First Nations and Inuit

Pre-Contact

Long before any European explorers, the First Nations and Inuit of North America had already explored much of the continent. To learn this history, though, you must listen to their stories. Instead of writing things down, they kept the stories alive by telling them to their children. When diseases killed many of the elders, many stories of the Native peoples were lost.

European Disease Diseases such as smallpox, measles, influenza, typhus and tuberculosis killed countless numbers of First Nations peoples and Inuit.

They had never been exposed to these European germs before and their bodies had not built up defenses against them. The Native population did not give Europeans any strange germs in return. This is because such germs and diseases began in domesticated animals, such as cattle. Europe was full of such animals, but they were rare in the New World. Although Native people in the North had dogs, they were not kept in large enough numbers for the microbes to spread.

	Archaeologists dug up an 8000-year-old skeleton near Kamloops, B.C. in the 1990s. Because he was so tall and slim, they felt he was probably a runner. In ancient times, a runner was highly respected for his ability to run long distances quickly. Whenever a message had to be sent in a hurry, a runner would run to the next village. There he would be replaced by another runner who would continue on to the next village -- kind of like the relay race that we know today.

A Long Sleep!
According to old Ojibwa stories, passed down through the years, the great Manitou (Spirit) lay down and promised to awaken in 900 years. But since no one knows exactly when he fell asleep, no one knows when he's due to wake up.

On the western shore of Lake Superior, the Sibley Peninsula has a rock shaped like a person who's lying down. This is Nana'b'oozoo, the great Manitou. Step lightly!

Native pictographs -- near Towdystan, B.C. Copyright/Source

	The lighting of a kudlik, a traditional soapstone lamp, symbolizes the passing of knowledge from one generation to another.

	Native paintings that are thousands of years old, on cliffs and large rocks, can still be seen in the interior plateau of British Columbia and at the Agawa site on the north shore of Lake Superior.