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. Both groups spoke, and continue to speak, dialects descended from what scholars call the Eskimo-Aleut language family.

Did you know? According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are about 4.5 million Native Americans and Alaska Natives in the United States today. That’s about 1.5 percent of the population.

An Inuit preparing to throw a harpoon from his sealskin kayak while hunting in the Bering Sea, as photographed by Edward S. Curtis in 1929. Courtesy of Britannica

Because it is such an inhospitable landscape, the Arctic’s population was comparatively small and scattered. 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. In the southern part of the region, the Aleut were a bit more settled, living in small fishing villages along the shore.

igluvigaq being built

Inuit people constructing an igluvigaq with blocks of snow. Frank E. Kleinschmidt/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-USZ62-135985)

Image courtesy of Britannica

The Inuit and Aleut had a great deal in common. Many lived in dome-shaped houses made of sod or timber (or, in the North, ice blocks). They used seal and otter skins to make warm, weatherproof clothing, aerodynamic dogsleds and long, open fishing boats (kayaks in Inuit; baidarkas in Aleut).

Inuit

Photograph from the early 20th century showing an Inuit person ice fishing in Nome, Alaska.

Frank and Frances Carpenter Collection—Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-DIG-ppmsc-02385)

Image courtesy of Britannica

By 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 homes in the area today.

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