Introduction by Sharon Poortvliet

I met my adopted Grandfather, Andrew Bahr, when I was three years old. It was "love at first sight" for both of us. He was the kindest, gentlest, man I have ever known. As I was growing up, my sisters and I heard the story of our Grandfather's five-year Reindeer Trek many times as my mother was very proud of his accomplishment. My Grandfather kept detailed notes of his life including his famous 1500 mile Journey across the "top of the world." Unfortunately the notes on the Journey are no longer available but I found this story among my mother's things and edited it for my family to enjoy and to remember their roots.

Background

The notes published in this and the next issue are from Andrew Bahr's (born Anders Bær) life before the five year trek that made him famous. Unfortunately the notes about that trek are no longer available, but here is a summary of that trek to put his remaining memoirs in a historical context.

            In a drive that occupied five years and four months, from December 22, 1929, to March 25, 1935, Andy Bahr and various herders brought 2,370 reindeer across 3,600 miles of American and Canadian wilderness – 2,007 days of traveling.

            It was the vision of Charles H. Townsend and Sheldon Jackson, general agent of education in Alaska.  1208 reindeer were brought to Alaska from Siberia and Lapland during the years 1892-1902. The Alaskan Eskimos were to be aided in making a living, previously entirely dependent upon hunting. The herds were eventually increased, according to the figures supplied by Carl Lomen to number 1,000,000 reindeer. The Canadian government's Department of the Interior had accepted the offer of the Lomen Commercial Company of Alaska to deliver 3000 reindeer to the Canadian station at Kittigazuit, MacKenzie Territory. Thus, on December 22, 1929, the 2000 head, in the charge of Andy Bahr, a Norwegian Sami, and 10 Eskimo apprentice herders, set out from Nabaktoolit, Alaska, for Kittigazuit, MacKenzie Territory, Canada, 1200 miles as the crow flies.

      Andy Bahr was already an ace reindeer herdsman. This diminutive Sami was so famous in his own land that in 1892 the U.S. government hired him to come to Alaska to supervise the installation of the reindeer herd there. On this December day in 1929 when he led the drive from Nabaktoolit, it was to make history as the longest and only drive of its kind.  He was 57 years old. Yet this indomitable little man had qualities of courage, persistence, and resistance to incredible hardship. Bahr and his men traveled fairly light, yet prepared to endure the terrific cold of the long winter, with its unpredictability and many blizzards. Also, they had to keep the herd moving in the terrible heat of the brief summer which was in some ways worse than winter. During this period swarms of huge mosquitoes and "no-see-ums" attacked night and day.

            Time and again, despite experience and precautions, wolves and bears took heavy toll when the animals were stampeded by flies and blizzard. There were necessary long delays to permit fawning, then progress further slowed to allow strengthening of the young. At the end of the second year, when had been expected the herd would arrive at Kittigazuit, only a third of the distance had been covered.

            On March 25, 1935, a herd of 2,370 reindeer came to their destination, Kittigazuit, after 2,007 days' traveling through approximately 3,600 miles.  At last, the supreme danger of mountains, muskeg, wild beasts and insects was behind them. The trek had not conquered Andy Bahr, now 62 and the men he led to victory.

            Of the 3,000 original animals only 15 percent reached the new Canadian grazing land. The major portion of the herd was born and grew to adulthood on the long trek.

            Upon Bahr's return to his adopted home city Seattle in April 1935, the city declared a put holiday and toasted the victorious herdsman. But Bahr found that all he owned in Seattle, a little apartment house partly paid for with the savings of years, had been swept away in the financial maelstrom of 1929-1933. Andrew Bahr passed away in Seattle on May, 1945.

The Personal Notes of Andrew Bahr

I have traveled by foot more than twice the distance around the world as my work has been herding reindeer since I was old enough to remember. I was born December 25, 1871 in the open air while my mother was herding. I was told she didn't suffer much as she had been working very hard. I was very small and lean, only 18 inches tall, when I was born. My parents were reindeer herders in the district of Kautokeino, Lapland, Norway. Later I moved to Karasjok where I went to school and was confirmed.

Our herd was kept every summer on North Cape Island (Magerø). We had the world's most northern reindeer herd. Every fall, during the last part of September, our herd was taken to the mainland. They swam 3.65 miles across the strait and then we drove them 300 miles in a southerly direction to the boundary lines of Finland, Norway and Sweden in order to keep the herd well fed on their seasonal feeding grounds. Every spring, during the first days of May, just before fawning, the herd was taken back to the island, swimming the strait again. We corralled them with lead line and burlap to drive the herd into the water. We watched the tidal condition for the current strong in this strait, tem miles or more an hour. Just when the tide is starting to turn, we lead and drive the herd into the water. The boat that leads the deer has three strong men to row and one trained man to handle the four lead deer. Then the lead man orders the men to row the boat 75 feet out while he calls and rings an old bell in his left hand. This same bell has been hung for years on one of the deer's neck in the herd. The whole herd knows that. They lift up their heads looking and listening. Two men who stayed behind in the corral, start to drive the herd on with two old dogs. The deer know the dogs well and feel easier. Then the rest of the herd start to follow while three or four boats drive the herd from behind. In less than an hour they swim across.

Once, while our herd was swimming in the middle of the strait, several fishing boats sailed near and made a lot of noise. They scared the herd and the deer started to mill. Hundreds of them drown. Complaints were made and after that no boats were allowed to pass while the herd was swimming.

For four-and-a-half months the herd was kept on the island. All the fawns were born and the whole herd got nice and fat. Meat was sold from time to time in the city of Honningsvåg and other places on the island. Hundreds of kroner are paid yearly as restitution for damage done by reindeer on farmland. Farmers there do not want fences to be built around their land even if the reindeer men would build them or pay for the expense. They know there is nothing that will grow there anyway and this is an easy way to get 100 kroner. The laws to protect reindeer men are weak and the herders are heavily taxed.

During the last part of September our herd is taken to the mainland again. There is no winter pasture for the reindeer. It is covered with deep snow and coated with ice all winter long. We move south using pack deer to carry the whole outfit, children and all. For the first hundred miles there is not much firewood to be found and not much food for the deer. The whole countryside is trodden down by the many reindeer herds that graze every summer along the coastline of the Porsanger Fjord on one side and the great Alta Fjord on the other side. When we reached a place where birch trees were found and food for the reindeer, we stopped.

By this time it is October and it is snowing hard. The rutting season is in hand too. It is necessary to stay for a couple of weeks. This was a good time to make pulkas (sleds - Sami geres). They are made of birch 2 feet wide, 5 inches deep and a little over 6 feet long. They have flat bottoms with the sides slightly curved in and the front end bent up and tapered toward a point. Pulkas are better than sleds with runners in the wilderness where there are a lot of trees and deep snow. Pulkas do not sink so much in the snow and they drag right behind the deer. They don't need anyone to steer and can carry a load of 200 pounds.

One year when the first was finished, I asked my father if I could have it to take a ride. Father said I could but I was to only take a tame deer. I was not satisfied with that. I took a young, partially broken deer, (I was just a kid then). I hitched up and we went flying over the tundra, bouncing from one tundra head to another, the snow flying. I could open my eyes only now and then. Over a hill I went and was going full speed when I went flying over the bushes at least 25 feet. I jumped up but fell down again. I lay there for a few minutes thinking about what could have become of my deer. I got up and followed the tracks. I found only the pulka. The deer was gone. I returned to camp but could not eat or sleep that night. The next morning, early, I went to look for my deer. It was hard to find as it was snowing and blowing all night. The tracks were blown away. I found the hill I had flown over and then spied the hundred foot line that had been tied behind the deer. It was angled around the bushes at the upper edge of the timberline. It seemed to me that both the deer and I were equally glad to see one-another When he saw me he started to bark and run back and forth. I untied him and drove the deer home on skis, hanging onto the long line behind the deer, how we flew. It was not long before we got home. I felt very happy.

During the two weeks we were there, additional pulkas were made and also some reindeer collars. We had some pulkas not far away that we had stored last spring, (as we did every spring). We retrieved the pulkas and traveled for quite a distance until we reached the boundary lines of Finland, Sweden and Norway. At times we go miles into Finland. There is good food here and the reindeer are sold for meat all along the way from Muonio, Finland to Kiruna, Sweden, to Posekop, Norway. All the blood and tallow were sold to make sausage and blood pudding. The adult reindeer skins were sold and made into leather, while the fawn skins were made into coats (parkas), shirts, and pants. All the reindeer hair was sold and used for making cushions, padding, etc. Reindeer hair was mixed with tar and used as caulking for boats. Also, all the reindeer sinew was saved and sold to make thread. Reindeer horns were sold and made into glue. Reindeer horns were also used by the herder to make household items such as spoons, buckles for belts, buttons for halters, screws for woodwork, sheaths, handles for knives, other ornaments for woodworks, pins for clothes and tent flaps, rings for lasso nooses, and hooks that are fastened on the reindeer harness for reins to rest on while driving. Also antlers were used to make small looms that made fancy things such as bands for shoes and belts, etc.

Only our family, my father, grandfather and two of my uncles, kept herds on North Cape Island, a land of 885 square miles, (English miles). Our herd numbered between 3,000 and 4,000 deer and was about all the island could take care of for four-and-one-half months each summer. The deer from this island were 20% bigger than from many other places. Carcasses of ordinary steer, in the fall of the year, dressed for market, weighed on average around 150 pounds, while the average weight from our herd was around 200.

Every spring we headed toward the Polar Star to get our herd on the island before fawning season, which begins the first part of May. In some years the feeding and traveling conditions were very bad, especially farther north. Deep snow and layers of ice made it hard to find food for the deer. Many of them would starve, and have to be left on the trail. The country up by North Cape is barren, mountainous and stormy. One November, while moving over the highest mountain with the whole herd, we were caught in a terrible hurricane that blew men down. We were lost from each other and our herd was blown away. Part of them went down a 1000 foot bluff. All of them died of course, and one of our party froze to death. We were all frozen, more or less; our faces, our fingers and toes. One of our dogs disappeared; we supposed he froze to death. I was 13 then. There was another herd traveling not far from us and part of their herd went on young ice that was covered with snow. Two of their boys went to the lake and started driving their deer to shore. The deer bunched up while the boys were driving them. The ice bent and made waves and the whole herd of several hundred deer broke through the ice. They all drowned, both the boys and their deer.

There were lots of wolves in the early days of Lapland. It was hard to kill them with the old type of guns that were used 50 or 60 years ago with the flint locks and furnace in which a spark from a stroke of flint on steel ignited powder. Farther south where the country is wooded and the snow is deep and soft, people used to run wolves on skis and club them. Once my father clubbed 12 wolves at one time. When he overtook the first wolf, he stopped and showed his teeth. My father pointed with his stick and the wolf bit the end of the stick and tried to pull it off. My father, with his stick in his right hand, hit the wolf on his snout and the wolf fell down, stunned. He hit the wolf several times more and then seeing he had no more time, went after the other wolves and clubbed them all. The last one he clubbed just before he got to him. He clubbed him and then stabbed him with his belt knife and then turned back to see where the others were. They were gone. They had a good licking anyhow. Summer pastures for the reindeer should not be too low or swampy and should have some creeks and lakes. There should be patches of trees here and there, especially birch and willows, so there will be shade. The deer can go in and have the mosquitos brushed off while they eat leaves. Coasts with sand and gravel beaches, and snow along the banks that last part of the summer are good. Peninsula or any headland jutting into the sea is very suitable. Any island not more than 3 to 5 miles out in the ocean is good. The deer can be taken back and forth to the mainland. On the island where the deer are kept yearly both winter and summer, the feeding grounds should be divided. The higher lands for winter feeding and the lower lands for summer pasture for four months. The winter feeding ground, if kept vacant in summer, will improve some and will be good for a long time, if the herd is not bigger than the land can support.

While on the other hand, if summer herding is done on winter feeding grounds, the reindeer moss will be trodden down and thus winter food is killed and the deer will starve. Land that is too low, swampy, muddy, soft and miry is an agent for all the sickness that reindeer can get. It is also a source for all the parasitic insects that prey on reindeer. In early summer the reindeer are changing all their hair and horns. While they are growing their skin is very tender. It is easily cut and wounded, more or less. Muddy dirt makes the skin crack. The deer that wade in the mire for days, weeks and months will be easily prone to blood poisoning and "bigfoot" and will probably die as the mud enters the cracked skin and festers. There is very little chance to cure them as there are too many of them and they are too wild for treatment. It would also cost too much and if you amputate the foot the animal is not worth anything. I have watched my father and others as they operated on such sick deer and I have also done that myself. This is done only on very tame deer. First the animal is tied down and then operated on by cutting the diseased foot open with a knife. Squeeze the pus out as much as possible and then wash with disinfectant medicine. If there is no medicine on hand, use pitch, or pine tar. Boil the tar or pitch in a little water and use that water to wash and clean the wound. Then paint the wound with pure tar and dress or bandage lightly. Keep the animal in a dry place. Feed and water the deer from time to time. Clean and take care of the wound every day until the sore is healed. The animal will get well if the operation is done in time. There is a lot of work taking care of sick animals and that is not a paying proposition. The best and surest medicine for such sicknesses as mentioned above is to take the herd to a dry place where there is good food. Turn them loose, let nature cure them, and then there will be no additional sicknesses to increase in the herd. Many of them that are not so sick will get well. But watch that wolves don't have a chance to get in.

For eyesores that develop in the reindeer, we use a homemade medicine. We soak tobacco leaves in a little water and use the fluid as an eye drop. After while the eye clears up and the animal gets well. A strange thing sometimes happens after using the medicine; the eyeball turns almost entirely white. Once I was with a herd up in the hills and found a deer that was almost blind. I thought I had better make some medicine for him but there was no water obtainable. I melted snow in my mouth, poured it in my palm, soaked a tobacco leaf in it and used the fluid to wash and clean the eyes of the deer. I put plenty of it in the eye that was worst and after a week the deer had eyes that were as good as new. I learned it in the old country that the nicotine in tobacco has curing power to kill the disease. There are some sicknesses that reindeer can get but they are very rare.

Insects are worst in low swampy country, especially inland. Mosquitos and midges furnished with a sting are poisonous weapons. When stung, it will cause much annoyance to animals and to others. Also warble and nose flies are bad. They are both furnished with a sharp pointed instrument by which it thrusts and shoots sperm into the skin on a reindeer's back. An egg then develops and hatches into larvae, which work holes through the skin. After ten months, around the first part of June, they come out and become flies again and start bothering the reindeer all over again. Also, the nose fly shoots through the nostrils of the deer and lays eggs in the cavities in the lower passage of the nose. The eggs hatch and after ten months they come out through the nostrils of the deer and they are not slow about their work.

Taking care of the herding ground is just as important as taking care of the herd in the long run. The herd should not be larger than the land can support and the men can take care of. The average herd should range in size from 1,000 to 4,000 deer. A herd should not exceed 5,000 deer, as too large of a herd is short lived. Inexperienced herders sometimes have their herd too big and if disease strikes the herd it will kill part, if not all of them.

In the early days, all of Alaska was fresh and the herding was started properly. The Eskimos were taught to herd by the old Lapp herders and the herds were tame then. They were kept in good condition with lots of trained sled deer and it was easy to make a drive. The country was fresh then, not trodden down and burnt, as it was later. It will take from 30 to 40 years to improve, especially in the glacier areas. The gestation period of a female reindeer is seven months and seven days. If the herd is a large one, it will be necessary, about the first part of April, to separate all adult females from the rest of the deer and take them to where there is enough food and shelter. They should also have some good herders to watch and take care of them until the fawning is over in the last part of May. The females will not stampede much if there is plenty of food and shelter. The "Luovasta" as reindeer men from Lapland call them, are the rest of the adult males and yearlings. These are very wild in the spring and do a lot of stampeding. If they are not separated, they will scatter the female deer and make it very dangerous for the fawns who can easily drown in the creeks and rivers. They also tread and spoil the food for the females. The Luovasat can be kept behind until fawning is over and the creeks and rivers are lower. Then you can mix them in with the females. When it is time to bring the herd to the summer pasture, it is also time to brand and castrate the males.

Alaska cannot support more than one and a half million reindeer in the long run. Fifty percent of the area is not suitable for reindeer herding. Herds have to be reduced to small herds if successful herding is to be expected. Herding the deer too close together, using too many dogs, and keeping the herd too long in one place can cause the animals to become diseased. They need to be moved often to new pasture and given as much freedom as possible. Man should always follow and control the herd and make them accustomed to men or otherwise they will become too wild. In Alaska the deer got too wild for handling and making drives. Wild deer will not stand half of the hardships that a tame herd will. The wild deer run and wear themselves out with useless panic and cause both delays and damage and thus will become very costly to raise.