33.8 America: a.d. 1801 to 1900  (Page 2/31)

All was forgiven at the end of the century when the great Klondike and Nome gold rushes developed. (Ref. 234 , 199 )

Alaska's northwest contained some 24 Eskimo groups, all speaking related tongues.

Unlike their European and Siberian counterparts these Americans relied more on sea mammals than on the new world reindeer (caribou). Seals, walruses and sea-lions supplied food, clothes, boats, tents and oil for lamps. Tendons were used for sewing and bones took the place of wood. The Eskimos introduced umiaks (large, open, skin boats) and the toggle-headed harpoon to the world. (Ref. 288 )

Greenland

Central Greenland remained the most inhospitable of all Arctic areas, but Eskimos did live all along the southern coasts, both east and west, with a hybrid Eskimo-Danish culture. Due to an oversight at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, when Norway was taken away from Denmark, this colony was overlooked and remained in Danish hands. Administration was poor, however, and among other troubles the natives had a high incidence of tuberculosis. In far northwest Greenland a group known simply as Polar Eskimos lived in complete isolation, using sea-mammal bones for sled runners and using nets to catch cliff-dwelling birds. There were about 150 people there when Europeans discovered them in 1818. (Ref. 38 , 288 )

Canada

Arctic Canada had a mixture of Inuit (Eskimo) people living chiefly north of the tree-line and Arctic Indians living just south of that region. Among the latter were the Kutchins, who walked hundreds of miles each summer after the caribou herds. In winter they used snow-shoes and lived in domed caribou-skin tents or log and moss houses. They traded with the Eskimos. Koyukon, Tchin and Chipwyan tribes were all part of those Kutchin people. Inuit Eskimos lived on the Arctic Ocean coast line from Beaufort Sea to the Baff in Bay and Davis Strait as well as on the northern shores of Hudson Bay. (Ref. 288 )

In 1825 British North America consisted of 2 major areas: First, there were the six settled provinces of Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Lower and Upper Canadas; and second there was all the remaining territory from Hudson's Bay on west to the Pacific. The first 4 named were known as the Maritime provinces; Lower Canada was later to become Quebec and had 625,000 chief Iy French people in 1841, while upper Canada later became Ontario and had 455,700 population in the same year. The western territory was owned by the Hudson's Bay Company and the Northwest Company with the British government keeping some authority. Each province was ruled by a local Tory oligarchy which supported the governor.

Occasionally an attempt to gain independence sprouted, such as the revolt promoted by Louis Joseph Papineau