Maximum Eskimo

The Eskimos[1] were a pretty expansionist bunch. During the course of their rapid expansion from their North American hearth region in the Seward Peninsula, which began around 1000 AD, on at least four occasions, they took over previously-settled territory:
--The "skraelings" encountered by the Norse in Markland and Vinland were not Eskimos but members of the "Dorset culture," who were supplanted by a proto-Inuit group, the Thule, moving east along the Arctic Coast, not long after the Norse left North America.
--The Thule/Inuit then went on to gradually displace the Norse from
Greenland in the 1300s-1400s, in what is probably the only example of
Native Americans taking over a territory from its original European
settlers.
--Far to the west and further south, a group of Yup'ik Eskimos seem to
have conquered the locals of the Kodiak Island area in the 1100s AD,
picking up a bunch of their adaptations in the process and thereby
becoming the ethnic group variously known as Pacific Eskimo, Chugach
Eskimo, Sugpiaq or Alutiiq.
--Perhaps most remarkably, in the 1700s AD a group of Inupiat Eskimos
moved inland and had just finished pushing some Athabaskans out of the
Brooks Range passes at the time of European contact.
In short, Eskimos were all over the place. But they were latecomers:
the first Eskaleut speakers probably showed up in North America around
2500 BC, ten thousand years or more after the first peopling of the
continent. The spread started in about 1000 AD,
and the expansion was fast--most of it complex in about 400 years, with the move inland taking a bit longer. So, suppose that the expansion begins 500
years earlier--a blink of the eye in prehistoric times. There's a
handwave here--the florescence seems to have coincided with the
Medieval Warm Period, the same period of relatively hospitable climate
in the Arctic which allowed the Vikings to expand westward into
Iceland and Greenland. But during the Little Ice Age OTL, the Eskimos
survived and (relative to the desolate conditions, thrived). So I
think an earlier expansion is possible, provided the technological package is there. Note that this is not a political expansion, not an empire; it’s a migratory expansion, a Volkswanderung. Think Indo-Europeans in skin boats.

There are about six possible axes of expansion: east, along the Arctic Coast; west, back into Siberia; southwest, into the Aleutians; east along the Pacific/Gulf of Alaska Coast (and eventually south as the coastline bends); and south into the Canadian/Alaskan interior.

--An inland expansion is probably a dead end. Eskimo are a people highly adapted to a cold-water marine environment; even the "Inland Eskimo" of OTL went to the Colville mouth annually to trade with their coastal cousins. This kind of thing can change, but probably not in a mere 500 years.
--Southwest into the Aleutians is feasible, but uninteresting. The Unangan people living there were supremely adapted for the unique environment of the Chain; if the Eskimo supplant them, they will do by adapting their technology. Given that Eskimos and Aleuts[2] are related OTL, all that would really happen is you'd get Unangan who speak a language somewhat more closely related to Yup'ik than OTL Aleut is.
--OTL the Chugach Eskimo/Sugpiaq got as far as Prince William Sound.
In this direction every kayak-paddle takes them into a more abundant
natural environment, but also into terrain occupied by wealthier and
more complex societies. But if they get there early, the societies
will be less organized and advanced, so there’s an opportunity. OTL
their coastal neighbors were the Eyak of the Copper River Delta. Eyak
territory at the time of European contact was very circumscribed;
strong evidence shows much of their traditional territory had been taken
over by Tlingits, a group of fierce warrior-artists, moving up
from the Alexander Archipelago. But this happened way late, like the
1500s AD. ATL Sugpiaq take over Eyak country; their expansion is
eventually halted by the ancestral Tlingit around Prince of Wales
Island. This puts just about the entire coast of today’s state of
Alaska under Eskimo settlement.
--In OTL, Yup'ik Eskimos did migrate back across the Bering Strait. They just barely established a presence on the tip of the Chukotsk Peninsula. My ignorance of the native peoples of Siberia is profound, so I don't know how far west across the Arctic or south down Russia's Pacific Coast they can get. Nor do I know what impact, if any, this would have on Russian eastward expansion. Certainly it would be interesting if Russians found Eskimo-speaking people at the site of OTL Vladivostok, but that's awfully far south.
--The most intriguing possibilities lie in the High Arctic. The Thule/Inuit will reach the Atlantic Coast around AD 800 ATL. They’re sure to turn the corner keep spreading south; the waters in this region are rich in cod and whale. They certainly take over all of Newfoundland from the timid Beothuk, and will be waiting to greet John Cabot with harpoons and spears. Perhaps they take over the Bay of Fundy from the Mik’maq. Possibly they’re at least trading and hunting whale as far south as Cape Cod by 1500 AD.
--OTL the Thule reached Greenland in the 1300s; ATL they're there in
c. 800 AD, meaning they beat the Icelanders by about two generations. OTL they settled the northwest coast first and gradually worked their way down. ATL Erik the Red finds the East Settlement, but not the West Settlement,
occupied. This leads to more extensive contact than occurred OTL, but
it also makes the Norse toehold more tenuous. The Norse can probably hold on as long as the Medieval Warm Period lasts; but as soon as the weather starts getting rougher, the smaller amount of farmland available, and greater pressure by the Eskimo, drive the Norse out faster. They never reach North America; they’re driven off Greenland by about 1100 AD.
--In theory, the Greenland Eskimo could pick up use of the sail from
the Norse. Despite popular conceptions, Eskimo in the high Arctic
didn’t use kayaks; they used larger, open boats called umiak, with a
captain-and-crew command structure which look reasonably similar to
Viking longboats. The sail is a logical jump. Timber for masts could
be a problem, but by this point other Eskimo-speakers have reached
forested regions, so timber is available at least as a trade item
(ropes are more problematic). OTL individual Eskimo crews made it to
the vicinity of the outer British Isles and maybe even Denmark; there
are reports of dwarfish "Finn-men" in skin boats. ATL, with the
certain knowledge of wealthier lands to the east and possible advances
in maritime technology, the Eskimo could start doing longer-distance
voyages, and cross the Denmark Strait. The first umiaks reach Iceland
in the High Middle Ages, a few years after the signing of the Old
Covenant in 1262.
--There's a potential game-changer to the history of all of North America here: iron tools. OTL Eskimo certainly saw the Norse using metal tools. ATL the Eskimo, in theory at least, have the raw materials to actually do ironworking: bog iron in Newfoundland and timber for furnaces in same (and in the southernmost reaches of their range in Alaska and mainland Canada). Now, it's worth noting that OTL the Inuit and the Norse lived together--like, villages within sight of one another--for like 10 generations without borrowing much of anything from each other. But I think there's the possibility that them showing up at pretty much the same time, with both peoples still in their "pioneers in a new land" phase at the time of contact, will alter the dynamic.

Thoughts? Note that this is not the same scenario as "Of Mice and Ice," which I have been looking at with interest (although I came up with the idea separately). It is at once more and less restrictive in scope than that scenario. Here, the change is not as revolutionary as horticulture; simply the earlier appearance of the skin-boat-and-toggled-harpoon Eskimo we know and love. At the same time, the change effects not just the Inuit of the High Arctic, but all Eskimo speaking people. A broader but shallower change, as it were.

[1] “Eskimo” is a fraught term; many Canadians consider it a
pejorative and prefer the term “Inuit.” In Alaska, we use “Eskimo” as
an umbrella group containign two fairly culturally distinct (but
definitely related) groups: the Inupiat/Inuit of the Arctic Coast, and
the Yup’ik of the Pacific Coast, who are not found in Canada.
[2] Today's occupants of the Aleutians are more commonly known as "Aleuts." In the opinion of many, including me, that term best describes the syncrete of Russian and Native culture that resulted from 100 years of very close contact between the two peoples; Unangan is a term best reserved for the "pure" Native culture on the chain that preceded Russian contact.
 
Very interesting, I like the concept. I hope you go further with it.

I'm reminded of the chapter about the Inuit and Norse in Greenland in Jared Diamond's Collapse, it was very intriguing to see the different changes that occurred due to social interaction and climate change. Greenland doesn't seem like a place that would be very hospitable for dairy farms. :p
 
...
Thoughts? Note that this is not the same scenario as "Of Mice and Ice," which I have been looking at with interest (although I came up with the idea separately). It is at once more and less restrictive in scope than that scenario. Here, the change is not as revolutionary as horticulture; simply the earlier appearance of the skin-boat-and-toggled-harpoon Eskimo we know and love. At the same time, the change effects not just the Inuit of the High Arctic, but all Eskimo speaking people. A broader but shallower change, as it were.
...

I really like "Ice and Mice" and would worry about a direct competitor; glad to see this isn't the case. No Arctic agriculture means no population densities of the kind possible in DirtyCommie & DValdron's scenario. But if I find that plausible, this one certainly must be--not much more than the exact same tech we know existed and worked OTL, just somewhat earlier. And it's all Neolithic tech, not depending on any science or underlying development that makes it implausible until a certain stage, so there is little reason to disallow it!

Vice versa, the potentials are less dramatic. OTL the main reason the Inuit were left alone well enough not to get wiped out is that southern societies could make little use of the land and explorers from there would do well to go there and come back alive, and that probably not without the help of the Inuit. So as OTL in their Arctic fastness they are safe enough except from plagues and the like, and they'd be less vulnerable than DC/DV's Greater Thule, because they won't have cities and extensive contact with Eurasian trade bearing Eurasian disease. Any groups who do get infected probably get killed off quickly, leaving the others untouched. (Something like that, I expect, happens on a grander scale in Ice/Mice--this may help explain the limited development of the Siberian/Asian Arctic, there there would be too much contact with diseased Eurasian populations and the colonies keep getting wiped out, eventually the region gets a bad reputation for spooky danger among the Inuit and they stay away).

But vice versa, how much does it matter historically whether the more southerly Native groups the Europeans overwhelm and displace speak some kind of Inuit or some other language? No matter what, they will have similar tech levels and population densities to OTL and will meet similar fates. Which in Canada rarely mean total extinction, nor in Alaska, but on the whole they'd just get shoved aside as quaint anthropological footnotes, with the surviving high Arctic Inuit operating much as OTL. It makes Inuit more relevant to anthropologists and linguists, but the historical dynamic is much the same.

Developing Arctic crops on the other hand transforms the demographics and opens up in effect new land not only for Thulians but the northern fringes of their southern neighbors, notably Scandinavians and Russians, and offers the lure of the Arctic becoming historically and economically relevant, mainly as a communications route, eventually as a transport hub and mining and even industrial region, much earlier than OTL. And the Thulians are much demographically stronger (even after plagues sweep through them) and powerful historical players, considering that southerners might be able to hurt them (devastating their crops for instance) but would have a devil of a time trying to occupy and subjugate them. In turn I expect Thulians to adopt all manner of southern technology that OTL or even ITTL they just don't have the population base and social division of labor to adopt on their own.

So it would be interesting to see what you can do with Eskimo who aren't gifted with their own crops, just assuming they make the most of their hunting methods. But I will be amazed if it can transform history the way farming Thulians could.
 
[snip comparisons to "Of Mice and Ice," the Thule-with-agriculture TL]

But vice versa, how much does it matter historically whether the more southerly Native groups the Europeans overwhelm and displace speak some kind of Inuit or some other language? No matter what, they will have similar tech levels and population densities to OTL and will meet similar fates. Which in Canada rarely mean total extinction, nor in Alaska, but on the whole they'd just get shoved aside as quaint anthropological footnotes, with the surviving high Arctic Inuit operating much as OTL. It makes Inuit more relevant to anthropologists and linguists, but the historical dynamic is much the same.

[snip]

It will make a difference in Southeast Alaska, I think. There, the Eskimo are replacing a people with a dramatically different culture--not just material culture but social structure. The Tlingit are part of the larger complex of Pacific Northwest cultures--totem poles, cedar longhouses, salmon fish-traps; and more importantly, clans, castes (including slaves), organized warfare, and something that looks a fair amount like Western-style property rights. No doubt Eskimo living in the Inside Passage area would eventually adopt more complex social forms given the greater material abundance; but 500 years just isn't that much time. OTL the Russians enslaved the Unangan/Aleut with ease (and put them to work in all aspects of the peltry industry); they had much more trouble with the Tlingit, who at one point drove them out of their capital at New Archangel/Sitka, and kept them wary of venturing beyond the palisades of that city for many years. I think that the Russians will have a significantly easier time conquering the alt-Eskimo--let's call them Panhandle Eskimo--than they did the Tlingit. This unlocks the material wealth of the PNW for them and significantly changes the dynamic of the colonial PNW, which has knock-on effects for Britain, Spain, and the United States.

If indeed the colonial ventures of those nations proceeds apace. Because the biggest potential for change is what's happening where the Arctic turns the corner into the Atlantic. Someone mentioned that there was meteoric iron in Greenland; so even OTL the Inuit understood the advantages of iron weapons and tools. If they can pick up the secrets of ferrous metallurgy from the Norse, they've got the raw materials. It'll take some time to get going, and more time to spread from the center of the industry (almost certainly Newfoundland, where they have both bog iron and timber for fuel). But even if it starts coming into use in the 1300s in North America, that's almost 200 years for iron tools and weapons to diffuse before Europeans show up for Round 2. And there's also the question of the iron-weapon-wielding Greenland Eskimo who show up in Icelandic waters...
 
Appreciate the feedback and words of encouragement. I'm probably not going to develop this *too* much further, although the potential for a New World just starting to jump into the Iron Age when Columbus shows up is intriguing--just trying to kick some thoughts around. It's kind of a warmup to what I really want to do with Alaskan AH: write about Alaska in Doug Muir's Bronze Age New World setting from the old shwi. Watch this space.
 
Well, on the subject of things Metalurgical, I'd point you towards the Coppermine River, which was the heartland of Copper Inuit or Copper Eskimo territory. Interestingly, in the broad general vicinity, there's also Tin.
 
Its a big step to get from stones to iron. Many native cultures had access to meteoric iron and even used it but did not progress to developing sustained iron industries.
 
I really like this TL. Its cool that your writing it about your own local history. I've been meaning to write something about British Columbia vut can't find the write POD.

It would be really cool if you continued!
 
Its a big step to get from stones to iron. Many native cultures had access to meteoric iron and even used it but did not progress to developing sustained iron industries.

Sure, but here they'll be living right next to people who ran iron forges everywhere they settled. Of course, they did so OTL and never picked it up, but I'm assuming closer contact here.
 
Well, on the subject of things Metalurgical, I'd point you towards the Coppermine River, which was the heartland of Copper Inuit or Copper Eskimo territory. Interestingly, in the broad general vicinity, there's also Tin.

Very true, but I wonder--what's the point of bronze when you've got iron?
 
Actually, you could have some Chinese and Eskimo contact as well giving Eskimos a cultural boost.

Boy, that seems tough to pull off. OTL, the Great Wall of China meets the Pacific Ocean at Shanhaiguan, at latitude 39o58'N. That's way, way south for the Eskimo. The farthest I've got them going on other shores is 55o37'N on the Pacific (Prince of Wales Island) and 46oN on the Atlantic (and now that I've done a side-by-side comparison, I'm now skeptical of an Eskimo spread all the way to the Bay of Fundy). What did you have in mind, thought?
 
Boy, that seems tough to pull off. OTL, the Great Wall of China meets the Pacific Ocean at Shanhaiguan, at latitude 39o58'N. That's way, way south for the Eskimo. The farthest I've got them going on other shores is 55o37'N on the Pacific (Prince of Wales Island) and 46oN on the Atlantic (and now that I've done a side-by-side comparison, I'm now skeptical of an Eskimo spread all the way to the Bay of Fundy). What did you have in mind, thought?

I think they could have contact with the Manchus, Koreans and Mongols but there should be a reason though and they are behind the great wall..
 
Very true, but I wonder--what's the point of bronze when you've got iron?

Depends on how good the iron is and how advanced the iron-working tech is. Iron is inherently a whole lot cheaper, being much more common and not requiring esoteric alloy metals to make something useful. But bronze and brass and so on, despite the rarity of their raw materials and the need to bring two or three different rare alloy metals together, often held their own against a low level of ironworking. Even in the early modern period, a copper-alloy cannon was often superior to an iron one, especially for naval or coastal use, because it was less subject to corrosion; one could salvage brass cannon from a sunken ship, but an iron one, even after a brief stay on the bottom, was so much scrap. And the bronzes and brasses were often quite strong--not as strong per unit weight as the iron, but I believe they could hold an edge considerably better than all but the most advanced steels.

For early modern cannon, I believe the copper-based alloys had still other advantages to offset iron's pretty good and much cheaper qualities.

So if the iron works are still pretty primitive (and I believe the highest standard the Norse settlers ever set was pretty darn low) then bronzes are very competitive indeed; they would actually be more prestigious than all but the very best meteoric steels, which are of course much rarer still than copper, tin, arsenic and so on deposits.

If you are looking for Native Americans holding Early Modern Euro invaders at bay, chances are good their best and most common high-quality native-made weapons are in fact bronze. If they start getting serious help from European allies, then they might be led over to good irons and steels with the best technical advice.
 
It's a matter of what's available and where it is. The coppermine river was a rich source of placer (nugget) deposits. Nuggets of almost pure copper could be harvested with relatively little effort, and heated in fires till they became malleable, and then pounded together or hammered into useful shapes. This occurred readily in our time, and was the reason that the culture was named the 'Copper Inuit.' They were located in the Northwest Territories, comparatively not that far from Alaska. So you've got proximity working for you.

Now, if you want to build on that, then you can move to copper smelting, which requires greater temperatures, to the introduction of tin ores, which are in the region. Gets you bronze. Which is useful.

Iron? You're probably looking at bog iron smelting. I don't know what the available resources of bog iron are in the territory. You might want to look that up. Any kind of iron smelting generally requires much hotter temperatures and more advanced equipment, which is a bigger challenge for a non-sedentary hunter-gatherer society.

Also, keep in mind the communication barriers. A lot of trade occurs within groups, because they can talk to each other. It occurs at the fringes with related groups because the languages are similar enough that they can work towards mutual understandings. Languages that are completely unrelated to each other make it much harder to work out trade with. It's hard to find two languages more unrelated to each other than Eskimo and Norse. It doesn't mean that they can't work out trade, but the learning curve is going to be steep and difficult. And its going to take place at the furthest fringes of Inuit culture, which might mean a good long time to work its way back.

But hell, its your timeline. I'm not telling you how to run it. Good luck, have fun, and stand by your choices.
 
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