Dorset Culture

The Dorset culture (also called the Dorset Tradition) was a Paleo-Eskimo culture (500 BCE - CE 1500) that preceded the Inuit culture in Arctic North America. It has been defined as having four phases, with distinct technology related to the people's hunting and tool making. They made distinctive triangular end-blades, soapstone lamps, and burins.

The Dorset were identified as a separate culture in 1925. Archaeology has been critical to adding to knowledge about them, as the Dorset were essentially extinct by 1500. They had difficulty adapting to the Medieval Warm Period and were later displaced by the Thule, who migrated east from present-day Alaska. However a small, isolated community of Dorset culture people known as the Sadlermiut survived until 1902-1903 at Hudson Bay on Coats, Walrus, and Southampton islands. DNA testing has confirmed the people were directly related to Dorset culture.

Inuit legends recount their driving away the people they called Tuniit (singular Tuniq) or Sivullirmiut (First Inhabitants). According to legend, the First Inhabitants were "giants", people who were taller and stronger than the Inuit, but who were easily scared off. Scholars believe that the Dorset and the later Thule people were the peoples encountered by the Norse who visited the area. The Norse called these native peoples skræling.