Domesticated reindeer are not indigenous to North America. Between the years 1892 and 1902, some 1 280 reindeer were imported into western Alaska from Siberia as a supplemental food item for the Bering Strait Eskimo, a novel attempt to introduce a herding technology among hunting societies. Very little is known about the experiences of Eskimo reindeer herdsmen or about the probable success or failure of this particular approach to the economic and social development of remote Arctic regions.