Inuit - Early History

Early History

For pre-history, see: Paleo-Indians and Archaic periods (Canada)

Inuit are the descendants of what anthropologists call the Thule culture, who emerged from western Alaska, after crossing the land bridge from Asia also called Beringia, around CE 1000 and spread eastwards across the Arctic. They displaced the related Dorset culture, the last major Paleo-Eskimo culture (in Inuktitut, called the Tuniit). Inuit legends speak of the Tuniit as "giants", people who were taller and stronger than the Inuit. Less frequently, the legends refer to the Dorset as "dwarfs". Researchers believe that the Dorset culture lacked dogs, larger weapons and other technologies that gave the expanding Inuit society an advantage. By 1300, the Inuit had settled in west Greenland, and they moved into east Greenland over the following century.

Faced with population pressures from the Thule and other surrounding groups, such as the Algonquian and Siouan to the south, the Tuniit gradually receded. They were thought to have become completely extinct as a people by about 1400 or 1500.

But, in the mid 1950s, researcher Henry B. Collins determined that, based on the ruins found at Native Point, the Sadlermiut were likely the last remnants of the Dorset culture. The Sadlermiut population survived up until winter 1902–03, when exposure to new infectious diseases brought by contact with Europeans led to their extinction as a people. More recently, mitochondrial DNA research has supported the theory of continuity between the Tuniit and the Sadlermiut. It also has provided evidence that a population displacement did not occur within the Aleutian Islands between the Dorset and Thule transition. In contrast to other Tuniit populations, the Aleut and Sadlermiut benefited from both geographical isolation and their ability to adopt certain Thule technologies.

In Canada and Greenland, Inuit circulated almost exclusively north of the "Arctic tree line", the effective southern border of Inuit society. The most southern "officially recognized" Inuit community in the world is Rigolet in Nunatsiavut. South of Nunatsiavut, the descendants of the southern Labrador Inuit in Nunatukavut continued their traditional transhumant semi-nomadic way of life until the mid-1900s. The Nunatukavummuit were usually spread out among islands and bays and therefore did not establish stationary communities. In other areas south of the tree line, Native American cultures were well established. The culture and technology of Inuit society that served so well in the Arctic were not suited to subarctic regions, so they did not displace their southern neighbors.

Inuit had trade relations with more southern cultures; boundary disputes were common and gave rise to aggressive actions. Warfare was not uncommon among those Inuit groups with sufficient population density. Inuit such as the Nunatamiut (Uummarmiut) who inhabited the Mackenzie River delta area often engaged in warfare. The more sparsely settled Inuit in the Central Arctic, however, did so less often.

Their first European contact was with the Vikings who settled in Greenland and explored the eastern Canadian coast. The Norse sagas recorded meeting skrælingar, probably an undifferentiated label for all the native Americans whom the Norse encountered, whether Tuniit, Inuit, or Beothuk.

Sometime in the 13th century, the Thule culture began arriving in Greenland from what is now Canada. Norse accounts are scant; however, Norse-made items have been found at Inuit campsites in Greenland. It is unclear whether they were there as the result of trade or plunder. One old account speaks of "small people" with whom the Norsemen fought. Ívar Bárðarson's 14th-century account noted that the Western Settlement had been taken over by the "skrælings". The reason why the Norse settlements failed is uncertain. The last record of them is from 1408, roughly the same period as the earliest Inuit settlements in east Greenland.

After about 1350, the climate grew colder during the period known as the Little Ice Age. During this period, Alaskan natives were able to continue their whaling activities, but Inuit were forced to abandon their hunting and whaling sites in the high Arctic as bowhead whales disappeared from Canada and Greenland. These Inuit then had to subsist on a much poorer diet in addition to losing access to essential raw materials for their tools and architecture previously derived from whaling.

The changing climate forced Inuit to work their way south, forcing them into marginal niches along the edges of the tree line. These were areas which Native Americans had not occupied or where they were weak enough for coexistence with Inuit. Researchers have difficulty defining when Inuit stopped territorial expansion. There is evidence that they were still moving into new territory in southern Labrador when they first began to interact with Europeans in the 17th century.