Scholars have divided the region’s people into two language groups: the Athabaskan speakers at its western end, among them the Tsattine (Beaver), Gwich’in (or Kuchin) and the Deg Xinag (formerly-and pejoratively-known as the Ingalik), and the Algonquian speakers at its eastern end, including the Cree, the Ojibwa and the Naskapi. The Subarctic culture area, mostly composed of swampy, piney forests (taiga) and waterlogged tundra, stretched across much of inland Alaska and Canada. READ MORE: Native American History Timeline The Subarctic They used seal and otter skins to make warm, weatherproof clothing, aerodynamic dogsleds and long, open fishing boats (kayaks in Inuit baidarkas in Aleut).īy the time the United States purchased Alaska in 1867, decades of oppression and exposure to European diseases had taken their toll: The native population had dropped to just 2,500 the descendants of these survivors still make their home in the area today. Many lived in dome-shaped houses made of sod or timber (or, in the North, ice blocks). The Inuit and Aleut had a great deal in common. That’s about 1.5 percent of the population. Census Bureau, there are about 4.5 million Native Americans and Alaska Natives in the United States today. In the southern part of the region, the Aleut were a bit more settled, living in small fishing villages along the shore.ĭid you know? According to the U.S. Some of its peoples, especially the Inuit in the northern part of the region, were nomads, following seals, polar bears and other game as they migrated across the tundra. Both groups spoke, and continue to speak, dialects descended from what scholars call the Eskimo-Aleut language family.īecause it is such an inhospitable landscape, the Arctic’s population was comparatively small and scattered. The Arctic culture area, a cold, flat, treeless region (actually a frozen desert) near the Arctic Circle in present-day Alaska, Canada and Greenland, was home to the Inuit and the Aleut. Watch a collection of episodes about Native American history on HISTORY Vault The Arctic
0 kommentar(er)
