European Contact

The first Europeans to visit the area were probably Norse settlers en route to Greenland about 1,000 years ago. The lure of a northwest route to the riches of the Orient was the source of further contact throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. Sir Martin Frobisher made one of the first attempts to find the Northwest Passage in 1576. He landed in southern Baffin Island where he met Inuit people in an unfriendly confrontation - prisoners were taken on both sides.

The Inuit initially were involved in the whaling industry and then in the fur trade. Permanent trading posts were established in the area in the 1900s resulting in the spread of trade goods among the Inuit.

Contact with Europeans resulted in many changes in the Inuit way of life. Changes in Inuit occupancy patterns began in the early 19th century. Rather than traveling inland in the summer, the Inuit began to stay on the coast to work in the whaling industry. The trade in furs caused the Inuit to forego their traditional winter seal hunt for non-traditional trapping of Arctic fox. By the early 1920s, virtually all Inuit were living within traveling distance of a trading post. This eventually led to the creation of permanent campsites at the trading posts. Concentration of the population at permanent communities also concentrated the hunting activity in the vicinity of these communities.

Christian missionaries also affected Inuit culture and life style. Missionaries followed the whalers and the fur traders, traveling by dogteam and schooner along the Arctic Coast and around Hudson Bay. As a result of missionary activity, many of the traditional spiritual beliefs of the Inuit were lost. On the positive side, the missionaries were often scholars who left valuable records of the language and way of life of the Inuit. Edmund Peck, an Anglican missionary was responsible for the spread of the Inuktitut syllabic script in the eastern Arctic. By the 1920s, adult literacy had reached almost 100%.

By the end of the 19th century, the Inuit had acquired rifles, telescopes, metal pots, steel needles, cotton thread, and woolen material. The 20th century brought a wide variety of technological advances. Most hunting is now done using snowmobiles, outboard motorboats, and three- or four-wheeled motorcycles. These vehicles have increased the hunting range and relieved some of the pressure on wildlife in the immediate vicinity of communities, but the Inuit still use less of the land than they did before moving into permanent settlements.