Contacts with Non-Indians

Because of their locations in the remote northern wilderness, the Inuit had few early contacts with non-Natives. The Inuit of Greenland, however, were the first Native peoples of the Western Hemisphere to encounter Europeans. In this case, their contacts were with the Vikings, who first arrived on Greenland about A. D. 984 under the Norseman called Eric the Red. Inuit in Labrador also might have had contacts with Vikings who reached North America from 986 to 1010.

The English explorer Martin Frobisher, who sought the Northwest Passage—a supposed water route through North America to the Far East—is the next European on record to have had contacts with Inuit (both Greenland and Central Inuit) during his three trips from 1576 to 1578. Frobisher kidnapped an Inuk and took him back to England.

Other explorers from various European nations visited the Arctic regions from the east, still in search of the Northwest Passage, from the late 1500s into the 1800s. Europeans came in contact with Alaskan Inuit from the west starting in 1741 with Vitus Bering’s exploration for Russia. The ensuing presence of the Russian fur traders in Alaska had a much greater impact on the Aleut, however. In the late 1700s, Samuel Hearne, exploring for the Hudson’s Bay Company, reached the Central Inuit by land. Some of the Central tribes had no contacts with whites, however, until the expeditions of Vilhjalmur Stefansson and Diamond Jenness in the early 1900s. In the meantime, starting in 1721, the Danes settled Greenland and had extensive contacts with Greenland Inuit. And during the 1800s, there were many missionaries, especially Moravians, among the Labrador Inuit. After 1848, commercial whaling ships began working Alaskan and Arctic waters.

It was during the early 1800s that many Inuit began using white trade goods, such as guns, knives, kettles, and cloth, which altered their traditional culture. Alcohol and European diseases also had a great impact on the Inuit as on other Native peoples.

In the late 1800s, two developments led to further rapid change among the Inuit. In 1867, the United States purchased Alaska from Russia and began developing it economically. About this same time, the Hudson’s Bay Company of Canada established many posts in the Arctic for the development of the fur trade.