The Inuit Move East
Beginning about a thousand years ago, these early Inuit began to spread east into Arctic Canada. Within a few hundred years, they had replaced the earlier inhabitants of the region, a now-extinct people known to the Inuit as Tunit. This Inuit migration was not a single mass event, but probably involved dozens of small parties of perhaps 20 or 30 people moving east in search of a better life.

A particular goal seems to have been the rich whaling grounds around Baffin and Somerset islands. Here they quickly replicated the large whaling villages and prosperous way of life they had left behind in Alaska. Other groups settled in coastal areas without rich whale resources, where they lived in smaller villages and depended primarily upon seals, caribou and fish. Everywhere they went, Inuit pioneers brought with them the heavy sod winter houses and elaborate hunting technology of their Alaskan ancestors.

The Inuit and the Vikings
By about AD1250, the first Inuit had entered Greenland through the Smith Sound area in the far northwest of the island. Here, possibly on the Canadian side, they first encountered medieval Norse ("Viking") hunters coming from the Norse colonies in southwest Greenland founded by Eric the Red. Eventually these Norse colonies disappeared, probably in the mid 1400s. There are different theories about their disappearance, but a deteriorating climate was one reason. Competition with the Inuit, who were far better adapted to Arctic life than the Norse, might also have been a factor. By the time of later European exploration in the 16th century, the Inuit were in sole possession of the entire North American Arctic.

A Colder Climate
The same worsening climate that spelled the end of the Norse colonies in Greenland also put severe strains on the Inuit economy. After about 1300, temperatures became progressively colder culminating in a so-called Little Ice Age around 1500. Rich and important whaling areas in the High Arctic were abandoned and people shifted southward.

Bowhead whaling as the focus of Inuit life disappeared from most of Canada and Greenland (although not Alaska). Life generally became harder and more hand-to-mouth. People moved their camps and villages more frequently, and, in many areas, the old sod and whalebone winter house was abandoned in favour of houses made of blocks of snow. They were easier to build as they could be put up anywhere, even on the sea ice, and required only an hour or two to construct.

Contact with Explorers
Contact with European explorers also brought changes. Between the voyages of Martin Frobisher in the 1570s and the search for the missing Franklin expedition in the 1850s, dozens of expeditions to the Arctic set sail, usually from England. Most of them were in search of a Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

At first, Europeans did not see the Arctic as a place of value in itself, but as an obstacle blocking their way to the fortunes beyond. During their journeys through the North, European explorers often met Inuit. Few Europeans were unprejudiced enough to think they had anything to learn from the Inuit, but they did trade and exchange gifts. The Inuit began to learn about the outside world and to appreciate what it had to offer. The Europeans brought them iron, which they valued for making tools such as harpoon points and knife blades.