THE REINDEER AND ITS DOMESTICATION 115 
 
 In the eighteenth century Knud Leems 1 reported, " Taurum rangi- 
 ferinum castraturus Lappo, testiculos non, ut alias fieri solet, 
 dissecta cute, eruit, sed, admoto ore, dentibus contundit." In the 
 same manner the process is described in modern times by J. D. 
 Caton, 2 
 
 The Lapp perform the operation with their teeth; the glands are bruised or 
 crushed without breaking the skin. No other mode of castration has ever been 
 known among the Lapp. This imperfect operation is probably sufficient for 
 their purposes, for it so" subdues the natural ferocity of the animal as to subject , .. 
 him to control, while it leaves enough of spirit to make his services highly suf- 
 ficient. Were it carried as far as with us, it might so destroy his energy as to 
 leave him practically useless. 3 . 
 
 The Ostyak designate the gelded reindeer xatri, which, according 
 to S. Patkanov, 4 is a loan-word received from Samoyed. Whether 
 the Ostyak adopted the process from this people remains an open 
 question; but this is more than probable, in view of the fact that 
 the Samoyed are the most skilful and successful reindeer-breeders, 
 and are doubtless responsible for the transportation of the animal 
 from Asia to Europe. 5 The Chukchi, according to Bogoras, 6 in 
 order to geld the bucks, bite with their teeth either through the 
 
 dowcets or through the spermatic ducts. The operation is said 
 > 
 
 1 Beskrivehe over Finmarkens Lapper (Kiobenhavn, 1767; in Danish and Latin), 
 p. 152. ' About a century earlier we have the same observation recorded by J. Scheffer, 
 Lappland (Franckfurt, 1675), p. 374. 
 
 2 A Summer in Norway (Chicago, 1880), p. 228. . , 
 
 3 See also E. Demant, Das Buck des Lappen Johan Tfyiri, p. 40: This book con- 
 tains the autobiography of a Lapp, and is one of the finest documents of primitive 
 life and thought that we possess. 
 
 *Die Irtysch-Ostjaken, vol. I, p. 18. See also A. Ahlqvist, Journal de la Sociele 
 Jinrio-ougrienne, vol. vin, 1890, p. 6. *Phere are many more Samoyed loan-words in 
 Ostyak relative to reindeer-culture: hence AhlqvisfcJj^fo'c?., p. 21) concluded that the 
 Ostyak appear to have adopted from the Samo^led certain important features of 
 reindeer-breeding, or perhaps even this entire industry, i .... 
 
 5 Among the Samoyed, a very specialized nomenclatraSr of the rei<ld||jpr and the 
 equipment relating to it obtains, as showri by a glance at A. CastrSti'^Vfidrterver- 
 zeichnisse aus den samojedischen Sprachen, pp. 262-263^ Terms denoting the wild 
 and domesticated animal, the gelded and ungelded male, are strictly differentiated; 
 and there are peculiar words for the female, the calf in its various stages of growth, 
 the old and the hornless animal, with many variations in the dialects. 
 
 6 Jesup North Pacific Expedition, vol. vn, p. 84. 
 
Il6 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION [MEMOIRS, 4 
 
 not to affect the reindeer much, for immediately afterward it con- 
 tinues to graze. Sometimes the scrotum is tied very tightly with a 
 sinew thread, and after a while becomes atrophied and drops off. 
 
 'The milking of the reindeer is another practice which demon- 
 strates the dependence of the domestication. There can be no 
 doubt that it came into existence in imitation of milking cows, 
 mares, and sheep. The fact that this economy is comparatively 
 old is attested by the Chinese account of the fifth century. Even 
 the Tungus, who, with a few exceptions, use the reindeer solely for 
 riding, milk the calving females. Four teacupfuls of milk within 
 twenty-four hours make the whole produce. The Chukchi even 
 try to suck milk from the doe's udder. 1 ' The reindeer is plainly 
 not a milk- furnishing animal, and has been forced by man into 
 assuming a role which is denied to it by nature. 2 j^^ 
 
 Property-marks for the purpose of recognizing their aniprals 
 are utilized by all reindeer-breeding tribes. The Chukchi again 
 betray their fondness of biting likewise in this case; for they mark 
 their property by biting a piece out of the fawns' ears in late summer, 
 or the next spring during the separation of bucks from pregnant 
 dams. The Lapp, 3 Samoyed, Tungus, and other reindeer peoples, 
 cut marks in the ears of their animals. Thirteen such marks 
 from the Tungus of Ayan have been illustrated by Pekarski and 
 Tsv'atkov. 4 One or two cuts, in straight lines, angular, or rounded, 
 are made in one ear or in both. This practice has been perpetuated 
 by our Government in Alaska. 
 
 Every local superintendent must take careful oversight of the annual mark- 
 ing of the reindeer and see that all reindeer are correctly marked according to 
 ownership. He shall keep a complete list of such marks in the records of the 
 station. 6 
 
 1 Bogoras, I. c. 
 
 2 In regard to peculiar methods of milking on the part of the Lapp, see E. Demant, 
 Buck des Lappen Johan Turi, pp. 30, 39; on the part of the Soyot 0. Olsen, El primitivt 
 -folk (Kristiania, 1914), p. 67. 
 
 3 J. Scheffer, Lappland, p. 379. 
 
 4 " Ocerki byta Priayanskix Tungusov," Publication du Musee d'Anthropologie, 
 vol. n, p. 37- 
 
 8 Rules and Regulations regarding the U. S. Reindeer Service in Alaska, approved 
 June 10, 1907, and December 7, 1008 (Washington, 1911). 
 
LAUFER] THE REINDEER AND ITS DOMESTICATION H7 
 
 Aluminum button markers are employed for this purpose. 1 The 
 reindeer-breeders of Siberia are not the originators of this custom, 
 but it was doubtless transmitted to them by Turkish-Mongol 
 tribes. The term tamaga, tamga, tamka, denoting a property- 
 mark on cattle and subsequently a seal, is common to all of these; 
 it is diffused all over Siberia, and is even known in China and Tibet 
 (dam-k'a, t'am-ga). 2 
 
 The uniformity of reindeer-breeding is characterized also by the 
 universal method of lassoing the animals. Everywhere a long 
 lasso, either plaited from horse-hair or from thin seal-skin straps, 
 is used for catching the deer after pasturing in the morning, when 
 its services are required. The Tungus are very skilful in throwing 
 the lasso from a respectable distance; and most animals will pa- 
 tiently halt, or even run to their master's side, as soon as merely 
 touched by the rope. A classical description of this procedure i 
 given by the Yakut Uvarovski in his autobiography. 3 
 
 The reindeer-breeders cannot lay claim, either, to any origin 
 thought or invention as to the entire apparatus utilized by them in 
 connection with the reindeer. Above all, the pack-saddle and the 
 method of loading, riding-saddle, harness, sledge, and snowshoes, 
 are all borrowed institutions. 4 The geographical distribution of 
 sledge and snowshoe by no means coincides with the area of reindeer 
 domestication. On the one hand, we encounter the two imple- 
 ments among the primitive dog-breeding tribes of northern and 
 northeastern Asia, inclusive of the Amur and Ussuri regions, where 
 the reindeer is unknown; and, on the other hand, they extend far 
 into the south of Siberia, even into Mongolia and Turkistan, where 
 they are associated neither with the dog nor with the reindeer. 
 Sledge and snowshoe, accordingly, cover an infinitely wider territory 
 than the domestic reindeer, and obviously were in existence in 
 
 1 S. Jackson, Fourteenth Annual Report on Introduction of Reindeer into Alaska, 
 1904 (Washington, 1905), p. 108. On plates 33 and 34 of this report will be found 
 illustrations of several such marks. 
 
 2 W. Radloff, Worterbuch der Tilrk-Dialecte, vol. in, col. 1003; T. Watters, Essays 
 on the Chinese Language, p. 374. 
 
 3 O. Bohtlingk, Ueber die Sprache der Jakuten, text, p. 45. 
 
 4 Bogoras (/. c., p. 88) has called attention to the uniform character of the collar 
 for the sledge-reindeer among Chukchi, Tungus, Samoyed, and Lapp. 
 
Il8 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION [MEMOIRS, 4 
 
 times prior to its domestication. As we learn from the early 
 Chinese account relating to the year A.D. 499, the reindeer must 
 have been trained to the sledge at that date (and certain it is that 
 this utilization of the animal preceded its breaking-in for the 
 saddle) ; and, since the same people had also horses and oxen for 
 drawing vehicles, it is manifest that this older method was simply 
 transferred to the reindeer. The Chinese annals furnish several 
 classical examples of the early employment of snowshoe and sledge 
 on the part of tribes which never availed themselves of the service 
 of the reindeer. 
 
 According to the Annals of the T'ang dynasty (618-906), there 
 was east of the Kirgiz, on the Yenisei, a tribe styled " Snowshoe 
 Turks" (Mu ma T'u-kiie, literally, "wooden-horse T'u-kue 'V 
 consisting of three hordes. 
 
 They covered their habitations with birch-bark and owned numerous horses. 
 They used to cross the ice on snowshoes ('wooden horses') which they tied to 
 their feet, taking curved branches as supports for the shoulders (snow-sticks), 
 and thus swiftly pushing ahead. 
 
 In regard to the Pa-ye-ku (Bayirku), it is said that all people 
 put wooden boards under their feet and pursue deer over the ice. 2 
 The Liu-kuei, a tribe to be located in Kamchatka and mentioned on 
 page 113, note 3, according to the T'ang Annals, 3 " fastened to their 
 feet wooden boards six inches wide and seven feet long, and thus 
 hunted the game over the ice." Likewise the Kirgiz on the upper 
 Yenisei, of whom we have a description in the Annals of the T'ang, 
 pursued the game on snowshoes. 4 A description of the snowshoe 
 and the mode of using it is given also by Rashid-eddin in connection 
 
 1 In Tibetan, sin-rta (wooden horse) means any vehicle or carriage. Compare 
 also Russian konki (skates; literally, little horses), from kon'ok, diminutive of kon f 
 (horse). Chinese T'u-kiie represents a transcription of the name Turk, more exactly 
 of the plural form Tiirkiit (see Pelliot, T'oung Pao, 1915, p. 687). 
 
 2 T'ang hui yao, ch. 98, p. 16. The Pa-ye-ku are mentioned under the name 
 Bayirku in the Turkish inscriptions of Kiil-tegin and Bilga-kagan; they were a Turkish 
 tribe living in the north of the Gobi. See also above, p. 105. 
 
 3 Ch. 220, p. ii b. 
 
 4 Some authors, like Klaproth and Ritter, thought in this connection of sledges; 
 but it has been correctly observed by W. Schott, in " Ueber die achten Kirgisen," Ab~ 
 handlungen Berliner Akademie (1865), p. 447; and his additional notes in Monats- 
 berichte Berliner Akademie (1874), PP- I- 8. that snowshoes solely are involved. 
 
LAUFER] THE REINDEER AND ITS DOMESTICATION Up 
 
 with the Uryangkit (above, p. 108). He adds that the snowshoe is 
 known in a large part of Mongolia and Turkistan, and that ski- 
 running is particularly practised by the Barguchim Tukum, Khori, 
 Kirgiz, Urasut, Telengut, and Tumat. The word used by the 
 Persian annalist is cane or cana, which, as is well known, is found 
 in all Turkish and Mongol languages with both significances, 
 "snowshoe" and "sledge:" Mongol tsana and cana, Buryat 
 sana, Altaic canak, cana, etc.; Finnish saani, Esthonian san, 
 Lettish sanus, sanas, Magyar szdn, szdny, or szdnka, szdnko 
 (diminutive); Russian sani (plural), sanki or sanocki (diminutive). 1 
 
 A profound study of all types of sledge and snowshoe will doubt- 
 less yield promising results. 2 Here it may be emphasized only 
 that the reindeer-breeders adopted ready-made what they found, 
 merely changing some of the material : thus they preferred reindeer-, 
 skin for snowshoes, while the Turks used horse-skin and the Gilyak 
 seal-skin. L. von Schrenck 3 has shown in particular how the v 
 Orocon (Schrenck: Oroki), scattered over a few spots of Saghalin 
 Island, adapted the dog-sledge of the Gilyak to reindeer-trans- 
 portation. 4 
 
 From a negative viewpoint, we might say that neither the 
 
 1 J. Kalima (Worter und Sachen (1910), vol. n, p. 183) has studied to some extent 
 the distribution of this word from the Slavistic standpoint, and arrives at the con- 
 clusion that it is a very ancient word, which Slavic, Finno-Ugrian, and Turkish lan- 
 guages have in common. In my opinion, the word is of Turkish-Mongol origin, and 
 a loan-word in Finno-Ugrian and Slavic. There can be no doubt that the term has 
 migrated jointly with the object which it denotes. The investigation of Kalima is 
 obscured by the fact that he adds Lapp cidinne, Russian cuni, cunki (in the northern 
 dialects), and Vogul sun, which must be dissociated from the above series, and in fact 
 are independent words. 
 
 2 Compare the preliminary remarks on snowshoes by G. Hatt, " Moccasins and 
 Their Relation to Arctic Footwear," Memoirs American Anthropological Association, 
 vol. in, 1916, p. 240. 
 
 3 Reisen und Forschungen im Amur-Lande, vol. in, p. 494. 
 
 4 It is not correct, however, to say with Schrenck that the Saghalin Orocon are 
 the only Tungusians to make use of sledges in connection with the reindeer. The 
 practice is not generally Tungusian, as wrongly asserted by C. Hiekisch, Die Tungusen, 
 p. 78, but is an exception, which, however, occurs sporadically wherever Tungusians 
 come in contact with Palaeo-Asiatic dog-breeders. The illustration of a Tundra 
 Tungus in the Kolyma district, driving on a reindeer-sledge, may be seen in V. Jochel- 
 son, Ocerk zv'aropromyslennosti i torgovli m'axami v Kolymskom okrug' a (Sketch of the 
 Animal Industry and Fur Trade in the District of Kolyma), p. 36. 
 
120 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION [MEMOIRS, 4 
 
 Lapp nor the Ugrians in the west, nor the Yakut (p. no), nor the 
 Chukchi and Koryak in the northeast, can come into question as 
 the original reindeer-tamers. Among the Chukchi the introduction 
 of the reindeer appears to be an affair of comparatively recent date, 
 as shown, if by nought else, by the imperfect degree of domestica- 
 tion. It is difficult, however, to accept Bogoras' opinion that 
 " they did not introduce the tame reindeer from their neighbors, 
 but that, in imitation of them, they attempted to domesticate the 
 race of reindeer inhabiting their own country." Such an expendi- 
 ture of energy cannot be attributed to the Chukchi; and, as a 
 matter of fact, such an instance of waste of energy is beyond our 
 experience in the life of peoples. Man in general is not inclined 
 toward work, unless compelled by sheer necessity or some induce- 
 ment; still less does he try to do over again what has been accom- 
 plished by his neighbor. Bogoras believes his theory to be plausible, 
 since the Chukchi reindeer is quite different from that of the Tungus. 
 This fact, however, can be simply explained from the constant 
 crossings between tame and wild reindeer, emphasized by Bogoras 
 farther on. It is inconceivable that any Palaeo-Asiatic tribe ever 
 undertook to domesticate the reindeer, as the maintenance of 
 sleigh-dogs excludes the reindeer. L. von Schrenck l has already 
 made the appropriate remark that 
 
 the ancestors of the migrating Chukchi and Koryak themselves surely did not 
 domesticate the reindeer, but received it in the domesticated state from a nomadic 
 .tribe, presumably the Tungus. 
 
 Tungusians, however, cannot be claimed to be the originators of 
 reindeer-domestication, as L. von Schrenck maintains they are. 
 The first Russian discoverers of eastern Siberia, who came in con- 
 tact with the Tungus, speak of Reindeer, Horse, Dog, Steppe, and 
 Woodland Tungus. 2 These divisions have no ethnographical sig- 
 
 1 Reisen und Forschungen im Amur-Lande, vol. in, p. 489. 
 
 2 P. J. v. Strahlenberg, Das nord- und ostliche Theil von Europa und Asia (Stock- 
 holm, 1730), p. 423. Regarding the distribution and economy of the Tungus. see S. 
 Patkanow, " Geographie und Statistik der Tungusen-Stamme Sibiriens " Keleti 
 Szemle, vol. iv, pp. 141-171, 287-316; vol. v, pp. 36-56, 185-203; vol. vi, pp. 130- 
 174, 222-283; and the same author's prirosl'a inorodceskago naseleniya Sibiri 
 (S.-Peterburg, 1911), pp. 87-115. 
 
LAUFER] THE REINDEER AND ITS DOMESTICATION 121 
 
 nificance, but merely allude to the economic conditions under 
 which the people were encountered at a certain time. Even this 
 mode of life is by no means a stable characteristic, for the economy 
 of these tribes is subject to sudden and fundamental changes. 
 Cases have occurred where reindeer-owners lost their herds and 
 turned to the rearing of horses or only dogs, or where woodland 
 people were transformed into inhabitants of the steppe. 1 The 
 Birar, settled in the river system of the Bureya and on both banks 
 of the Amur above and below the mouth of that side-river, accord- 
 ing to the Cossack Poyarkov, who came in touch with them in 
 1646, were engaged in reindeer-breeding; only thirty-five years 
 later they are described as horse-nomads. 2 The Tungusians, 
 accordingly, are shifting opportunists, and, in the course of their 
 constant peregrinations, simply adopt that mode of life best suited 
 to the geographical and economic environment of the respective 
 places. Originally they were mere hunters and fishermen; but, 
 being possessed of an adaptable spirit and a quick grasp of change- 
 able conditions, they were capable of appropriating any industry 
 offered by their neighbors. Historical considerations show us 
 that the Tungusian tribes, in former periods of their life, were never 
 given to reindeer-breeding. In fact, they are late arrivals in 
 Siberia, while their original home is to be sought for in Manchuria. 
 We can trace their history almost completely from very early 
 times by means of the Chinese annals; but in these no mention of 
 reindeer is made with reference to any Tungusian people, with the 
 sole exception of a branch of the Wu-huan (p. 105). Only when 
 they were pushed into Siberian regions did they become acquainted 
 with the reindeer. It is even doubtful whether the Tungusians 
 were the first to use the reindeer as a riding-beast. The Soyot, ! 
 as will be seen, still ride the reindeer; and the reindeer-riding tribe 
 alluded to by Marco Polo (p. 107) was doubtless related to the 
 Soyot or their group. 
 
 If it is true that the reindeer represents a mere repetition of 
 cattle and horse domestication on a smaller scale, it is logical to 
 
 1 Examples are cited by C. Hiekisch, Die Tungusen, p. 47; and L. v. Schrenck, 
 Reisen und Forschungen im Amur-Lande, vol. in, p. 144. 
 
 2 Patkanow, Keleti Szemle (1904), vol. V, p. 41. 
 
122 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION [MEMOIRS, 4 
 
 conclude that the reindeer can have been domesticated only in a 
 locality where it occurred in close association with cattle and horse. 
 In the northern regions, where the wild tundra reindeer prevails, 
 we meet at present as domestic animals the reindeer and the dog; 
 in the southern belt, occupied by the wild woodland reindeer, we 
 find the domestic reindeer in company with other large domestic 
 stocks. It is therefore clear that the original center of domesti- 
 cation is to be looked for in the gouthern^belt. The fact that 
 Ugrian peoples were in possession of reindeer-herds employed as 
 draught-animals toward the end of the fifteenth century, has been 
 established from Russian documents (pp. 96-99). At present the 
 well-to-do Wogul living in Beresov (in the western part of Tobolsk 
 government) keep cows, horses, and reindeer. They are so reduced 
 to poverty, however, that few own more than several tens. A 
 Wogul on the upper Tapsya River, who has a couple of hundred, 
 is regarded as very rich in this region; whereas, compared with 
 well-to-do Samoyed in Obdorsk, he would only be a wretched 
 beggar, for these count their reindeer by the thousands. 1 In the 
 beginning of the eighteenth century the wealthy among the Ugrian 
 Ostyak still kept a large number of reindeer, together with cattle, 
 horses, and dogs; but many of them were so poor that they had to 
 be content with reindeer. This is the account of G. Novitski, who 
 wrote in 1715, the earliest historian of this tribe. 2 At the present 
 time, only the Ostyak of the north, being neighbors of the Samoyed, 
 still have reindeer; 3 but it lost ground among the Irtysh-Ostyak 
 farther south. In the epic traditions of this people, ably collected 
 and translated by S. Patkanov and traced with good reason to a 
 period from the fourteenth to the fifteenth century, reindeer and 
 
 1 A. Ahlquist, in Erman's Archiv fur wissensch. Kunde von Russland (1860), vol. 
 xx, p. 157. Regarding reindeer among the Wogul, see also A. Erman, Reise um die 
 Well, vol. i, pt. i, p. 384. Reindeer-sledges of the Wogul are illustrated by K. D. 
 Nosilov, U Vogulov ocerki i nabroski (1904), pp. 183, 189. 
 
 2 G. Novitski, Kratkoe opisanie o narod'd Ost'atskom, ed. of L. Maikov (St. Peters- 
 burg, 1884), p. 37. An interesting contribution to the history of this people is the 
 article of A. van Gennep, " Origine et fortune du nom de peuple ' ostiak ' " Keleti 
 Szemle (1902), vol. in, pp. 13-32; reprinted in his Religions, mceurs et legendes, pp. 
 94-109. 
 
 3 M. A. Castren, Reiseerinnerungen aus den Jahren 1838-1844, p. 300. 
 
LAUFER] THE REINDEER AND ITS DOMESTICATION 12$ 
 
 dog are mentioned as domestic animals. At that time, also the 
 inhabitants of the northern part of the district of Tobolsk kept 
 herds of reindeer; while at present half-domesticated reindeer are 
 encountered only farther northward, beneath Beresov. The 
 domestic reindeer supplied the Ostyak with meat, skins, and sinews; 
 served as most important draught-animal in those snow-abounding 
 regions; and was slaughtered in honor of the gods on the occasion 
 of the sacrificial holidays. When the breeding of reindeer was still 
 thriving among them, this animal was exclusively chosen for the 
 sacrifice, which is still customary in the north, among the Ostyak 
 and Samoyed living there. 1 Patkanov holds the opinion that 
 reindeer-breeding is only a secondary industry among the Ostyak 
 and Wogul; that is to say, when these tribes were pushed from 
 southern regions into their present northern domicile, they were 
 compelled to abandon the larger domestic breeds in consequence 
 of unfavorable geographical conditions, and to take to the reindeer. 
 I would not subscribe to this theory unconditionally; but what 
 interests us in this connection is merely the coexistence of reindeer, 
 cattle, and horse among Wogul and Ostyak, neither of whom, 
 notwithstanding, can be regarded as the original domesticator of 
 the reindeer. 
 
 There is but one territory where all the necessary postulates for 
 reindeer-breeding are given, and which may come into question as 
 the original center of the domestication, and this is the region of 
 Lake Baikal. There we meet the reindeer, wild and domesticated, 
 and, as has been shown, from ancient times. There we meet a 
 host of tribes partially engaged in horse and cattle rearing, and 
 partially depending on the reindeer; there, accordingly, the contact 
 of reindeer-breeders with horse and cattle raisers is virtually estab- 
 lished. The ancient Chinese records, as we have seen, likewise 
 point to the same center. In the Baikal territory we find at the 
 present time three large and distinct stocks of peoples, the Buryat, 
 a branch of the Mongol family ; Tungusians ; and a large number of 
 tribes, originally of Samoyed and Yenisei-Ostyak stock, but now 
 either Turkicized (otatarilis, " Tatarized," as the Russians say) 
 
 1 S. Patkanov, Die Irtysch-Ostjaken, vol. i, p. 109; vol. n, p. 017. 
 
124 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION [MEMOIRS, 4 
 
 or Mongolized, and for the most part speaking a Turkish language. 
 The Buryat occupy the area in the governments of Irkutsk and 
 Transbaikalia from the Chinese frontier as far as the Lena system 
 northward, and from the rivers Onon to Oka, the side-river of the 
 Angara, westward, and still farther west into the region of Nizne- 
 Udinsk. The Buryat element is strongest beyond the Baikal, in 
 the valleys of the Uda, Onon, and Selenga. Those on this side of 
 the Baikal are to some extent Russianized, even practising agri- 
 culture. The others are herdsmen and owners of horses, cattle, 
 sheep, and goats. The reindeer is entirely foreign to them, and 
 never was in the hands of any tribe of the Mongol family. Tun- 
 gusians are scattered in the governments of Irkutsk, Yenisei, and 
 Transbaikalia, chiefly subsisting on fishing and hunting, but also 
 on agriculture and cattle-breeding. In Irkutsk government only a 
 few clans on the upper Lena keep reindeer; in Yenisei government 
 the latter are owned only by the well-to-do. In Transbaikalia we 
 encounter among the Tungusians hunters, agriculturists, cattle- 
 breeders, and reindeer people. Especially those inhabiting the 
 districts of Tshitin and Barguzin keep reindeer. 1 
 
 It seems certain that the Samoyed are not autochthonous in 
 their present habitats, but migrated there from southern regions, 
 in all probability from the territory of the Sayan mountains or the 
 upper courses of the Yenisei basin, where there are still many 
 scattered tribes of them enclosed by Mongols and Turks. Most of 
 these split Samoyed adopted the language and customs of their 
 superior neighbors, yet they remain conscious of the fact of their 
 original nationality. I designate this group as Sayan tribes or 
 southern Samoyed. Among the Soyot within the boundaries of 
 China there are family-names that also occur among the Samoyed 
 roving along the Arctic littorals. 2 The Woodland Kamasin still 
 spoke Samoyed at the time of Castren's travels (about 1840-50); 
 
 1 S. Patkanov, Keleti Szemle, vol. vi (1905), pp. 278, 279. Concerning the Bar- 
 guzin Tungus, see an article by N. M. Dobromyslov, " Zam'atki po etnografii Bar- 
 guzinskix Orocen," in Trudy of the Troitskosavsk-Kiachta Section of the Imperial 
 Geogr. Soc., vol. v (1902), pp 78-87. 
 
 2M. A. Castren, Kleinere Schriften, pp. 116-117; W. Crahmer, Zeitschrifl filr 
 Ethnologic (1912), p. no. 
 
LAUFER] THE REINDEER AND ITS DOMESTICATION 12$ 
 
 but fifteen years later, when visited by W. Radloff, 1 they had 
 adopted a Turkish form of speech. Two groups of these peoples 
 are still active reindeer-breeders, the Karagas and the Soyot. 
 The former roam in the territory between the rivers Oka, Uda, 
 Biryusa, and Kan (the boundary district of the governments of 
 Yenisei and Irkutsk), numbering about 550 individuals. They are 
 divided into five clans, one living in the neighborhood of the Soyot, 
 another near the Kamasin, and another near the Buryat. Although 
 now speaking a Turkish language of which we have an excellent 
 grammar by Castren, and closely resembling their Turkish neighbors 
 in costume and manners, their methods of hunting and reindeer- 
 keeping, as well as their winter tents made of reindeer-skins, are 
 identical with those of the Samoyed. Also their physical habitus, 
 several of their family names, and the survival of many Samoyed 
 words in their speech, clearly bespeak their origin. The Soyot or 
 Soyon, styling themselves Tuba and designated by the Mongols 
 Urangkhai (see above, p. 109), inhabit northwestern Mongolia and a 
 small strip of country along the Russian frontier from the sources 
 of the river Kobdo as far as lake Koso. A great number of them 
 who live farther south on the slopes of the Tangnu mountains are 
 completely converted into Mongols. According to Castren, many 
 Soyot clan-names agree with those of the Samoyed ; and the Soyot 
 clan Mattar, according to traditions, originated from the Mator, 
 who decidedly were Samoyed ; he argued also that several Yenisei- 
 Ostyak clans had become Soyot. Radloff 2 regards them as a medley 
 of Kirgiz, Samoyed, and Yenisei-Ostyak; Katanov, 3 as consisting 
 of Mongol, Turkish, and Samoyed elements. At present their 
 language is Turkish, but among many tribes Buddhism and Mongol 
 speech have spread so widely, that the Turkish element is threatened 
 with extinction. 
 
 G. Radde, 4 in 1862, outlined the following sketch of the distri- 
 
 1 Ethnographische Uebersicht der Tiirkstamme, p. 6. Regarding the Saj^an tribes 
 compare also the interesting article of N. F. Katanov, " Predaniya Prisayanskix 
 piemen o preznix d'alax i 1'ud'ax," in Sbornik v cest' semides'atil'atiya G. N. Potanina, 
 pp. 265-288. 
 
 * L. c., p. 17. 
 
 3 In Sbornik Potanina, p. 286. 
 
 4 Reisen im Stiden von Ost-Sibirien, vol. I, Saugetierfauna, p. 287. 
 
126 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION [MEMOIRS, 4 
 
 bution of the reindeer in the Baikal region. South of Ilchir lake 
 the tame reindeer, together with the horse and frequently also with 
 cattle, is found among the mountain tribes. During the summer a 
 division of these herds becomes necessary, the reindeer being driven 
 into the high mountains of an altitude of seven or eight thousand 
 feet, the horses and cattle grazing in the deeper valleys of four or 
 five thousand feet. In the Baikal regions the reindeer is ubiquitous; 
 in the southwestern parts, however, it is sparse now. In the 
 mountains where the river Jida takes its source, south of Turansk, 
 it is met among the Uryankhai, who inhabit there the space between 
 the Russian and Chinese frontiers. It is excluded from the Selenga 
 valley, the upper part of which, on the Russian side, is inhabited 
 by Buryat engaged in the rearing of sheep, cattle, and horses. 
 In the northeastern corner of lake Baikal it increases in frequency, 
 but even there the Tungusians become impoverished in consequence 
 of the decrease of the stock. In regard to the Soyot and Jot, he 
 observes that they rear reindeer in large numbers (up to three 
 hundred). The wild species still occurs farther to the south as an 
 inhabitant of the upper zones of the forest boundary, and beyond 
 as far as the snow-line. Hahn 1 has made the correct observation 
 that in the Sayan mountains, the source of the Amur, the reindeer 
 reaches the southernmost point of its diffusion, and comes there in 
 contact with the camel and tame yak; but he draws from this fact 
 no conclusion whatever as to the home of the domestication, but 
 offers solely the commonplace remark that any of the migratory 
 tribes of northeastern Asia may have been pushed back into an 
 inhospitable country, and, losing its stock of cattle and pack- 
 animals owing to the unfavorable climate, tamed the reindeer as a 
 substitute. 
 
 The Soyot were visited and studied in the summer of 1914 by 
 0rjan Olsen, who published interesting information on the tribe. 2 
 According to this author, the breeding of reindeer constitutes a 
 secondary industry among the Soyot, who also keep horses and 
 dogs, in opposition to the Lapp and Samoyed. Their herds are 
 
 1 Haustiere, p. 266. 
 
 2 Et primitivt folk. De mongolske Rennomader (Kristiania, 1915). Compare the 
 analysis of Ch. Rabot in La Geographic, vol. xxxi (1916-17), pp. 42-46. 
 
LAUFER] THE REINDEER AND ITS DOMESTICATION 
 
 not very numerous. The most fortunate among the inhabitants 
 of the Sayan mountains (and there are few) own no more than four 
 hundred animals; in general, the herds count from ten to fifteen 
 heads, at least on the banks of the Sesti-Kem. The people, ac- 
 cordingly, cannot live exclusively on the flesh of their herds'; and 
 those on the upper Yenisei loathe to slaughter their animals, unless 
 compelled to do so by famine. The only alimentary product is the 
 milk, consumed either fresh or in the shape of butter or cheese. 
 One or two large cupfuls are obtained from each operation, which 
 is performed twice a day in an enclosure formed by wooden palisades. 
 The reindeer is used by the Soyot as a pack and riding animal. 1 
 It is not attached to a sledge. The animal belongs to a very sturdy 
 breed, the largest being able to carry loads from eighty to one 
 hundred and ten kilo; with such a load, they make five to six kilo- 
 meters an hour. 
 
 Among the Soyot, the domestication of the reindeer has pro- 
 gressed further than among any North-Asiatic tribe. Although 
 they capture wild reindeer and cross these with their domesticated 
 individuals, this offspring is remarkably little savage. Whereas 
 other reindeer must be lassoed in order to be caught for duty, 
 the Soyot reindeer allow themselves to be caught by hand, and 
 follow their master like dogs, licking his hand with the expectation 
 of a bit of salt. When pasturing in the woodland, a call from 
 their owner is sufficient to make them return immediately. It is a 
 notable feature also that the domestic reindeer of the Soyot terri- 
 tory is capable of standing the extreme summer heat. At that 
 time the wild reindeer, which likewise occurs in the region of the 
 sources of the Yenisei, take refuge in the snow zone of the high 
 mountains. The domesticated herds constantly remain in the 
 forest, in the proximity of human habitations, without suffering 
 
 1 Compare the illustrations in Olsen, pp. 52, 73. According to I. Pesterev 
 Magasin asiatique, by J. Klaproth (Paris, 1825), vol. I, p. 126, who was commanded 
 to the Russian-Chinese frontier in the districts Udinsk and Abakansk from 1772 to 
 1781, the nomadic tribes near the fort of Udinsk (then belonging to the government 
 of Tobolsk), divided into four sections, Silpigursk, Udinsk, Karagansk, and Kamgatsk, 
 kept domestic reindeer from oldest times, the richest possessing a hundred animals; 
 seven years before his time they lost the greatest part. He states also that the stags 
 were used for the hunt and mounted by the hunters. 
 
128 
 
 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION [MEMOIRS, 4 
 
 from the heat. During the hot hours they rest under thickly 
 foliated trees. In order to protect the fawns from the blaze of the 
 sun, the Soyot erect hedges around large cedars. 
 
 The culture of the Soyot, like that of any other people in north- 
 ern and central Asia, is in a state of complete disintegration, and 
 original conditions can no longer be expected. What we find at 
 present is merely the weak echo of a former glory which still elo- 
 quently speaks to us from the brief accounts of Marco Polo, Rashid- 
 / eddin, and the Chinese annals. Itjs difficult, if not impossible, to 
 i credit any domestication to a certain people, or even to a certain 
 * stock of peoples. In the majority of cases we must be content to 
 trace the beginnings of a domestication to a more or less securely 
 defined geographical area. In the present case it can be positively 
 stated only that the primeval domestication of the reindeer took 
 place in the Baikal region; but, if the original domestication of the 
 
 ^ 
 
 reindeer is to be attached to the name of a tribal group, I should 
 venture to say it was the southern Samoyed, or the Samoyed in 
 the early period of their history, before migrating into their present 
 northern habitats. I do not say, of course, that the present Soyot 
 were the domesticators : our knowledge of the history of this tribe 
 is altogether too vague to admit of such an interpretation. The 
 Soyot are simply remnants and epigones of that once extended and 
 powerful family in the midst of which this fact was accomplished. 
 The history of the domestication can now be clearly conceived. 
 From the Samoyed it spread eastward to the Tungusians ; from the 
 latter to the Yakut, Chukchi, and Koryak; westward to the Ugrian 
 tribes of the Ural and the Lapp. 1 Applied to the reindeer, this 
 result means that the woodland reindeer was domesticated in times 
 prior to the tundra reindeer. When the Samoyed moved north- 
 ward, they naturally took along their woodland reindeer, and 
 gradually replenished and improved their old stock by capturing 
 wild tundra reindeer (by the methods described in the following 
 
 1 The peculiar boat-shaped sledges of the Lapp, to which G. Hatt, " Lappiske 
 slsedeformer," Geografi.sk Tidskrift, vol. xxn (1913), pp. 139-145, has devoted a 
 special study, in my opinion are derived from the Samoyed; for A. Olearius, Reise- 
 Beschreibungen (Hamburg, 1696), p. 81, already mentions the reindeer-sledges of the 
 Samoyed, which are shaped like half canoes or boats. 
 
LAUFER] THE REINDEER AND ITS DOMESTICATION 1 29 
 
 chapter), until a point was reached when the latter breed pre- 
 ponderated or prevailed exclusively. 
 
 The Ainu of Saghalin do not keep reindeer, but only know the 
 animal (styled by them tonakai) in the possession of the Tungusian 
 Orocon. It would hardly be necessary to emphasize this fact, 
 were it not that A. E. von Nordenskiold 1 has published the sketch 
 of an Ainu standing on large snowshoes, and pulled along by a 
 reindeer the bridle of which is tied to his belt. This illustration 
 is said to be derived from a Japanese book published in 1804. In 
 regard to such an employment of the reindeer onJbe^rjaTt of the 
 Ainu I learned nothing on Saghalin, nor^^rTMd any reference to 
 it in the literature on the Aim^^Even the Japanese traveler 
 Mamia Rinso, who visTteS^Saghalin in 1808, and whose valuable 
 account has been made accessible by Ph. von Siebold, gives no 
 information on this point ; on the contrary, he mentions the reindeer 
 only in the possession of the Orotsuko (Orokko, Oroki, Orocon). 
 The sketch in question, accordingly, is either based on an incidental 
 and isolated occurrence, or, which is more probable, represents a 
 purely imaginative artistic production in which two features foreign 
 to the Japanese snowshoes and reindeer were arbitrarily com- 
 bined. 
 
 PROCESS OF DOMESTICATION 
 
 We have no contemporaneous records showing how the i 
 domestication of the reindeer was brought into effect. In order to 
 obtain some idea as to how this was done, or might have been done, we 
 must rely upon a reconstructive method. One means to this end 
 is furnished by present-day observations of the training of indi- 
 vidual animals. The schooling of the 'individual is typical of the 
 entire breed, and the course of lessons through which each animal 
 has to run at present must have been valid, with some variations 
 perhaps, also ages ago. 
 
 In regard to the training of the animals, S. Jackson 3 has the fol- 
 lowing observation : 
 
 1 Umsegelung Asiens und Europas auf der Vega, vol. n, p. 101. 
 
 2 Ph. von Siebold, Nippon, new ed., vol. n, p. 229. 
 
 3 Fourteenth Annual Report on Introduction of Domestic Reindeer into Alaska 
 (Washington, 1905), p. 126. 
 
130 
 
 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION [MEMOIRS, 4 
 
 The training begins when the deer is three years old. Generally the stoutest 
 males and geldings are selected. Females are also trained, but they are smaller 
 and less enduring. The training begins by lassoing the selected animals, thus 
 separating them from the herd. The poor beasts are much scared, and jump 
 about in frantic efforts to escape. The trainer advances hand over hand on the 
 rawhide lasso till the head is reached. They are then sometimes given a little 
 salt, of which they are fond; they are then led about for some time or tied to a 
 post to, accustom them to confinement and, the lesson over, again released. 
 This is repeated day by day, and when sufficiently tamed they are harnessed 
 and in the same manner gradually accustomed to draw light loads. This takes a 
 long time and persistent work. They should not be worked before they are 
 three years old. At six or seven they reach their prime and then gradually 
 decline. 
 
 The Eskimo selected by the government as apprentices to learn 
 the art of breeding reindeer from expert Lapp reindeer-men enter 
 into an agreement to remain from two to five years, or until suf- 
 ficient skill to handle a herd is acquired. 1 This affords some idea 
 as to the time required for a man to develop into a herder. 
 
 Although the reindeer is the only species of the deer family 
 that has been brought into the state of domestication, there are 
 many examples known of other members of the family Cervidae 
 which develop a great adaptability to domestication and have been 
 tamed to a high degree. Yet domestication has succeeded only 
 in the case of the reindeer. The efforts to raise other kinds of 
 deer are interesting to the student of reindeer-domestication as 
 affording an object-lesson and showing us the possibilities in the 
 initial stages preceding the state of true domestication. 
 
 All of the deer family are easily tamed. The moose has often been reared 
 and tamed in this country ; but I know of no systematic attempt to domesticate 
 them, nor have I ever heard of their breeding in domestication. They have 
 been sometimes broken to the harness and proved themselves able to draw good 
 loads; and yet I know of no regular effort that has been made to reduce them to 
 servitude. When tamed, they are reasonably docile, except the males during 
 the rutting season, when, as might be suspected, they become ferocious, and 
 should be kept in close quarters where they can do no harm. If castrated young, 
 and early taught obedience to man, we may not doubt that they would readily 
 submit to his dominion, and their great strength would give promise of useful 
 
 Ibid., p. 128. 
 
LAUFER] THE REINDEER AND ITS DOMESTICATION l$l 
 
 beasts of draught, especially in countries where deep snows prevail, through 
 which they pass with facility where ordinary cattle could make no progress. 1 
 
 A highly interesting notice on deer-farming has been written 
 by D. E. Lantz. 2 In the United States, the wapiti or Rocky 
 Mountain elk (Cervus canadensis) and the Virginia deer (Odocoileus 
 mrginianus] are managed and reared in enclosures, chiefly for profit 
 in the sale of venison ; but also the desire to preserve our vanishing 
 game has caused the confinement of small herds under private 
 ownership in many places. The elk readily adapts itself to any 
 environment. It proves especially useful in clearing out under- 
 brush from thickets, in which they are more useful than goats, 
 since they browse higher. The increase of elk, while kept in pre- 
 serves with surroundings as nearly natural as possible, is equal to 
 that of cattle: fully ninety per cent, of the females produce healthy 
 young. The male elk is ordinarily docile, but in the rutting season 
 the older ones often become ill-tempered and dangerous. The 
 remedy for viciousness is castration, the effects of which are that 
 the animal is made docile, and its value for venison is greatly 
 enhanced. The stocking of parks and preserves with deer merely 
 for sport or aesthetic purposes appeals much more to a sensitive 
 mind. The idea of raising beautiful animals like deer merely for 
 slaughtering purposes is revolting and unsportsmanlike, and for 
 this reason has no future. A vigorous propaganda in favor of the 
 destruction of some of our finest game-animals, which we have 
 every reason to wish to see preserved, should be combated in all 
 ways possible. 
 
 Examples of tame deer can be gathered from all parts of the 
 world and from all times. In ancient Italy herdsmen reared does 
 (caprea) on sheep's milk, and the wealthy Romans were fond of 
 keeping them in their parks together with chamois and gazelles. 3 
 
 1 J. D. Caton, The Antelope and Deer in America, p. 277. This author, further, 
 has interesting notes on efforts to tame caribou, elk, and other deer. 
 
 2 " Deer Farming in the United States," published by the U. S. Department of 
 Agriculture, Farmer's Bulletin 330 (Washington, 1908), p. 20. Compare also the same 
 author's " Raising Deer and Other Large Game Animals in the United States," pub- 
 lished by the U. S. Department of Agriculture, Biological Survey, Bull. No. 36 (Wash- 
 ington, 1910), p. 62. 
 
 3 O. Keller, Tiere des classischen Allertums, p. 103. 
 
132 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION [MEMOIRS, 4 
 
 Tame stags are frequently mentioned by Greeks and Romans. 
 Sertorius owned in Spain a white deer, which, he made the people 
 believe, communicated prophesies to him. Vergil 1 tells how a 
 stately stag was bathed, combed, and adorned with flowers by 
 Silvia, the daughter of the head pastor Tyrrhus, and how the 
 animal became accustomed to the master's hand and table. In 
 art, neck-collars and girth are repeatedly represented on stags. 
 Apollo, Artemis, and Amor drive in chariots drawn by stags or 
 deer. Heliogabalus possessed a chariot pulled by four powerful 
 stags; and Aurelian, in his triumph over Zenobia, drove with a 
 team of four tame stags which had once belonged to a king of the 
 Goth. 2 Columella 3 says that wild animals, like roes, antelopes, 
 stags, and boars, are kept either for one's pleasure or for sale and 
 profit. In the former case, any hedged place near one's homestead 
 is sufficient, and the animals receive food and drink from one's 
 hand; a plot of woodland with running water, walled around or 
 fenced with pallisades, must be set aside for the game. 
 
 The genus Dama, which originally appears to have been re- 
 stricted to the Mediterranean countries and Persia, has been intro- 
 duced into western and central Europe, where it exists in a semi- 
 domesticated condition as far north as the British Islands and the 
 south of Sweden. 
 
 Owing to long domestication [read "taming"], the fallow deer of the British 
 parks frequently display great variation from the original type of coloration, 
 and a uniformly dark brown breed has been long established, while white or 
 whitish varieties are far from uncom ;: :.i. 
 
 Tamed deer were kept and fed by the hermits of ancient India. 
 The deer-park near Rajagriha in which Buddha used to dwell is 
 familiar to all readers of Buddhist literature. The kings of India 
 built special stables for deer on the west side of their palaces. 5 
 
 West of Tokmak the Turkish Khans of the seventh century 
 maintained a summer residence with a park of tame harts provided 
 
 1 Aeneis, vn, 483. 
 
 2 Keller, 1. c., p. 90; and Antike Tierwelt, vol. i, p. 278. 
 
 3 De re rustica, ix, i. 
 
 4 R. Lydekker, Catalogue of the Ungulate Mammals in the British Museum (Lon- 
 don, 1915), vol. iv, p. 229. 
 
 6 B. K. Sarkar, The Sukramti (Allahabad, 1914). P- 3O. 
 
LAUFER] THE REINDEER AND ITS DOMESTICATION 133 
 
 with bells and rings, in the words of the Buddhist pilgrim Hiian 
 Tsang, " familiar with men and not fleeing at their sight." The 
 Khan, being very fond of them, forbade his subjects to kill them on 
 pain of death without remission. 1 
 
 The Island Mijo, or Aki-no Mijo (so called from the neighbor- 
 hood of the province Aki), is famous for a particular breed of 
 deer, which they say are very tame and familiar with the inhabi- 
 tants. It is contrary to the laws of the country to chase and to 
 kill them. 2 
 
 In several places of the Altai, the maral (Cervus elaphus) is 
 reared in captivity in consequence of the large demand for its 
 antlers on the part of the Chinese, who are said to pay as much as 
 150 rubles for a pair, and employ it for medicinal purposes. Taming 
 and feeding the animals are said to be easy; the antlers are cut off 
 in their third year, the operation being without harm for the 
 animals. 3 The Chinese have many stories in regard to tame deer, 
 which were even used for drawing carriages. In mythology, gods 
 and fairies ride on deers' backs. 4 Some tribes of Formosa practised 
 the capturing of harts alive, and dexterity in this feat was regarded 
 as a manly virtue highly extolled by folk-songs. 5 
 
 It is not necessary to multiply these examples. Those given 
 illustrate sufficiently the fact that many species of deer exhibit a 
 high degree of adaptability, and that in diverse parts of the world 
 and at different times efforts have been made to tame them and 
 to keep them as pets in parks mainly for aesthetic reasons. In 
 the case of every domestication, the animal deserves as much 
 credit as man; an animal unqualified for the status, and without 
 sympathetic instincts for man, cannot be domesticated. 
 
 1 S. Julien, Memoir es sur les contrees occidentales, vol. I, p. 14; S. Beal, Records 
 of Western Countries, vol. i, p. 28; Chavannes, Documents sur les Tou-kiue (Turcs) 
 occidentaux, p. 120. 
 
 2 E. Kaempfer, History of Japan (Glasgow edition), vol. I, p. 200. 
 
 3 A. Printz, Erman's Archiv fur wissenschaftl. Kunde von Russland, vol. xxv, 
 1867, p. 294; A. Jarilow, Beitrag zur Landwirtschaft in Sibirien, r. 319. 
 
 4 An interesting article on Chinese notions of cervines is by M. Cibot, " Notice 
 sur le cerf," in Memoires concernant les Chinois (Paris, 1788), vol. xui, pp. 402408. 
 
 6 K. Florenz, " Formosanische Volkslieder," Mitt. D. Ges. Ostasiens, vol. vu, 
 (1898-99), p. 122. 
 
134 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION [MEMOIRS, 4 
 
 The following case presents a good example as to how primitive 
 man may have managed to get possession of wild reindeer alive. 
 The ancient Kitan and Jurci (Niiici) of Manchuria had a peculiar 
 method of hunting deer by imitating its belling, and killing with 
 arrow-shots the animal thus allured. 1 
 
 A lively description of this manner of hunting was given in the 
 eighteenth century by C. Visdelou 2 as follows: 
 
 The Niuci were always celebrated for a sort of hunting peculiar to their 
 nation. The same method is still appropriate solely to the Manchu. These 
 tell the following story as a well-substantiated fact. Briefly before the rutting- 
 season each stag will establish a seraglio of does and occupy a stretch of forest 
 or mountain. After this division there are stags left who either did not receive 
 their share or were robbed of their spoils. Each is intent on acquiring a terri 
 tory by right of conquest. He invades the district of one of his neighbors. On 
 entering it he utters a cry as a challenge for combat. A courageous owner does 
 not await another call, but will pounce on the intruder instantaneously. Mean- 
 while the does will line themselves up in two rows to watch the duel. The 
 adversary being put to flight or thrown to the ground, his does will pass over to 
 the victor. The Manchu take a stag's head with the antlers, hollow it out, and 
 place it over their own head. With a hidden decoy whistle they imitate the 
 call of a stag so perfectly that the animal is deceived. They crouch in the thicket, 
 and at the sound of the whistle the stag comes out in the open for an attack, 
 sometimes so precipitately and furiously that the hunter has no time to make 
 use of his weapons. He who is thus surprised is usually lost and torn to pieces. 
 During his youth the Emperor K'ang-hi once risked his life on such a hunt, which 
 takes place annually. The Manchu affirm that the best, largest, and strongest 
 
 1 H. C. v. d. Gabelentz, Geschichte der grossen Liao, pp. 98, 154; Chavannes, " Voy- 
 ageurs chinois chez les Khitan," Journal asiatique (mai-juin, 1897), p. 404; also 
 Klaproth, Tableaux historiques de I'Asie, p. 90. In the latter's translation appears a 
 zoological puzzle by which no one as yet seems to have been struck. According to 
 Klaproth, the Jurci subsisted on the flesh of the stags, and prepared an intoxicating 
 beverage from the milk of the does. The question as to how it was possible to milk a 
 wild animal did not alarm the learned sinologue. In fact, the Chinese author, the 
 traveler Hu Kiao, who lived among the barbarians of the north from 947 to 953, 
 did not write this nonsense. The text of the Wu tai ski (ch. 73, p. 3 b), in which his 
 account is embodied, simply contains a misprint (mi 1j$ , Cervus davidianu*, instead 
 of mi, " millet "); and the passage means, as rendered by Chavannes, " They make a 
 fermented beverage from a decoction of millet." Schlegel (T'oung Pao, vol. in 
 (1894), ,p. 141), citing the same passage after Ma Tuan-lin, arbitrarily takes the term 
 mi in the sense of " reindeer," and thinks that the Jurci distilled an alcoholic beverage 
 from reindeer's milk. As to the other animals mentioned by Hu Kiao in this region, 
 the " wild dogs " (ye kou), I believe, represent Canis procyonoides. 
 
 2 In d'Herbelot, Bibliotheque orientale (La Haye, 1789), vol. iv, p. 292. 
 
LAUFER] THE REINDEER AND ITS DOMESTICATION 135 
 
 stags are brought in from these hunting-expeditions, and that there is no finer 
 sight than the majesty, pride, and intrepidity of these animals when coming 
 forward to fight, a quality less conspicuous at other times. 
 
 G. Radde 1 reports that during the rutting season the hunters of 
 the Sayan, Baikal, Yabloko, and Chingan mountains avail them- 
 selves of slightly curved horns made from fir or larch wood; 2 on 
 the left bank of the Amur they use also the thick, hollow stems of 
 the Kongola-Umbelle (Calisace daurica). At this time the stag is 
 not timid, and approaches the hidden sportsman at a short distance. 
 Old stags, however, do not easily accept this challenge to battle, 
 and are said to discriminate well between the call of the hunters 
 and their own kind. The Mongols avail themselves of a whistle 
 (called urum or urum-dal) to attract the hart, or also imitate his 
 cry. 
 
 According to the reminiscences of the Lapp, they received their 
 domesticated reindeer from the wild animal. Johan Turi narrates 
 in his autobiography (p. 64), 
 
 In ancient times there were many wild reindeer, and there was no one who 
 cared to guard reindeer. And the Lapp learned how to make the wild reindeer 
 feel safe, so that they remained in his herd. When a wild reindeer has joined 
 the herd, it is necessary to go cautiously around the herd and to allow it to walk 
 ahead quite a distance, that the wild reindeer does not know that men are near. 
 When the wild animal has visited the herd, it is familiar with it, and does not 
 move away even when seeing men. Not all wild reindeer, however, are equally 
 bold; some never become confiding, however long they may remain with the 
 herd, but some it takes only little time to become accustomed to reindeer and 
 man; neither does it run away unless it should drift into a troup of wild reindeer; 
 in this case it follows the wild ones. The timid ones can never be tamed. The 
 wild ones are much larger than the domesticated stock, and more glossy, as 
 though having silver hair. A few of those which cannot be rendered tame were 
 obtained in this manner, that a wild reindeer bull visited the herd in the rutting 
 season. And when a wild reindeer is in the herd, the latter need not be guarded. 
 
 Johan Turi continues (p. 65), 
 
 A Lapp sojourned in the vicinity of Koutokaino, and he would annually 
 
 1 Reisen im Suden von Ost-Sibirien, vol. i, p. 284. Radde has transcribed the 
 call in notes. See also A. von Middendorff, Sibirische Rehe, vol. iv, p. 1390. 
 
 2 According to the Ta Kin kuo chi (ch. 39, p. i; written in 1234 by Yii-wen Mou- 
 chao), the Jurci made horns from birchbark, on which they produced sounds like 
 yu-yu, in order to allure the harts (mi-lu), and then to shoot them with bow and 
 arrow. Yu-yu is a Chinese term of endearment for a tame deer. 
 
136 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION [MEMOIRS, 4 
 
 allow the reindeer to mate on a strip of land in the Elf. A wild reindeer always 
 appeared during the mating-season for several years, and he did not kill him. 
 Somebody, however, killed him at last. And the Lapp regarded this as a much 
 more deplorable loss than if it had been one of his own bulls. Yet he received 
 offspring from the wild reindeer. His deer became as glossy and slender as wild 
 reindeer; it was quite extraordinary reindeer, and every one envied him for his 
 reindeer, since they were much finer than others. 
 
 While this account proves nothing for the origin of the domesti- 
 cation, it shows clearly that the old stock was renewed and re- 
 cruited from wild material, and that a great number of wild animals 
 were gradually absorbed by the Lapp. In this respect also Oh- 
 there's account given above (p. 95) is of fundamental value. 
 .^ Aside from battues, the Samoyed have conceived a peculiar 
 .^ method of capturing wild reindeer. They train four or five tame, 
 / usually female, reindeer in such a manner that they walk together 
 
 around the hunter in a certain order. One walks ahead, being 
 held by a rope many fathoms long, the others going at the side 
 of the hunter, who fastens to his girdle the ropes of all animals. 
 The hunter, clad in reindeer-skins and bending low, steals along 
 as near as he can to the wild herd, and picks out the best specimen 
 for his shot. During the rutting season the Samoyed select a 
 strong, ungelded buck, and look for a wild herd. When such is 
 sighted, slings are laid around the antlers of the buck and attached 
 by means of loose bast. Thus he is set on the wild herd. The 
 wild stag, being aware of the alien rival, challenges him to a duel. 
 During the brawl, his antlers become entangled in the slings of the 
 tame pseudo-opponent, who will press his antlers toward the 
 ground, and thus hold the adversary till the hunter arrives. 1 
 
 The Ostyak have developed a similar method, or rather adopted 
 it from the Samoyed. They fasten to their tame deer a strap 
 between the upper tips of the antlers, and allow them to disperse 
 near a herd of wild ones. These rush on the strangers, and, during 
 the struggle, entangle their antlers in the straps prepared, being 
 held till the arrival of their captors. 2 A similar method prevails 
 
 1 P. S. Pallas, Reise durch verschiedene Provinzen des russischen Reichs (1776), 
 vol. in, p. 91. 
 
 2 A. Erman, Reise um die Welt, vol. i, pt. i, p. 653. 
 
LAUFER] THE REINDEER AND ITS DOMESTICATION 137 
 
 among the Amur tribes. In the autumn and the spring the native 
 hunters indulge in the chase of wild reindeer by means of tame ones. 
 The latter are let loose, but held with a long strap by the hunter, 
 who cautiously follows behind in their trail. According to his 
 will, the reindeer is made to pasture, to lie down, to stand up, and 
 to turn round in this or that direction. The skilful hunter can 
 thus slay many wild deer before his presence is suspected by the 
 herd. 1 V. Jochelson 2 has described the same procedure for the 
 inhabitants of the Kolyma district, where the decoy animal is 
 known under the name man'scik (probably from Russian manit', 
 " to lure "), in the language of the Lamut ondadd. Thus the 
 practice is universal throughout Siberia. This method may illus- 
 trate how the decoys of Ohthere were used (p. 95), and how primi- 
 tive man at all times understood how to add a fresh supply to his 
 stock. What method he employed in detail for breaking his deer 
 certainly escapes our knowledge. Some of his methods have been 
 alluded to, as gelding and the imitation of processes gained b 1 
 experience with other domestications. 
 
 An interesting problem is whether reindeer-driving is to be 
 conceived as an imitation of the method of driving on dog-sledges. 
 In regard to the latter we possess unfortunately little historical 
 material. We have seen that dog-sleighs were known among the 
 Kirgiz in the thirteenth century (p. in) and in northwestern Siberia 
 in 1499 (p. 97), and that they even extended to the west of the 
 Ural in ancient times. 3 Driving with dogs is practised throughout 
 Siberia. As is well known, the dog was originally the sole domestic 
 animal kept by the so-called Palaeo- Asiatic peoples, the Ainu, 
 Gilyak, Kamchadal, Yenisei-Ostyak, 4 Yukagir, Koryak, and Chuk- 
 
 1 Grum-Grzimailo, Opisanie Amurskoi Oblasti, pp. 334, 335. 
 
 2 Ocerk zv' dropromyslennosti i lorgovli m'axami v Kolymskom okrug' a (Sketch of 
 the Animal Industry and Fur Trade in the District of Kolyma), p. 44- 
 
 3 These data escaped L. von Schrenck (Reisen'und Forschungen im Amur-Lande, 
 vol. in, p. 488) in his discussion as to the time when the Russians became acquainted 
 with dog-driving; he does not go beyond the seventeenth century. S. von Herber- 
 stein (Notes upon Rtissia, vol. n, p. 46) mentions large dogs used as beasts of burden, 
 "which are very useful for this purpose, with which they convey baggage in carriages, 
 in the same manner as will be hereafter described in speaking of the deer." Compare 
 above, p. 99. 
 
 4 J. Klaproth, Asia polyglolta (Paris, 1823), p. 167, stated that the Yenisei-Ostyak 
 
138 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION [MEMOIRS, 4 
 
 chi; and dog-sleighs represent the exclusive means of land trans- 
 portation among these tribes. The same condition is found among 
 the Eskimo, while the tame reindeer is unknown to them. From 
 this wide geographical distribution covering the Old and New 
 Worlds it necessarily follows that the employment of the dog 
 for the sledge is far older in time than that of the reindeer for the 
 same purpose. Although strictly mathematical proof cannot be 
 put forward, the ethnographical facts well warrant the conclusion 
 that the reindeer-sledge is based on the dog-sledge, and that rein- 
 deer-driving sprang into existence as a perfectly conscious and 
 volitional imitation of driving with dogs. This being the case, 
 it is clear that the reindeer people must have profited from the 
 experiences of the dog-drivers, and reproduced many of their 
 methods. 1 
 
 subsist on fishing, hunting, and to a small extent reindeer-breeding. Recent authors 
 say nothing about this point, but mention only fishing and hunting, with the dog as 
 the exclusive domestic animal (S. Patkanov, Essai d'une statistique et d'une geographic 
 des peuples palae-asiatiques (St.-Petersbourg, 1903), p. 9). The peculiar language of 
 this group has been studied by M. A. Castren, Versuch einer Yenisej-ostjakischen und 
 kotlischen Sprachlehre (St.-Petersburg, 1858). G. I. Ramstedt " Ueber den Ursprung 
 der sog. Jenisej-Ostjaken," Journal de la Societe finno-ougrienne, vol. xxiv, 1907, pp. 
 1-6, has made the singular attempt to compare the Yenisei-Ostyak numerals from 
 two to ten with those of Tibetan and Chinese, and to proclaim on the basis of this 
 result the Yenisei-Ostyak as a branch of the Indo-Chinese family. The alleged coin- 
 cidences are by no means convincing, and either do not exist at all, or are mere re- 
 semblances on paper; not phonetical, however. It would hardly be worth while to 
 call attention to this fantasy if the author were not a good philologist, whose contri- 
 butions to Mongol phonology and dialects command respect. 
 
 1 Two extraordinary statements in respect to reindeer-driving are made by the 
 Jesuit Philippe Avril, Ttavels into Divers Parts of Europe and Asia (London, 1693), 
 p. 172, English translation of his Voyage en divers etats d'Europe et d'Asie (Utrecht, 
 1673, and Paris, 1692). " To make the reine-deer go more swift, they tie a great dog 
 behind, that scaring the poor beast with his barking, sets her a running with that 
 speed, as to draw her burthen no less then forty leagues a day." " But that which 
 is more wonderful as to these sort of sledds, they are also driven along by the wind 
 sometimes over the land cover'd with snow, sometimes over the ice of frozen rivers, 
 as our vessels, that sail upon the sea. For in regard the country beyond Siberia is 
 open and extreamly level as far as Mount Caucasus, the people who inhabit it making 
 use of this advantage to spare their beasts, have so order'd their sledds, as either 
 to be drawn along by^the reine-deer, or else to carry sails, when the wind favours 
 'em." I cannot find any confirmation of this dog contrivance and of sail sledges in 
 any other source. Avril was commissioned by the then King of France to discover 
 a new way by land into China, left Marseilles in 1664, reached Moscow, where he 
 
LAUFER] THE REINDEER AND ITS DOMESTICATION 139 
 
 The advantages of reindeer over dog keeping are obvious. The 
 reindeer feeds itself, the dog must be fed. In traveling, food must 
 be carried for the dogs. The maintenance of dogs develops into a 
 burdensome task. In case of emergency the reindeer will furnish 
 food to his master. 
 
 As soon as the wind blows a little, the dog cannot travel; especially is this 
 so if the wind happens to be in the face. The deer does not mind the wind in 
 the least, from whatever direction it comes; it rather enjoys travelling against 
 the wind. It costs nothing for feed; it faces all weather, and makes its way 
 where the driver can hardly walk without snowshoes. It goes uphill and down- 
 hill alike. Trail or no trail, it will haul its two hundred pounds or more day 
 after day, even week after week. 1 
 
 It is not to the point that, as asserted by G. Mortillet 2 after K. 
 Vogt, reindeer-breeding is impossible without the use of the watch- 
 dog. In fact, only the western _group of reindeer-tribes Lapp, 
 Wogul, Ostyak, and Samoyed have their herds managed by dogs; 
 while neither the Tungus nor the Koryak and Chukchi have their 
 reindeer chaperoned by dogs; on the contrary, they keep these 
 away from the herds. 3 With me it is not an open question, as 
 stated by Bogoras, whether reindeer-breeding was begun with dogs 
 or without them. The dog, in my estimation at least, had^nothing 
 to do with the incipient process. He is merely an incidental 
 accessory, being transferred from his office previously held in other 
 herds to the guarding of reindeer long after the latter's domestica- 
 tion was completed. 
 
 As regards the employment of the reindeer for riding purposes, 
 there can be no doubt that it existed at least as early as the thir- 
 teenth century in the Baikal region (p. 107). The only moot point 
 
 was compelled to return, and traveled by way of Warsaw to Constantinople, reaching 
 Toulon in 1670. The information supplied by him on Siberia was gathered in Russia, 
 for the most part from oral accounts. In his biography (Biographic universelle. 
 Supplement, vol. LVI, p. 605) it is said, " Ce qu'il dit sur 1'histoire naturelle montre 
 que ses connaissances en ce genre n'etaient pas tres etendues." Nevertheless his 
 book is full of interest and teems with curious information (see, for instance, T'oung 
 Pao (1916), p. 363)- 
 
 1 Fourteenth Annual Report on Introduction of Domestic Reindeer into Alaska 
 (Washington, 1905), p. 105. 
 
 2 La Piehistorique, p. 439. 
 
 3 Bogoras, Jesup North Pacific Expedition, vol. vu, p. 71* 
 
AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION [MEMOIRS, 4 
 
 is whether this practice is primarily due to the southern Samoyed 
 or to Tungusians. 1 Since the northern Samoyed do not ride the 
 reindeer, it would seem that the claim of the Tungusians merits 
 preference; but this conclusion would be fallacious. The northern 
 Samoyed are mentioned as early as 1096 in the Russian chronicle of 
 Nestor, and it is therefore conceivable that the northward migra- 
 tion of this stock was an accomplished fact at a time when the 
 reindeer w r as not yet trained to the saddle in their southern home; 
 or, in other words, that the riding of the reindeer in the Baikal 
 region came into existence after the separation of the Samoyed 
 tribes, and for this reason never reached the northern group. 
 Thus the question as to the particular people which first mounted 
 the reindeer must remain undecided; assuredly it was a tribe that 
 had gained some experience with horses. It is said that it takes 
 the reindeer only a very short time to become accustomed to the 
 saddle. 2 
 
 Although truly in a state of domestication, it can by no means 
 be asserted that the reindeer has been brought fully under the 
 control of man. On the contrary, the reindeer controls man to a 
 much higher degree than man has sway over the animal, and in 
 fact determines his whole manner of life. In this respect reindeer- 
 keeping differs radically from cattle or horse breeding. Cattle and 
 horse have been subordinated to human will so completely that 
 they cannot subsist without being provided by man with fodder 
 and shelter. They share man's habitation, and stable-feeding has 
 made them the close associates and. friends of his home. To the 
 reindeer man does not furnish lodging and board. It remains 
 independent, and pursues its natural instincts along the question 
 of nutrition ; it is not sheltered from the inclemencies of the weather 
 by house or tent, but spends the night like its wild congener. In 
 short, it makes and lives its own life, only to answer its master's 
 call when occasion for labor arises. It performs its duties willingly 
 
 1 N. V. Latkin, Yeniseiskaya Guberniya, p. 169, includes also the Dolgan and 
 Yakut among the reindeer-riders. If this is the case, it is certainly due to Tungusian 
 influence. An example of reindeer-riding Yakut is found in the autobiography of the 
 Yakut Uvarovski (O. Bohtlingk, Sprache der Jakuten, pp. 26, 49). 
 
 2 Latkin, I. c. 
 
LAUFER] THE REINDEER AND ITS DOMESTICATION 14! 
 
 and submissively; but as soon as the short working-hours are past, 
 it demands its freedom, and must be released for grazing and 
 browsing: it cannot be held in socage indefinitely. The reindeer's 
 life is bound to a well-defined geographical area with specific floristic 
 characteristics, and it cannot be removed to other quarters without 
 its existence becoming endangered. Individuals taken into our 
 zoological parks, even if provided with moss, do not thrive long, 
 and are usually doomed after a few years; while transplantations 
 of herds into Switzerland, for instance, have proved failures. The 
 reindeer cannot live in captivity, it cannot be acclimated to un- 
 congenial zones, and will never approach that state of true domes- 
 ticity attained in cattle and horse. If domestication be taken in 
 the true sense of the word, " habituation to home-life," the rein- 
 deer has certainly not reached it, quite in conformity with its 
 master. 
 
 In view of the reindeer's economic independence, the inter- 
 esting question arises: What forces bind the animal to man? If 
 it receives from him neither food nor shelter, by what factors is it 
 induced to maintain such a seemingly unprofitable association? 
 Indeed, the reindeer's position is singular. Examining other 
 domestic breeds, we plainly recognize the foundation of their social 
 contract with man, which is based on an unwritten law of reci- 
 procity, that on both sides has developed into the quality of faith- 
 fulness. Dog, cat, and swine have reserved to themselves a certain 
 degree of independence in the choice of their diet, and if forsaken 
 by man, or even while under his care, may hunt for a meal on 
 their own initiative; nevertheless they will always appreciate more 
 what is offered them by man. Reindeer are fond of salt and 
 sugar, and a bit of these articles may accelerate their run; but 
 they are so rarely given to them, that this could hardly be thought 
 of as an inducement for them to keep up companionship with man. 1 
 It may be, then, that it believes in man as a superior being, that it 
 trusts in his power and strength, and looks up to him as his guardian 
 from perils threatening from wild animals, chiefly its arch-enemy 
 
 1 Hahn, Hausliere, pp. 558-559, regards the animal's craving for salt, satisfied by 
 human urine, as the strongest bond that binds it to the service of man, doubtless an 
 exaggeration. 
 
142 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION [MEMOIRS, 4 
 
 the wolf. But even this argument, weighty as it may be, does not 
 seem to me sufficient to explain the whole scale of the reindeer's 
 relation to man. It seems to me that psychic qualities both in the 
 animal and in man must be made responsible for the final result. 
 There is man's aesthetic pleasure in animals, and the entire deer 
 family is attractive to every human soul. This sympathy is doubt- 
 less reciprocated by the reindeer. Above all, there is the social 
 instinct developed both in deer and man, and in the loneliness of 
 the arctic regions these social bonds are doubtless intensified. The 
 deer is a highly social creature, impressing its friendship on man. 
 It is of gentle disposition, and is loved by children. Those of the 
 Tungus are fond of decorating their riding-deer with ribbons to 
 which are sewed glass beads or buttons. 1 
 
 Not much positive information is available in regard to feral 
 reindeer. The Lapp, Johan Turi, in his fascinating autobiography 
 (p. 40), speaks of the savage character of the bulls during the 
 rutting season, when they even pounce on men, and observes that 
 the " bulls of the wilderness " (that is, animals which have segre- 
 gated from the herd and lived long in the wilderness without man's 
 care) particularly are prone to attack people. 
 
 In accordance with the history of the domestication, the tending 
 of the herd, and the care of everything connected with it, are every- 
 where the business of man. Among the Chukchi, labor is divided 
 between man and wife in this manner: that all domestic affairs, 
 inclusive of preparation of hides, yarn, and clothing, fall to the 
 lot of woman; while man looks after the herd, harnesses or un- 
 harnesses the deer, and, if necessary, slaughters it. This is man's 
 sole business, but his time is fully occupied with it. 2 
 
 To dilate on the effects of reindeer-breeding is beyond the scope 
 of this article. This would mean to set forth in detail the eco- 
 nomic features of the culture of the tribes in question, which has 
 been done in a number of excellent monographs. I should like to 
 emphasize merely a single point; and that is, that in my estimation 
 the reindeer-breeders have developed higher psychic qualities 
 
 1 Pekarski and Tsv'atkov, Ocerki byta Priayanskix Tungusov, p. 39. 
 
 2 G. Maydell, Reisen und Forschungen im Jakutskhchen Gebiet Ostribiriens, pt. i, 
 pp. 186-187. 
 
LAUFER] THE REINDEER AND ITS DOMESTICATION 143 
 
 than the PalaeoAsiatic dog-breeders, owing to the fact that the 
 latter, as agreed upon by all observers, have no inward relations to 
 their dogs, and their savage dogs lack all superior traits of the 
 civilized dog, while there is mutual affection between man and 
 reindeer. I do not believe in generalizations nor in comparisons, 
 still less in dogmas of racial superiority and inferiority or of good 
 and evil, and I am very far from extolling the reindeer tribes at 
 the expense of the dog-breeders. Of these the Gilyak and Ainu 
 are known to me from personal experience, also the Olca and Golde 
 on the Amur, whose culture is partially based on the maintenance 
 of dogs. I gained a deep respect and sympathy for these people, 
 for their manliness and good nature, their hospitality, and their 
 intellect. I felt more at home, however, with the reindeer-breeding 
 Tungusians, who are more alert, open-minded, straightforward, 
 and psychically more developed, and I found that A. von Midden- 
 dorff was perfectly right in styling them the aristocracy of Siberia. 
 There can be no doubt that constant intercourse with an animal 
 as noble, civil, and civilized as the reindeer has a psychical value, 
 and exerts a beneficial and ennobling influence on the hearts of the 
 people. Let me quote the experience of a Finnish author. Among 
 the Lapp, songs are particularly cultivated by the reindeer-breeders; 
 and in the opinion of Armas Launis, 1 who has published a compre- 
 hensive collection of such songs with their musical notations, they 
 may be regarded as the originators of the songs which receive their 
 natural explanation from the life of the herder. At home he is 
 reserved and taciturn, and he scarcely sings otherwise than during 
 his sojourn on the tundra, where he tends his herd. Confronted 
 with the wide panorama of lakes and the blue mountains bordering 
 the horizon, he will remember a good friend or brood evil against 
 an enemy. The reminiscence assumes shape in words and tones, 
 and a tune thus arises on the subject of his thought. While he 
 looks over his herd with a feeling of content, he gives vent to his 
 sentiments, and, muttering the words " cabba cello cabba cello " 
 (handsome herd, handsome herd), he will finally compose a melody 
 in praise of his flock. 
 
 1 " Lappische Juoigos-Melodien," Memories de la Societe finno-ougrienne (Helsing- 
 fors, 1908), vol. xxvi. 
 
144 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION [MEMOIRS, 4 
 
 Hahn 1 says that the economic value of the reindeer has been 
 overstated, as would follow from the fact that it is restricted 
 everywhere to the aborigines; while Europeans did not take to its 
 breeding, even there, where the animal would be important. Again 
 he thinks that " the reindeer is not sufficient to man of European 
 descent and culture, or that the latter has not the patience required 
 for it; in this point he is surpassed by the ' savage.' ' But Oh there, 
 the Norseman, was a European (p. 94). The Russians, when 
 advancing and settling in northern regions, where horses do not 
 thrive, easily took to reindeer-breeding. P. S. Pallas 2 reported in 
 1772, in regard to the district of Obdorsk, that horses imported 
 there did not live a year, and that the reindeer-herds, which, 
 despite numerous diseases and wild animals, increase rapidly 
 form a not unimportant wealth both of the Russian and Pagan 
 inhabitants of those northern countries. 3 
 
 Erroneous also is Hahn's statement that 
 
 the reindeer has never followed the European, as particularly shown by the 
 introduction in 1770 into Iceland of reindeer which were supposed to give new 
 domestic animals to that poor country. 
 
 What was introduced into Iceland in 1771 and 1777 (not in 1770) 
 were not domestic, but wild reindeer from Norway, which were 
 gradually shot, and are now almost exterminated. 4 
 
 The reindeer introduced into Alaska at the end of the last 
 century are as useful to the whites as to the Eskimo. Says Dr. 
 
 1 Haustiere, pp. 264, 267. 
 
 2 Reise durch verschiedene Provinzen des russischen Reichs, vol. in, p. 23. 
 
 3 The Russian nomenclature relating to the reindeer, chiefly in the dialects of 
 northern Russia, is borrowed from Finno-Ugrian languages: thus pyzik (young rein- 
 deer, fawn), that already occurs in Old Russian, from Syryan pez, Wotyak puzey, 
 Wogul pezka, Ostyak pezi; vazatka or vdzenka (doe) from Syryan vazenka, Lapp vaz, 
 vaza; to the same root belong in the dialect of Archangel vacegal' (to tend a reindeer- 
 herd), vacuga (reindeer relais), vacuzn'a (reindeer-herd); hora (reindeer-bull) from 
 Samoyed hora, Syryan kora; girvas (male reindeer) from Finnish hirvas; gigna, higna 
 (leash in the reindeer-harness) from Finnish hihna; loima (a herd of reindeer) from 
 Finnish lauma, etc. (compare R. Meckelein, Die finnisch-ugrischen Elemente im Rus- 
 sischen, p. 20). 
 
 4 See the interesting account of A. Gebhardt (after Th. Thoroddsen), " Die Ren- 
 tiere auf Island," Globus, vol. 86 (1904), pp. 261-263. 
 
LAUFER] THE REINDEER AND ITS DOMESTICATION 145 
 
 Jackson, the father of this new economic movement, on this point: 1 
 
 The industrial pursuit which nature has mapped out for the native popu- 
 lation of arctic and subarctic Alaska is the breeding and herding of reindeer and 
 the use of the deer as a means of transportation and intercommunication. During 
 the past season the influx of miners into the Yukon region has made a very urgent 
 call for reindeer for freighting-purposes. In the original plan for the purchase 
 and distribution of reindeer, reference was mainly had to securing a new food- 
 supply for the famishing Eskimo; but it is now found that the reindeer are as 
 essential to the white men as to the Eskimo. The wonderful placer mines of 
 the Yukon region are situated from 25 to 100 miles from the great Yukon River. 
 The provisions brought from the south and landed upon the banks of the river 
 are with great difficulty transported to the mines. So great was the extremity 
 last winter, that mongrel Indian dogs cost $100 to $200 each for transportation 
 purposes, and the freight charges fiom the river to the mines, 30 miles, ranged 
 from 15 to 20 cents per pound. The difficulty experienced in providing the 
 miners with the necessaries of life has demonstrated the necessity of reindeer- 
 transportation, and that the development of the large mining interests of that 
 region will be dependent upon the more rapid introduction of reindeer for freight- 
 ing. There are no roads in Alaska, and off of the rivers no transportation facili- 
 ties to any great extent. In the limited traveling of the past, dogs have been 
 used for that purpose; but dog-teams are slow, and must be burdened with the 
 food for their own maintenance. On the other hand, trained reindeer make in a 
 day two or three times the distance covered by a dog-team, and at the end of 
 the day can be turned loose to gather their support from the moss, which is 
 always accessible to them. 
 
 On the other hand, it is stated, 
 
 The ordinary white man is unwilling to undergo the drudgery of herding in 
 that rigorous climate, and unwilling to work for the small compensation that is 
 paid for such services. He can do better. . . . With the increase of domestic 
 reindeer in Alaska, it will become possible for white men to own large herds; 
 but the men that will do the herding and teaming will always be Eskimo and 
 Lapp. 2 
 
 Hahn's gloomy prophesy of the ultimate extinction of the rein- 
 deer jointly with the " miserable " tribes of the Ostyak, Wogul, 
 and Samoyed, has happily not been fulfilled. He who is but 
 superficially posted on the subject knows that the Samoyed are 
 not a dying people, but vigorously spread and thrive. 3 So does 
 
 1 Report of the Commissioner of Education for the year 1805-06 (Washington, 
 1897), vol. ii, pt. 2, p. 1454. 
 
 2 Report of the Commissioner of Education for the Year 1003, vol. n, p. 2375. 
 
 3 See, for instance, W. Crahmer in Zeitschrift fur Ethnologic (1913). P- 543- 
 
146 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION [MEMOIRS, 4 
 
 the reindeer. It is protected by the Russian government, and the 
 study of the improvement of the economy has been entrusted to 
 special commissions. The reindeer is gaining ground, and will 
 claim more importance and attention in the future. * It has con- 
 quered Alaska and parts of Canada. The successful introduction 
 of domestic reindeer into Alaska has led to their introduction into 
 Newfoundland. Dr. Grenfell, who in 1892 organized a medical 
 mission among the fishermen off the shores of Newfoundland and 
 Labrador, on reading the U. S. reindeer reports, became convinced 
 that he had to have reindeer for his winter trips, and January 7, 
 1908, landed safely three hundred head at the village of Cremeliere, 
 two miles from St. Anthony, on the northern coast of Newfound- 
 land. 1 
 
 The ethnologist will watch with interest the gradual trans- 
 formation of the Alaskan Eskimo into reindeer-breeders. 2 History 
 repeats itself: it is the same process that reshaped the life of the 
 Chukchi and Koryak. The introduction in 1890 of reindeer into 
 Alaska was inspired by a desire to provide a new and more perma- 
 nent food-supply for the half- famishing Eskimo. Up to 1902 
 there were sixty individual holders of domestic reindeer in Alaska, 
 forty-four of these being Eskimo, the majority of whom had served 
 a five-years' apprenticeship and gained a competent knowledge of 
 the management and care of reindeer. In 1903 sixty-eight Eskimo 
 and one Indian owned 2,841 deer. From the 1,280 Siberian rein- 
 deer imported between 1892 and 1903, and from their natural 
 increase, 7,983 fawns have been born in Alaska. 
 
 The Eskimo has always been skilful in driving dogs, and now, 
 under instruction, is proving equally skilful in driving reindeer, 
 and upon various occasions, when the opportunity has offered, 
 has invariably demonstrated his ability to successfully transport 
 with reindeer mails, freight, and passengers between mining-camps. 3 
 
 1 Sixteenth Annual Report on Introduction of Domestic Reindeer into Alaska (Wash- 
 ington, 1908), p. 42. 
 
 2 Compare E. W. Hawkes, " Transforming the Eskimo into a Herder," Anthropos, 
 vol. vin (1913), pp. 359-362. 
 
 3 From Dr. S. Jackson's report, in Report of the Commissioner of Education for the 
 Year 1003 (Washington, 1905), vol. n, p. 2374. 
 
LAUFER] THE REINDEER AND ITS DOMESTICATION 
 
 In view of the opportunities and facilities granted in Alaska, 
 it is a matter of surprise that biologists have not yet seen fit to 
 take up the study of breeding problems in connection with the 
 reindeer, either for- theoretical purposes or with a view to im- 
 proving the races. We are anxious to know, for instance, why the 
 Tungus reindeer is larger and sturdier than that of Lapland, and 
 why most of the wild deer are larger than the domesticated. As 
 to the question of color variation in the domestic stocks we have 
 merely vague descriptions of laymen, and the differentiations of 
 the various stocks have not yet been determined scientifically. 
 Likewise the following observation would offer a problem to the 
 biologist. 
 
 No deterioration in the herds on account of inbreeding has been noted. 
 On the contrary, the chief of the Alaska division maintains that the reindeer now 
 in Alaska are larger animals than those which comprised the original stock im- 
 ported from Siberia, that Alaska affords a better range than Siberia, and that 
 the climate is better adapted to the reindeer industry. The herds in Alaska 
 average moire than seven hundred reindeer each, so that the danger of inbreeding 
 cannot be serious. The introduction of wild caribou into some of the herds has 
 increased the size of the reindeer in those herds. 1 
 
 1 " Report on the Work of the Bureau of Education for the Natives of Alaska, 
 1913-14," p. 10 (1915), Bulletin, No. 48. 
 
AMERICAN 
 ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION 
 
 President : 
 Vice-President, 1917 : 
 Vice- President, 1918 : 
 Vice-President, 1919 : 
 Vice- President, 1920 : 
 Secretary : 
 Treasurer : 
 Editor ' 
 Associate Editors : 
 
 Executive Committee : 
 
 OFFICERS 
 
 A. L. KROEBER, Affiliated Colleges, San 
 Francisco. 
 
 GEORGE B. GORDON, University of Pennsyl- 
 vania, Philadelphia. 
 
 B. LAUFER, Field Museum of Natural History, 
 Chicago. 
 
 JOHN R. SWANTON, Bureau of American Eth- 
 nology, Washington. 
 
 GEORGE GRANT MACCURDY, Yale University 
 Museum, New Haven. 
 
 ALFRED M. TOZZER, Harvard University, Cam- 
 bridge. 
 
 NEIL M. JUDD, U. S. National Museum, Wash- 
 ington, D. C. 
 
 PLINY E. GODDARD, American Museum of 
 Natural History, New York. 
 
 JOHN R. SWANTON, Bureau of American Eth- 
 nology, Washington; ROBERT H. LOWIE, 
 American Museum of Natural History, New 
 York. 
 
 THE PRESIDENT, SECRETARY, TREASURER, and 
 EDITOR (ex-officio} , CLARK WISSLER, EDWARD 
 SAPIR, W. C. FARABEE. 
 
 COMMITTEE ON PUBLICATION 
 A. L. JCROEBER, Chairman ex-officio. 
 "PLINY E, GODDARD, Secretary tx-offici*. 
 
 HIRAM BINGHAM, YALE UNIVERSITY, NEW HAVEN. 
 
 STEWART CULIN, BROOKLYN INSTITUTE MUSEUM. 
 
 A. A. GOLDENWEISER, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK. 
 
 G. B. GORDON, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 WALTER HOUGH, U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM, WASHINGTON, D. C. 
 
 NEIL M. JUDD, U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM, WASHINGTON, D. C. 
 
 F. W. HODGE, BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY, WASHINGTON, D. C. 
 
 BERTHOLD LAUFER, FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, CHICAGO. 
 
 EDWARD SAPIR, GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA, OTTAWA. 
 
 M. H. SAVILLE, MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN, NEW YORK. 
 
 JOHN R. SWANTON, BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY, WASHINGTON, D. C. 
 
 A, M. TOZZER, HARVARD UNIVERSITY, CAMBRIDGE. 
 
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