These remains of an Inuit settlement are in Nunavut Canada on the northwestern shores of Hudson Bay The Thule people who lived here from around a thousand years ago were the ancestors of the Inuits migrated through northern Canada to Greenland They always remained in these Arctic and subarctic regions Although they made trading contact with the Native American tribes to the south the Inuits never ventured into these regions to settle SETTLING DOWN Many groups of Native Americans to the south continued to gather food and hunt or fish Others however began to live in settlements and grow crops Their homes ranged from underground pit houses and homes of mud and thatch to dwellings in cliffs By 3500 B.C. a plentiful supply of fish in the Pacific Ocean and in rivers had enabled people to settle in large coastal villages from Alaska to Washington State In the deserts of Arizona more than two thousand years later
farmers constructed hundreds of miles of irrigation canals to carry water to their crops In the Mississippi floodplains the Native peoples formed complex societies They created mud and thatch temples on top of flat earth pyramids Their largest town Cahokia in Illinois contained more than one hundred mounds and may have been home to 30,000 people INUIT LIFE For the Inuit people in the frozen Arctic life was very different They built their homes of stones and driftwood or of blocks of ice For food they hunted herds of caribou or sea mammals such as whales and seals The skins of these animals were used to make clothes summer tents and tools Their lifestyle was nomadic as they followed the herds during their annual migrations Their culture barely changed from that of their Asian ancestors who continue to live in parts of Northern Siberia living similar lives to the Inuit NORTHWEST SUBARCTIC ARCTIC Cree Ojibwe GREAT BASIN COAST Inuit Ojibwe Oneida Mohawk Seminole Cherokee Creek This map of North America highlights the main Native American cultural groups along with the smaller groups or tribes featured in this series of books Shoshone CALIFORNIA PLATEAU GREAT PLAINS Nez Perce Shoshone Apache Navajo Hopi SOUTHWEST NORTHEAST SOUTHEAST Comanche Sioux Cheyenne Blackfoot Aztec
LAND AND ORIGINS Chapter 1 THE PEOPLE CALLED INUIT The Inuit homelands in North America include northern parts of Canada Alaska and the eastern and western coasts of Greenland A small number of Inuits also live in Siberia The total Inuit population today is about 155,000 Some Inuit groups have different names for themselves The Native American people of Arctic Canada and West Greenland call themselves Inuit Other names are Inupiat Yupik and Inuvialut All these names mean people or real people In 1977 representatives from the various Inuit groups met in Alaska and decided they would use Inuit to describe all the different groups THE INUIT ORIGIN STORY No one knows for sure how the Inuits came to their homelands As we have seen scientists believe that the Inuits came from Asia However most of the Inuit groups tell their own origin story In the distant past a young girl was forced to marry a man who was really The Inuits wear jackets called parkas Inuit parkas once had pointy hoods supposedly so people could easily grab someone who fell through the ice into freezing water
Siberia RUSSIA Bering Sea 0 0 miles 500 500 km Arctic Ocean N W E S Ellesmere Island GREENLAND ALASKA USA Anchorage Aleutian Islands YUKON TERRITORY NORTHWEST TERRITORIES Pacific Ocean Nunavut Gulf of Alaska BRITISH COLUMBIA ALBERTA Baffin Bay Baffin Island Cape Dorset Rankin Inlet Hudson Bay MANITOBA ONTARIO Nuuk Godthab Iqaluit Labrador Sea NEWFOUNDLAND Sasatchewan Canada QUEBEC The orange area shows the Inuits traditional lands In some places the Canadian territory of Nunavut the Inuits modern homeland indicated in yellow overlaps their traditional lands The cities and towns shown have large Inuit populations a dog When they had children half were human and half were puppies The mother put the puppies into one shoe and the children into another The shoes turned into boats that carried their passengers to new homes The children grew up to become the Inuits The puppies sailed much farther away and they became the white Europeans who later explored the Inuits Arctic homelands The Language of the Inuits There are several Inuit languages but most speakers can usually understand each other The following words are in Inuktitut the language of the eastern Arctic Inuit li aakka Pronunciation ee ah-kah qujannamiik coo-yan-nah-mee-ick liaali ikajunga tavvauvutit ee-lah-lih ick-a-yung-ga tah-vow-voo-teet English yes no thank you you’re welcome help goodbye
