Before the Fall of the Reindeer People

Environmental Graffiti ^ | 13 Dec 2009 | EG

[BGHater]

Sámi, great photos.

[Jack Black]

Finnish bump

[Jack Black]

Finnish bump

[Dixie Yooper]

We must get these poor people cell phones so we can warn them...about liberals.

[Responsibility2nd]

During this joyous Christmas season, I’d like you to know....

A reindeer bit my sister once.

[blackminorca]

Awesome pics - what a demanding life - none of them look too old.

[buckalfa]

A glimpse of our future under international climate change
regs such as cap and trade?

[muawiyah]

One would hope so, but not too hard of course.

Whenever I go over that collection ~ and this is just part of a far larger collection accessible on the net, I look for family faces and always find a new one.

Now not all those faces are family ~

Worth nothing ~ there may be as many as 105,000 Sa'ami in the Fenno-Scandinavian peninsula but there are at least 9,000,000 Sa'ami descendants in the United States.

One aspect of Sa'ami life not covered in those pictures was the forced relocation of most of the population to America in the mid 1600s through the early 1700s.

[JoeProBono]

Great post!

[Spike Knotts]

"“The Sámi are believed to be the first known culture to have herded animals,” writes one scholar."

"Meanwhile, a smaller minority of Mountain Sámi continued to hunt reindeer, and around the 1500s began taming the overhunted animals into herds, becoming the famed reindeer nomads"

Uh...something doesn't compute. Is it the author's contention that no one else on Earth "herded animals" until the 16th century? Ok...no wonder the "scholar" chose to remain nameless.

The pictures seem contrived and poised to me. Natives ginning it up for a naive, or not so naive photographer out looking for his romantic preconceptions of a stone age existence...much like the highly stylized and arranged 19th century American Indian pictures that the media used to introduce the idea of the noble savage. To believe that most of these pictures are genuine seems similar to believing that if a photographer decided to come by my house to document a rapidly vanishing breed, the Southernus Redneckus, he'd just happen to find me in the front yard wearing a Budweiser cap, wife beater and cut offs...and I conveniently have my dogs, Camaro, truck, guns, tools, and family arranged around me. Ready for the glamor shot.

[nathanbedford]

One aspect of Sa'ami life not covered in those pictures was the forced relocation of most of the population to America in the mid 1600s through the early 1700s.

Can you elaborate a bit, this is fascinating? Where did they locate in America? Why would there be pressure brought on them to emigrate?

Great post here.

[BerryDingle]

Gramma got run over by a reindeer “bump”.

[muawiyah]

It's actually very simple. The New Sweden colony was established in territory claimed by UK about 1638. The first ship with colonists was called the Kalmar Nyckel (and there's a lot of history tied up in those two names BTW ~ so no discussion here this time).

There were 5 "official" colonial military crew members ~ all Swedes. All spoke Swedish. The rest of the passengers consisted mostly of "family groups" and we know the names of most the heads of household ~ and, best of all we know they were identified as speaking FINN, and not Swedish.

For most modern purposes FINN means "Finnish" but at that time it did not. That word denotes an individual from the Finnmark ~ that is, a Sa'ami.

As you know reindeer easily range 3000 miles. The Sa'ami followed reindeer wherever they went ~ full domestication came later, but it was common for the reindeer to range much further South in winter.

The Swedes regularly rounded up Sa'ami (and even Swedes without papers) who got too close to Stockholm. In this case they took their Sa'ami winter-time prisoners and shipped them to America ~ to what is now Delaware.

Within a few years of starting the colony there were thousands more Sa'ami present, the officers engaged the Dutch in a little war, the Dutch won, the colony then moved across the isthmus to Elkton Maryland, the officers were hired by the Dutch to run Nieuwe Amsterdam, and the Sa'ami were left on their own.

The Swedes continued to dispatch Sa'ami they caught too close to civilized spots to America, to the same place. The last shipments appear to have happened in the mid 1700s.

The Sa'ami settlements expanded. By 1700 the settlements to the North in Lancaster PA relocated to York (yoik?) PA to get away from Quaker harrassment. (All these people were nominally Lutheran ~ and in reality many still maintained older religious beliefs ~ SEE: Santa Claus, Reindeer, Dwarves, Chimneys, etc. ~ I know you know this stuff.)

By the early 1700s there were 5 Sa'ami colonies in Pennsylvania ~ and 2 Sa'ami colonies in Maryland. Best I can determine these colonies were identified with a "deer" or "elk" in their names, or in later colonies with the word "union" (for Kalmar Union).

Remember George Washington in the boat crossing the Delaware? See those guys doing the rowing? Remember the Maryland 400?

There are numerous family genealogies on the net that detail in some manner the Sa'ami experience in America.

The fellows walking barefoot at Valley Forge might well have been quite comfortable in fact.

Today there are millions of Americans of Sa'ami origin ~ some with a lot, some with not so much. I've been fairly successful in finding a remnant. Maybe we will be able to get together on a compendium of documentation someday. Maybe you'd like to help. To get started read what there is on the internet.

One more thing. Science has determined that the division between the Sa'ami and other white folk took place right at the end of the Ice Age 15,000 years ago. There've been some additions since that time ~ a handful of Yakuts with tame reindeer, some Eastern Slavs 7,000 years ago, and maybe even some folks from America back before the end of the Ice Age.

Having Sa'ami ancestors makes you almost a race apart ~ where the differences between the vast majority and your group are mediated by genes, and not just culture and language.

[muawiyah]

Some of the photos date from the late 1800s where it was still very common to have folks stand in poses for minutes at a time ~ that was a function of the technology available in those days.

Regarding wearing their Sunday best, used to be everybody dressed up for a photo ~ women in their skirts, broad sleeved blouses, pointed hats/bonnets and the men in their best leather brogalis.

We have a number of family pictures where the photographer set up quite a long way from his subjects because you had many adults only 4' tall mixed in with others that were well over 7' tall. Fortunately they stood very still so we can do blow-ups of individuals that are very good likenesses.

You'll notice the photographers in FennoScandinavia had similar problems due to the height differentials.

[BerryDingle]

muawiyah,

Do you know of any websites that list the last names of known Saami settlers to the U.S.?

[BerryDingle]

Sami, my apologies :).

[blam]

The Sami are mostly mtDNA haplogroups 'V' and U5.
My mother was 'V' and my grandmother (Father's mother, Mrs Smith) was U5a.

My yDNA is R1b1b2, an Irishman with roots in Denmark.

[SunkenCiv]

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[blam]

How I love ya, How I love ya, my dear auld Sami....