NATIVE AMERICANS

INUIT(ESKIMO)

Location of tribe:

Occupying the entire coast of Alaska with the exception of the Aleutian Islands and Southeast Alaska, Eskimos inhabit a wide variety of environments ranging from the North Slope arctic tundras and coasts to the Bering Sea lowlands and the mountainous, forested coasts of South Alaska.(Arctic Studies Center)

Style of Homes:

The regular winter dwelling was a semiexcavated, domed, dirftwood and sod house, roughly 12-15 feet long. Most was placed between the interior walls and the sod of insulation.The houses held form 8 to 12 people. They are nomadic. (Pritzker 776)

Improtant Goods or Products

Whale products, such as skin, oil, and blubber, for caribou skins on a regular basis. Other trade items included fish, driftwood, other skins, and ivory labrets. (Pritzker 777)

Organization of Government:

Nuclear or small extended families were loosely organized into fluid local gorups associated with geographical areas. These local gorups occasionally came together as small, fluid, autonomous bands of between 20 and 200 bilaterally pople. This identified has no political entities. And the head of family is usually old man. with little formal authority and no power. (Pritzker 775)

Culture of Tribes:

1. Their religious belief was based on the existence of spirit entities found in nature. Respect was expressed in behaviors such as maintaining a separation between land and sea hunting, opening the head of an animal just killed in order to allow its spirit to escape, speaking well of game animals, offering sea mammals a drink of cold water and land animals knives or needles, and many other taboos, rituals, and ceremonies as well as certain songs and charms. (Pritzker 774)

2.Kinship networks were the most important social structure as well as the key to survival in terms of mutual aid and cooperative activity. This arrangement also led to ongoing blood feuds: An injury to one was perceived as an injury to the whole kin group and called for revenge. (Pritzker 775)

Altered the Environment:

Stone-tipped, toggle-headed harpoons were attached to wooden floats and inflated sealskins to create drag on a submerging whale. Floats were also used to keep a slain whale from sinking before it could be towed to shore. (Pritzker 776)

Relationship with other Nearby tribe:

1. The enemies of the Bering Strait people included Siberian Inuit and also nearby Athapaskan Indians. Some interior north Alaska groups were friendly with Athapaskan Kutchin. (Pritzker 777)

2. Some large nothern Alaska Inuit groups had trade with people in Nigalik and Yup'ik people as well as AthapaskanIndians. (Pritzker 777)

Relationship with European Explorers

For thousands of years, people lived throughout Arctic Canada using resources procured from the land. Early evidence for inhabitation of northern Canada dates to approximately 12,000 years ago in the Bering Strait region. By about 1,000 years ago, modern Inuit populated the western and eastern Arctic, northern Quebec and Labrador. They first encountered European peoples through Erik the Red's tenth century Icelandic voyages to Newfoundland and Labrador.

Although the Norse established settlements in the tenth century, those were soon abandoned, and the northeastern coast of Canada remained relatively undisturbed for several hundred years until John Cabot's Newfoundland voyage in 1498. In 1576, Martin Frobisher sailed into the eastern Arctic, searching for a Northwest Passage to Asia. He encountered a group of Inuit and brought one back to England, along with rocks that he thought were gold. In 1580, John Davis discovered the strait of water located between Greenland and Baffin Island, later named the Davis Strait, which became a significant location for commercial whale hunting in the late seventeenth century. In 1610, Henry Hudson discovered Hudson Bay and made contact with the James Bay Cree. This was the first instance of European contact with Aboriginal people in northern Quebec, the eastern Arctic coastal mainland and the southern Arctic islands. Subsequent voyages include those by Button (1612), Baffin (1615, 1622), Foxe (1631) and James (1631), who each attempted to map a Northwest Passage through the Arctic without success. (Bonesteel)

In 1721, a Lutheran missionary sailed form Norway to Greenland in search of converts. (Horwitz 44)

Unique Part:

1. They use ice to build their house.

2. They can eat whale without cooking.(Pritzker 776)