The Inuit (singular Inuk) are a group of peoples who live in the Arctic regions of Greenland, Canada, and the United States. The term Eskimo, used in the U.S., includes the Inuit, and Alaska's Yupik and Inupiat peoples, as the Yupik do not consider themselves to be part of the Inuit peoples. Most Inuit live in the Canadian Arctic and subarctic, mainly in the territory of Nunavu.

Contact with Europeans began with the early Norse arrivals of Vikings, but these were small in number and the contact was really for trade. The next contact with Europeans was in the 16th century, when whalers built whaling stations on the coast which they occupied for part of the year. In the winter, when the stations were empty, the Inuit raided the stations for tools and iron. Then Martin Frobisher's expedition in 1576 met Inuit as he was searching for the fabled Northwest Passage to China. The expedition landed at Frobisher Bay, Baffin Island. During this time, five sailors left the English ship and vanished. This resulted in a misunderstanding: Frobisher thought they had been captured, the Inuit thought the five had been abandoned. The European arrival unwittingly brought disease to the Inuit just as it did to other native peoples in the Americas. During the 19th century, the Hudson's Bay Company opened trading posts where whale products were processed and furs traded.

Hudson's Bay Company trading with the Inuit in 1819.

The lands occupied by the Inuit were of little interest to European settlers. All the same, the governments to the south considered their lands to be part of their own territories.