The remarkable story of Mary Makriko [by Laurel Bill] THE QUEEN OF REINDEER, AS SHE WOULD LATER BE CALLED, was born in 1870 as Mary Makriko to an Inupiat Eskimo mother and a Russian father who was a trader on the Seward Peninsula. Raised in St. Michael on the southern shore of Alaska’s Norton Sound, Mary lived in a village that became the staging point for supplies bound for interior trade on the Lower and Middle Yukon River and a gathering place for large numbers of Alaska Natives who traded furs for European goods. In 1889, Mary met and married Inupiat Charlie Antisarlook, and the couple moved to Sinrock, near Cape Nome. Soon after, the reindeer came into her life. Serving as a translator for Capt. Michael A. Healy on board the U.S. Revenue Service Cutter, Bear, she found the vessel laden with reindeer in transport from Siberia to Alaska.…