In some ways, the dilemma of West Coast Aboriginal people was how to dispose of so much food, so much wealth. The Inuit of the Arctic faced a very different problem: survival. Of all of the regions of Canada, the Arctic undoubtedly was the most difficult and challenging for the aboriginal peoples to occupy. It has long, dark winters of intense cold and blowing snow, and its ecosystem is very fragile and sparse.
The Inuit had come from Siberia some four thousand years before and had occupied the coasts of the Arctic islands and the mainland of Canada, north of the treeline. They were highly successful in developing hunting technologies and strategies to kill marine animals and those found inland on the treeless tundra lying between the Arctic shoreline and the northern boundary of the boreal forest. They were primarily big-game hunters, although they supplemented their diets seasonally with birds and fish. The most sought-after marine mammals were polar bear, ringed and bearded seal, walrus, narwhal, and beluga whale. On the tundra they hunted barren-ground caribou, and grizzly bear and the shaggy muskox in a few scattered locations. Wolf, wolverine, arctic hare, and arctic fox provided them with warm furs, as did beaver and muskrat in the Mackenzie River delta. They caught arctic char, a fresh water-salt water fish, and lake trout in large quantities.
In order to feed themselves throughout the year from this array of game and fish, most Inuit migrated on a seasonal basis. Summer was the main whaling season, especially the months of July and August, when bands camped on the coast. In the autumn most moved inland to catch arctic char as the fish swam upriver from the sea, and to hunt the caribou that were crucial to them for food, bone, and the skins that made up much of their winter clothing. Caribou skins made perfect winter wear because the hides were light and the hairs hollow, trapping body heat. The original survival parka, such clothes are still carried today by Arctic bush pilots as emergency
When the explorer Martin Frobisher (1539-94) returned to England from his 1577 voyage to Baffin Island, he took this Inuit man, woman, and child with him. John White may have done this watercolour on board ship during the trip home.
Clothing. From late autumn and early winter until spring most Inuit gathered in fixed base-camps near the coastline
Or on the sea ice. From these settlements small hunting parties made regular excursions in search of seal and walrus, and—after contact with Europeans—on traplines for fur-bearing animals. With the increasing daylight of spring, the people moved to fishing camps where they dug through the ice to take advantage of the spring runs of arctic char as the fish returned to the sea.
The Inuit were adept and resourceful at fashioning weapons, transport, and shelter from antler, bone, ivory, wood, skins, fur, snow, and ice. For hunting, the men made several types of toggling harpoons (harpoons with detachable bone points), throwing boards (for harpoons and bird spears), spears, lances, and simple and double recurved sinew-backed bone bows. In the west-central Arctic, pure copper found on the surface of the ground was used for making knife blades. Fishing equipment included unbarbed bone fish hooks, jigs and lures, nets, fish rakes, and spears; stone or woven willow weirs were built along the lower reaches of coastal rivers to trap arctic char. Among the more useful tools for women were the stone and copper curve-bladed knives backed with bone and antler and known as ulus, scrapers for working hides, and sewing kits that included bone needles and thimbles. Men’s tools included double-edged daggers made of bone, ivory, stone, and copper. Household equipment included containers made from wood and easily worked soapstone; long, shallow soapstone seal-oil cooking and lighting lamps; and bow drills used to make fires and to manufacture equipment.
One of the best-known features of Inuit life is the winter snow house or igloo that was commonly used in the central and eastern Arctic. Two types of igloo were
This 1824 engraving, Esquimaux Building a Snow-hut, is after a drawing by Captain G. F. Lyon.
Constructed, using bone or wood snow knives and snow shovels. A small hut about 1.5 metres (5 feet) in height and 2.1 metres (7 feet) in diameter was built for temporary shelter during winter hunting expeditions or journeys. The main winter dwelling was much larger; 3 to 3.7 metres (10 to 12 feet) high and 3.7 to 4.5 metres (12 to 15 feet) in diameter, these igloos usually housed two or more families. On the basis of a small igloo constructed by his Inuit guide, Augustus, the Arctic explorer Captain John Franklin remarked in 1820 that:
They are very comfortable buildings____The purity of the material... the elegance of its
Construction, and the translucency of its walls, which transmitted a very pleasant light, gave it the appearance far superior to a marble building, and one might survey it with feelings somewhat akin to those produced by the contemplation of a Grecian temple... both are triumphs of art, inimitable in their kinds.
In the drier western part of the North around the Mackenzie delta, as well as on the southern coast of Labrador, a semi-subterranean wood-frame structure covered
With planks and ice-glazed sod was the typical family winter house. In the Mackenzie region, such dwellings had an open central area surrounded by three living chambers, each occupied by a family. During the warmer months of the year, Inuit bands lived in tents—either conical or dome-shaped—covered with seal or caribou skins. Besides dwellings, some groups also built larger snow or skin-covered structures called kashims for sporting and ceremonial activities.
Clothing, with some regional variations in style, was basically the same for all Inuit people. Winter outerwear consisted of parkas for both men and women, with pants for men or culottes for women, usually made from caribou skins, and knee-length boots fashioned from a variety of materials, including seal, beluga, and caribou skins. Women decorated clothes with hides of contrasting colours in ways that indicated the gender and age of the wearer. Undergarments were made from pelts and such warm, soft materials as eider-duck skins. In winter, these undergarments were worn with the hair turned inward; summer clothing largely consisted of the winter underwear worn with the hair side turned outward.
During the course of their migration with the seasons, the Inuit used several means of transportation. They used two crafts for open-water travel—the well-known kayak and the less familiar umiak. Most bands built the wood-framed, skin-covered kayak for single hunters to pursue their quarry along the edge of ice floes or to spear caribou swimming across lakes and rivers. The umiak, a flat-bottomed, wood-framed, and skin-covered boat that could carry ten people and up to four tons of cargo, was for transportation and for hunting large marine mammals. Designed for hunting among the ice floes, these craft were relatively light and puncture-resistant due to the tough beluga - or walrus-hide covering, and they could be pulled onto a floe quickly when shifting ice or a wounded animal threatened. Umiaks were also used to move camp, and in northern Quebec dogs sometimes helped puU these boats against the current, two men remaining in the umiak to steer it while others drove the dog teams along the shore.
Winter travel was mainly by sled. The runners were commonly made from wood, bone, or antler covered with a smooth layer of mud and ice for ease of movement; at the beginning of the day the runners were made even slicker by a fresh coat of urine. The dog teams that pulled the sleds varied in size, but most groups could not afford to support more than a few hungry animals. Among the Copper Inuit, for example, a husband and wife would use only two dogs to help pull the sled. Dogs were also valuable as pack animals—fully loaded, they could carry 14 to 18 kilograms (30 to 40 pounds) and drag the tent poles.
Winter Houses of Esquimaux; this engraving is after a watercolour by George Back. Back’s journal entry for July 11, 1826, records that these huts were “built of driftwood, with the roots upwards— without windows—low and destitute of every comfort....” Back accompanied several major Arctic expeditions, including Franklin’s to the Coppermine River; a lake and river in the Northwest Territories bear his name.
In several respects Inuit society was similar to that of the Indians of the Subarctic, being based around a small family—mother, father, children, and grandparents. However, a family alone could not be self-sufficient. Because of the exceedingly harsh climate and the scarcity of food, families clustered together in small bands to make co-operative hunting, fishing, and the collection of other foods easier. For example, to hunt barren-ground caribou the Inuit used many of the same techniques that the Athapaskans did. By collective effort, hunting parties drove herds either into lakes and rivers where they were speared by men in kayaks, or towards converging stone fences where hunters waited with bows and arrows. In winter, people living in the central and eastern Arctic hunted seals on the ice using the breathing-hole technique, and usually a small number of hunters and their dogs were involved. The dogs sniffed out the breathing holes, many of which were then blocked to force the seals to a hole where one of the hunters waited, standing on a piece of caribou hide and
A Labrador Eskimo in his Canoe (watercolour, 1821) by fifteen-year-old Peter Rindisbacher. Note the sealskin float in this drawing.
Behind a wall of snow blocks to deflect the icy arctic wind. In spring, seals were decoyed onto the ice by a hunter lying on his side and mimicking seal movements.
Whaling required the co-operation of many hunters. Large whales were hunted by harpoon, but one of the most important species in the central and eastern Arctic was the small, white beluga whale that appeared on the edge of the sea-ice in late spring and generally stayed in the shallow waters of bays and estuaries. Hunting parties took advantage of the beluga’s habits to trap and spear entire herds. Collective effort was also required to take large numbers of arctic char during the big autumn runs, and most bands maintained one or two stone barricades that extended across rivers leading to the sea.
When hunting or collecting food, the participants rallied around whichever leader was best suited to oversee the enterprise. The principal exception to this practice of temporary leadership was the village headman, whose primary responsibility was the organization of whaling-boat crews. These positions were inherited through the father in the Mackenzie delta, and in Quebec were held by men who owned an umiak, were great hunters, and had kinship status that gave them control over a number of male relatives. Otherwise there was generally no formalized leadership beyond the family.
In Inuit society, lifelong partnerships were established between men. Partners
The Migration, a 1964 sculpture in grey stone, bone, and skin, by Povungnituk sculptor Joe Talirunili (b. 1899), commemorates a tribal migration in a sealskin-covered umiak, traditionally rowed by women.
Shared resources and sometimes wives and guaranteed each other mutual support and protection. Writing about the marriage practices of the Caribou Inuit of the western Arctic in 1821, John Franklin recorded that “The Esquimaux [Inuit] seem to follow the eastern custom respecting marriage. As soon as a girl is born, the young lad who wishes to have her for a wife goes to her father’s tent, and proffers himself If accepted, a promise is given which is considered binding, and the girl is delivered to her betrothed husband at the proper age.” Beyond these alliances, sharing was a prominent feature of Inuit society generally, and there were many formal and informal means of making certain that it took place. There were rules for dividing the spoils of collective hunting and fishing, while ceremonial activities also ensured that scarce resources were distributed among the band.
Before the intrusion of the Europeans, the Inuit had a very active ceremonial life and usually constructed special areas or igloos for celebrations and rituals. Most common was the drum-dance feast, in which the men danced in turn while beating a large, tambourine-like drum and singing a personal song. The songs might deal with aspects of the singer’s life, or they might be satirical of others; in part, they provided an outlet for hostile feelings in a public forum. During drum dances and on other occasions the Inuit engaged in games and sporting contests, for which they had a great fondness— particularly wrestling and boxing matches, and demonstrations of strength.
They shared the belief common among Native groups, that everything was inhabited by a soul or spirit. So as not to offend the souls of animals and fish taken, rituals and taboos were observed both before and after the hunt. Shamans acted as Intermediaries between the community and the spirit world, but in contrast to other areas of Native Canada, the priests were not organized into fraternities, and there were no elaborate religious ceremonies equivalent to the Feast of the Dead, the Sun Dance, or the winter dances of the West Coast Indians.
From the Arctic to the west coast to the east coast, Canada on the eve of contact with Europeans was a world in which the people had developed close material and spiritual bonds to the land, strongly influenced by the broad variations in climate and geography. Although there were profound differences in the lifestyles adopted by Native people in the core areas of the various regions, at the boundaries those differences tended to blur into one another. Such mixing and blurring was the result of continuous migrations of people, seasonal activities that required groups to move to new locations, and trade between regions. The fact that the people of different regions blended into one another along their borders greatly facilitated European exploration and the initial exploitation of the country. It meant that the Europeans could move easily across boundaries, and they soon discovered that within each area they could rely on the Native people to be very familiar with the terrain and very adept at harvesting what the land had to offer.
World History
