The Inuit People :: Expository Essays Research Papers

The Inuit packInuit A People Preserved By IceThousands of years ago, during the last ice age, mile-thick glaciers cover a vast portion of North America, and the Asian continent was coupled to North America by a land bridge. The Arctic areas of Alaska, Beringia, and Siberia were relinquish of ice. Vast herds of caribou, muskoxen, and bison migrated to these plains. Following them were the nomadic Asian ancestors of todays Inuit and Indians. The doorway to Asia closed approximately three or four thousand years later as the glaciers receded and melted. These masses the Inuit (meaning the people), adapted to their harsh tundra environwork forcet and developed a finis that remained untainted for a long time. The Inuit people relied solely on track down for their existence. With summers barely lasting two months, agriculture was non-existent. Animals such as caribou and impression were vital. Groups of bleeders would stalk and kill many caribou with fragile bows make of driftwood, and their bounty was split evenly amongst the tribe. Bone spears were fashioned to hunt seals which provided food, oil, clothes, and tents. The seal skins were also used to construct kayaks and other boats that the Inuit would use to travel and to hunt whales. One advantage of the sterile cold of the arctic was that it kept these people free of disease (until they met the white man.) Inuit tribes consisted of two to ten loosely joined families. There was no one central leader in the host all decisions were made by the community as a whole. Nor was in that respect any definite set of laws the Inuit, though usually cheery and optimistic, were disposed to uncontrolled bursts of rage. Murder was common amongst them and it went unpunished unless an individuals murders occured too often. At that point, that soulfulness was deemed unstable, and the community appointed a man to terminate him/her.In their society, the duties of men and women were strictly separated. The males would hunt , fish and construct the tools used by the family. Women, however, were responsible for killing the animal skins, cooking, sewing the clothes ( a womans sewing ability was evenly as attractive to a man as her beauty was), and rhytidectomy the children. Male children were preferred because they could care for their parents in their old age female person children when often strangled soon after birth.Although today Christianity has breached some of the south tribes, the vast majority practice a form of animism.