Title: Digital History
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Content: The Inuit wore layers of caribou-skinned clothing and constructed heavily insulated pit houses, dug into the ground and covered with furs and animal skins. The Inuit built sleds for transportation and spread out across the coast. These people were organized in a large number of small bands, which shared certain common cultural patterns while remaining largely autonomous. Along the Northwest Pacific Coast--an area of dense forests, teeming with caribou, deer, elk and moose, and rivers, rich with sea life-- the ancestors of the Haidas, Kwakiutls, and Tlingits developed a distinctive culture oriented toward the water. The mild climate and the abundant marine life--salmon, sturgeon, halibut, herring, shellfish, and sea mammals--meant that these peoples could produce food with very little work. Such abundance freed these people to create some of the world's most impressive art forms as well as an elaborate ceremonial life. The people of the Northwest Pacific Coast constructed large, gabled-roof plank houses; carved family and clan emblems on totem poles; made elaborately carved wooden masks, grave markers, and utensils; and constructed great sea-going canoes, some more than 60 feet long.