AMERICAN SUBARCTIC PEOPLES

Distribution of American subarctic cultures. indigenous inhabitants of the subarctic region of Alaska and Canada, with the exception of the Eskimo, or Inuit. The subarctic, or the physiographic zone called the taiga, is a land of coniferous forest abundant with sphagnum moss and traversed by many waterways. Its main natural resources utilized by the Indians include wood, of which spruce, tamarack, and alder have been especially important for manufactures; game animals, such as moose, caribou, and beaver, of which the meat is used for food and the skins are used for blankets and clothing; berries; fish, usually the most abundant and therefore the staple food; and coloured earths suitable for conversion into paints. Cold winters, when the ground is covered with snow and the waterways are frozen, are reflected in many technological adaptations, including the use of fur garments, toboggans, ice chisels, and snowshoes. Since the 17th century, traders have been attracted to the region by its wealth in fur-bearing animals. Together with missionaries, they decisively influenced the native Indians' history. Many old beliefs, hunting customs, kinship relations, and so on, however, persisted throughout the fur-trade years in this marginal area and had only begun to fade in the second half of the 20th century. The subarctic contains two relatively distinct culture areas. The eastern subarctic is inhabited by Algonquian-speaking Indians, including the Naskapi of northern Quebec; the far-flung Cree; and an intrusive wedge of Ojibwa, who, after the beginning of the fur trade, displaced the Cree from west-central Ontario and eastern Manitoba. The western subarctic belongs largely to Athabascan speakers, who extend from Canada into Alaska. Cultural differences among the Athabascans justify the delineation of two subareas. The first subarea, drained mostly by the northward-flowing Mackenzie River system, is inhabited by Chipewyan, Beaver, Slave, and Kaska Indians. Their culture was generally simpler and less sedentary than that of the second subarea, whose salmon streams drain into the Pacific Ocean. Its groups include the Carrier, part of the Kutchin, the Tanaina, and Ingalik Indians. Northward the Algonquians and Athabascans border on the Eskimo; to the west the Canadian Athabascans encounter the Tlingit, Tsimshian, and other Northwest Coast tribes, while the Alaskan groups again abut on the Eskimo. (For a discussion of the cultures of the Northwest Coast, see Northwest Coast Indian. Eskimo groups are treated in the article Arctic: The people.) Additional reading Frederick Johnson (ed.), Man in Northeastern North America (1946, reprinted 1980), brings together authoritative papers on geography, physical anthropology, linguistics, mythology, psychological characteristics, and culture in general. Keith J. Crowe, A History of the Original Peoples of Northern Canada, rev. ed. (1991), is a useful textbook. Ethnographic accounts include, for the pre-fur-trade period, Frank G. Speck, Naskapi: The Savage Hunters of the Labrador Peninsula, new ed. (1977); Edward S. Rogers, The Round Lake Ojibwa (1962), among his many books on the topic; John J. Honigmann, The Kaska Indians: An Ethnographic Reconstruction (1954, reissued 1964); and exhaustive works by a leading authority on the Athabascans, Cornelius Osgood, Ingalik Material Culture (1940, reprinted 1970), Ingalik Social Culture (1958), and Ingalik Mental Culture (1959); and for post-European contact, Arthur J. Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade (1974), on the Cree and Assiniboin, 16601870; Shepard Krech III (ed.), The Subarctic Fur Trade: Native Social and Economic Adaptations (1984); and Kerry Abel, Drum Songs: Glimpses of Dene History (1993), on the indigenous people of the McKenzie River drainage area. John J. Honigmann The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica