Labrador Inuit and Europeans, Contact and Long-term Relations

Part of: Society for Historical Archaeology 2014

The earliest Inuit migration from Alaska to the eastern Arctic in the 13th century coincided with Inuit introduction to Norse material culture. Subsequent migrations brought Inuit into northern Labrador in the late 15th century and a century later their encampments dotted the length of the Labrador coast as far south as the Quebec North Shore, and in time also northwestern Newfoundland. The evidence increasingly suggests that there was never an extended period when Labrador Inuit did not have European goods, obtained either through direct or indirect processes. This is especially true for southern Labrador. Papers in this session consider a many-layered contact landscape. Topics may include Inuit as arbiters of contact relations; dissecting notions of contact; the shifting tenor of cross-cultural interactions from the 1500s to the 1800s; maintenance and viability of Inuit society over the long term; recent archaeological and archival research.

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-10 of 10)

  • Documents (10)
Documents
  • Beyond the pale: Inuit resistance to the Moravian reconstruction of northern Labrador (2014)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Whitridge.

    Moravian missionaries in central and northern Labrador won growing numbers of Inuit converts during the nineteenth century, as they pursued a concerted program of economic, social and cultural reorganization aimed at establishing stable mission communities that were tightly articulated with the wider Moravian network. Inuit who declined to convert to Christianity came to be marked as dangerous hold outs, ‘heathens’ who represented a nagging moral threat to the missionary project. ...

  • Bretons, Basques and Inuit in Southern Labrador and Northern Newfoundland: the Struggle over Maritime Resources in the 16th and 17th Centuries (2014)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Pope.

    Europeans developed a seasonal salt-cod fishery in northern Newfoundland and southern Labrador, in the early 16th century. In the same period, the Inuit arrived in Labrador and began to move southwards along the coast. While we have plenty of 16th-century evidence for Breton, Norman and Basque exploitation of Labrador, by fishers and later by whalers, Europeans then withdrew from the area until the end of the 17th century, when Quebec merchants began to exploit the Labrador Straits for salmon...

  • The Dynamics of Inuit/European Interactions as seen from Sandwich Bay, Labrador (2014)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Rankin.

    It can be argued that the southward migration of the Inuit onto the Labrador Peninsula in the 15th century was motivated by their desire to access European metal. Their search ended on the shores of the Strait of Belle Isle where the Inuit scavenged iron and other European commodities from seasonally abandoned Norman, Breton and Basque fishing and whaling station. Such indirect encounters eventually gave way to more regular interactions between the Inuit and the various European populations...

  • Food Practices during the Late 18th Century in Northern Labrador (2014)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Lindsay Swinarton.

    This paper examines Inuit food practices during the late 18th century communal house phase in northern Labrador, a period in which the Inuit had increasingly permanent contact with Moravian missionaries and other Europeans. With the establishment of the first mission station in Nain in 1771, the Moravian presence impacted Inuit subsistence practices in a multitude of ways, by fostering an increased importance on cod fishing, an increased economic value for fox pelts, and a disruption to the...

  • A geochemical approach to Inuit-European contact (2014)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Tyrone Hamilton.

    Iron was among the most sought-after forms of material culture for Labrador Inuit, who obtained it at Breton, Norman and Basque seasonal whaling and cod fishing stations along the southern Labrador coast and the Quebec North Shore by the 16th century, both through trade but also through pilfering during off-season visits. This project uses geochemical analysis via Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry to study the provenance of a sample of iron artifacts from Inuit sites in south, central...

  • Iglosuat and sea ice hunting grounds: the contributions of environmental archaeology to the reconstruction of winter cultural landscape of Dog Island, Nunatsiavut (2014)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jim Woollett.

    This presentation makes use of environmental archaeology data accumulated in the course of fieldwork in the Dog Island region of Nunatsiavut to reflect on the spatial structure and social dynamics of Inuit winter settlement and land use. Analyses of substantial faunal assemblages recovered from the sites of Oakes Bay 1 (HeCg-08), Koliktalik Island 6 (HdCg-23), Itibliarsuk (HdCg-56) amongst others, permit the detailed reconstruction of seals taken by hunters and consumed by households and,...

  • Inuit opportunism and long-term contact in southern Labrador (2014)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Marianne Stopp.

    By the early eighteenth century, French archival records for the Strait of Belle Isle describe repeated, divisive relations between French and Inuit. This paper considers European-Inuit relations before this time and thereafter through recently collected archaeological evidence from southern Labrador as well as archival material. The archaeological data point to a more nuanced contact landscape than suggested by the written documents while the latter point to greater Inuit presence than...

  • Inuit Plant Use in Southern Labrador: A Study of Three Sod Houses from Huntingdon Island 5, Sandwich Bay, South Labrador (2014)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Therese Dobrota.

    Huntingdon Island 5 (FkBg-3), in Sandwich Bay, South Labrador is a year-round Inuit occupation used successively between the mid-16th to the late 18th century. Soil samples from three sod houses, representing different occupation periods, have been submitted for paleoethnobotanical analysis at the Memorial University Paleoethnobotany laboratory. The samples recreate a picture of Inuit plant use, mainly in connection to housekeeping practices, that spans over a period of increasing European...

  • Making Labrador Home: Concerns and Considerations of How We Think About the Thule in Labrador, Canada (2014)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Kaplan.

    Investigations of the Labrador Inuit-European contact period focus on a diversity of topics, including environmental, economic, technological, spiritual, and social factors. In contrast, an economic lens dominates discussions of when and why Thule groups settled Labrador. In addition, some researchers are questioning whether the settlers were ‘really’ prehistoric Thule groups, or had knowledge of or contact with Europeans before settling Labrador’s shores. This paper uses archaeological and...

  • Negotiating Contact: Examing the Coastal Trade Network of the Labrador Inuit (2014)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Amelia Fay.

    Inuit-European contact in Labrador spans many centuries and a vast expanse of rugged coastline. With such broad temporal and geographic parameters, the complexity of this contact is best understood within the framework of long term history. As a European presence gradually increased along the coast, the Inuit responded by establishing a long-distance trade network where European goods were filtered north in exchange for marine mammal products, furs, and feathers. By the 18th century certain...