Inuit

Inuit (Inuktitut syllabics: ᐃᓄᐃᑦ, singular Inuk or Inuq / ᐃᓄᒃ) is a general term for a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples of the Arctic who descended from the Thule.

Early history of the Inuit

The Inuit are the descendents of what anthropologists call the Thule culture, a nomadic people who emerged from western Alaska around 1000 AD and spread eastwards across the Arctic, displacing the related Dorset culture (in Inuktitut, the Tuniit). Inuit legends speak of the Tuniit as "giants", people who were taller and stronger than the Inuit, but who were easily scared off and retreated from the advancing Inuit. Researchers believe that the Dorset culture lacked dogs, boats and other technologies that gave the expanding Inuit society a large advantage over them. By 1300, the Inuit had settled west Greenland, and finally moved into east Greenland over the following century.

Related Topics:
Anthropologist - Thule culture - Alaska - 1000 - Dorset culture - 1300 - Greenland

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The Tuniit survived in Aivilik - Southampton and Coats Islands - until the beginning of the 20th century. They were known as Sadlermiut (Sallirmiut in the modern spelling). Their population had been decimated by diseases brought by contact with Europeans, and the last of them fell in a flu epidemic caught from a passing whaler in 1902. The area has since been resettled by Inuit. Genetic research suggests that there was little or no intermarriage between the Tuniit and the Inuit over the thousand years of contact in the Canadian Arctic.

Related Topics:
Aivilik - Southampton - Coats Island - 20th century - 1902

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The Inuit were a nomadic culture that circulated almost exclusively north of the timberline, the de facto southern border of Inuit society. To the south, Native American Indian cultures were well established, and the culture and technology of Inuit society that served them so well in the Arctic was ill-suited to the sub-Arctic, so they did not displace their southern neighbours. Their relations with southerners were generally hostile, but at other times cordial enough to support trade.

Related Topics:
Timberline - Native American

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The first contact with Europeans came from the Vikings, who settled Greenland and explored the eastern Canadian coast. Norse literature speaks of skrælingar, most likely an undifferentiated label for all the native peoples of the Americas the Norse contacted - Tuniit, Inuit and Beothuks alike. Archeological evidence suggests that the Tuniit had abandoned Greenland around 200 AD. They reoccupied areas in the far north of Greenland sometime around 1000 AD, but the Norse settlements were in the south and southwest of the island. It is likely that the area of the Norse settlements was unoccupied at the time they arrived.

Related Topics:
Viking - Norse - Skræling - Beothuk - 200 - 1000

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Sometime in the 13th century, Inuit began arriving from what is now Canada. Norse accounts are scant, and there is no Inuit oral history discussing contact with the Norse. However, Norse-made items have been found at Inuit campsites in Greenland. It is unclear whether they are the result of trade or plunder. One old account speaks of "small people" with whom the Norsemen fought. Ívar Bárðarson's 14th century account mentions that one of the two Norse settlement areas - the western settlement - had been taken over by the skrælings. The reason why the Norse settlements failed is unclear, but the last record of them is from 1408 - roughly the same period as the earliest Inuit settlements in east Greenland.

Related Topics:
13th century - Canada - Ívar Bárðarson - 14th century - 1408

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After roughly 1350, the climate grew colder during the Little Ice Age and the Inuit were forced to abandon hunting and whaling sites in the high Arctic. Bowhead whaling disappeared in Canada and Greenland (but continued in Alaska) and the Inuit had to subsist on a much poorer diet. Without whales, they lost access to essential raw materials for tools and architecture that were derived from whaling. Although the Inuit had always been nomadic, they were forced to move more and more often to maximise their return from hunting. Semi-permanent sod and whalebone dwellings were replaced by what has now become the symbol of the Inuit in many minds: temporary snow houses known as igloos.

Related Topics:
1350 - Little Ice Age - Bowhead whaling - Igloo

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The changing climate forced the Inuit to also look south, pressuring them into the marginal niches along the edges of the tree line that Indians had not occupied, or where they were weak enough to coexist with. It is hard to say with any precision when the Inuit stopped their territorial expansion. There is evidence that they were still moving into new territory in southern Labrador in the 17th century, when they first began to interact with colonial North American civilization.

Related Topics:
Labrador - 17th century

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