It is believed that each of the pre-contact peoples who migrated through the High Arctic approached Ellesmere Island from the south and west. They were able to travel along Ellesmere's coasts or overland to
Nares Strait, and some of them crossed the strait to populate
Greenland. The archaeological record of past
Arctic cultures is quite complete, as artifacts deteriorate very slowly. Items exposed to the cold, dry winds become naturally freeze-dried while items that become buried are preserved in the permafrost. Artifacts are in a similar condition to when they were left or lost, and settlements abandoned thousands of years ago can be seen much as they were the day their inhabitants left. From these sites and artifacts, archaeologists have been able to construct a history of these cultures. However, the research is incomplete and only a small proportion of the details of excavations have been published.
Small tool cultures The
Arctic Small Tool tradition peoples (
Paleo-Eskimos) in the High Arctic had small populations organized as hunting bands, spread from
Axel Heiberg Island to the northern extremity of Greenland, where the
Independence I culture was active from 2700 BCE. On Ellesmere, they chiefly hunted in the Eureka Upland and the Hazen Plateau. Six different small-tool cultures have been identified at the
Smith Sound region: Independence I, Independence I /
Saqqaq,
Pre-Dorset, Saqqaq,
early Dorset, and late Dorset. They chiefly hunted
muskoxen: more than three-quarters of their known archaeological sites on Ellesmere are located in the island's interior and their winter dwellings were skin tents, suggesting a need for mobility to follow the herds. There is evidence at
Lake Hazen of a trade network , including soapstone lamps (
qulliq) from Greenland and incised lance heads from cultures to the south.
Thule culture (brown) and expansion of the
Thule (green), The
Thule moved into the High Arctic at the time of a warming trend, c. 1000 CE. Their major population centre was the
Smith Sound area (on both the Ellesmere and Greenland sides) due to its proximity to
polynyas and its position on transportation routes. From settlements at Smith Sound, the Thule sent summer hunting parties to harvest
marine mammals in Nansen Strait. Their summer camps are evidenced by tent rings as far north as Archer Fiord, with clusters of stone dwellings around
Lady Franklin Bay and at Lake Hazen which suggest semi-permanent occupations. The Thule genetically and culturally completely replaced the
Dorset some time after 1300 CE. The Thule displaced the small-tool cultures, having a number of technological advantages which notably included effective weapons,
kayaks and
umiaks for hunting marine mammals, and
sled dogs for surface transport and pursuit. The Thule also had an extensive trade network, evidenced by
meteoritic iron from Greenland which was exported through Ellesmere Island to the rest of the archipelago and to the North American mainland. More than fifty
Norse artifacts have been found in Thule archaeological sites on the
Bache Peninsula, including pieces of
chain mail. It is uncertain if Ellesmere Island was directly visited by
Norse Greenlanders who sailed from the south or if the items were traded through a network of middlemen. It is also possible the items may have been taken from a shipwreck. A bronze set of scales discovered in western Ellesmere Island has been interpreted as indicating the presence of a Norse trader in the region. The Norse artifacts date from c. 1250 to 1400 CE. Between 1400 and 1600 CE, the
Little Ice Age developed and conditions for hunting became increasingly difficult, forcing the Thule to withdraw from Ellesmere and the other northern islands of the archipelago. The Thule who remained in northern Greenland became isolated, specialized at hunting a diminishing number of game animals, and lost the ability to make boats. Thus, the waters around Ellesmere were not navigated again until the arrival of large European vessels after 1800.
Early European exploration Much of the initial phase of European exploration of the
North American Arctic was centred on a search for the
Northwest Passage and undertaken by Britain. The 1616 expedition of
William Baffin were the first Europeans to record sighting the then-unnamed Ellesmere Island (Baffin named
Jones and
Smith Sounds on the island's south and southeast coasts). However, the onset of the Little Ice Age interrupted the progress of explorations for two centuries. In 1818, an
ice jam in
Baffin Bay broke, allowing European vessels access to the High Arctic (
whalers had been active in
Davis Strait, about southeast of Ellesmere, since 1719). Baffin Bay was then navigable in the summers due to the presence of an ice dam in Smith Sound, which prevented Arctic
drift ice from flowing south. The other channels of the archipelago remained congested with ice. That year,
John Ross led the first recorded European expedition to
Cape York, at which time there were reportedly only 140
Inughuit. (The Inughuit of North Greenland, the
Kalaallit of West Greenland, and
Inuit of the archipelago are descendants of the Thule culture, which had diverged during the isolation imposed by the
Little Ice Age.) Knowledge of Ellesmere persisted in the oral histories of the
Inuit of
Baffin Island and the Inughuit of northern Greenland, who each called it .
Euro-American exploration and contact The search for
Franklin's lost expedition – also searching for the
Northwest Passage and to establish claims to the Far North – involved more than forty expeditions to the High Arctic over two decades, and represented the peak period of Euro-American
Arctic exploration.
Edward Augustus Inglefield led an 1852 expedition which surveyed the coastlines of Baffin Bay and Smith Sound, being stopped by ice in
Nares Strait. He named Ellesmere Island for the president of the
Royal Geographical Society (1849–1852),
Francis Egerton, 1st Earl of Ellesmere. The
Second Grinnell expedition (1853–1855) made slightly further progress before becoming trapped in the ice. Over two winters the expedition charted both sides of
Kane Basin to about 80°N, from where
Elisha Kent Kane claimed to have sighted the conjectured
Open Polar Sea. During this period, as the
Little Ice Age abated and the hunting of
marine mammals became more feasible again, Indigenous peoples began to return to Ellesmere Island. The most well-known of these migrations in both
Inuit and European accounts is the journey of Qitlaq, who led a group of Inuit families from Baffin Island to northwestern Greenland, via Ellesmere Island, in the 1850s. This journey reestablished contact between Inuit who had been separated for two centuries and reintroduced vital technologies to the Inughuit. Other groups followed and by the 1870s Inuit were living on Ellesmere Island and had regular contact with those on the neighbouring islands. Contact between Inuit and Europeans or Americans was often indirect, as the Inuit happened upon shipwrecks or abandoned base camps which provided wood and metal resources. European goods were also obtained through inter-group trade. Long-term contact began in the 1800s through
whaling stations and
trading posts, which frequently relocated. Euro-American expeditions employed Inughuit, Inuit and west Greenlander guides, hunters and labourers, gradually blending their knowledge with European technology to conduct effective exploration. off
Cape Prescott in 1875 British and United States Arctic expeditions had been interrupted for some years due to the priorities of the
Crimean War and the
American Civil War, respectively. By about 1860, the focus of Arctic exploration had shifted to the
North Pole. As earlier attempts at the pole via
Svalbard or eastern Greenland had reached impasses, numerous expeditions came to Ellesmere Island to pursue the route through Nares Straight. in Grinnel Land, May 1883 The
Lady Franklin Bay Expedition, a United States expedition, led by
Adolphus Greely in 1881 crossed the island from east to west, establishing
Fort Conger in the northern part of the island. The Greely expedition found
fossil forests on Ellesmere Island in the late 1880s. Stenkul Fiord was first explored in 1902 by Per Schei, a member of
Otto Sverdrup's 2nd Norwegian Polar Expedition. The
Ellesmere Ice Shelf was documented by the
British Arctic Expedition of 1875–76, in which Lieutenant
Pelham Aldrich's party went from
Cape Sheridan () west to Cape Alert (), including the
Ward Hunt Ice Shelf. In 1906
Robert Peary led an expedition in northern Ellesmere Island, from Cape Sheridan along the coast to the western side of
Nansen Sound (93°W). During Peary's expedition, the
ice shelf was continuous; it has since been estimated to have covered . The ice shelf broke apart in the 20th century, presumably due to
climate change.
Establishment of Canadian sovereignty In 1880, the
British Arctic Territories were transferred to Canada. Canada did little to solidify its legal possession of the islands until prompted by foreign action in 1902–03: Otto Sverdrup claimed the
Sverdrup Islands, three islands west of Ellesmere, for Norway, the
Alaska boundary dispute was settled against Canada's interests, and
Roald Amundsen set out to sail the
Northwest Passage. To establish an official government presence in the Far North, the
North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) were sent on sovereignty patrols. A NWMP detachment sailed to the Arctic whaling stations in 1903, where they forbade
whalers from killing
muskox or trading skins, in order to prevent
over hunting and protect the ability of Inuit to sustain themselves. In 1904 a NWMP detachment sailed to Cape Herschel at the east end of
Sverdrup Pass, where they could intercept hunters accessing the interior of Ellesmere. While the
fur trade was brought under control, American exploration parties to the Far North had acted with autonomy and intensively hunted terrestrial mammals to sustain their expeditions. Peary's parties had heavily hunted muskoxen on Ellesmere and had nearly brought the extinction of
caribou in northern Greenland; the
Crocker Land Expedition (1913–1916) also extensively hunted muskoxen. In response to these and other trespasses, the government amended the
Northwest Game Act to prohibit the killing of muskoxen except for Native inhabitants who otherwise faced starvation. In 1920, the government learned that
Inughuit from Greenland had been annually visiting Ellesmere Island for
polar bear and muskox hunting – in violation of Canadian law – and selling the skins at
Knud Rasmussen's trading post at
North Star Bay (known as Thule). The Danish government stated that North Greenland was a "
no man's land" outside their administration and Rasmussen, as the
de facto sole authority, refused to stop the trade, which the Inughuit needed to support themselves. In response,
Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) detachments were established on Ellesmere Island at
Craig Harbour in 1922 and at Bache Post in 1926, positioned to guard the coastal and overland routes to the hunting grounds on the western side of Ellesmere. In addition to intercepting
illegal hunting and fur-trading, the RCMP conducted patrols and encouraged the Inuit to maintain their traditional lifestyle. The posts were closed in the mid-1930s, after the sovereignty issues had been settled. ==Geography==