Naskapi

The Naskapi are a Subarctic Indigenous people whose homeland, called St'aschinuw, stretched across the barrens of northern Quebec and Labrador near Ungava Bay. They form the northern branch of the Innu, distinct from the more settled Montagnais, and speak a northern dialect of the Innu language, part of the Algonquian family.

Their name, first recorded by the Jesuit André Richard about 1643 and said to mean people beyond the horizon, was applied to nomadic bands beyond the reach of missionaries. Living by the seasonal caribou hunt rather than fixed villages, they ranged between Hudson Bay and the Torngat Mountains.

Moravian missionaries met bands near Okak in 1790, and in 1831 the Hudson's Bay Company opened Old Fort Chimo on Ungava Bay, drawing the Naskapi into the fur trade as trappers of marten and fox.