Editing Ellesmere Island (section)

===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.{{r|"Fjagesund2014"|p=334}} 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).<ref name="EBbaffin"/> 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 ([[whaler]]s had been active in [[Davis Strait]], about {{cvt|1000|km|disp=sqbr}} southeast of Ellesmere, since 1719).{{r|"Dick"|p=29–30}} 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.{{r|"Dick"|p=37}}

That year<!--1818-->, [[John Ross (Royal Navy officer)|John Ross]] led the first recorded European expedition to [[Cape York (Greenland)|Cape York]],{{r|"Dick"|p=65}} at which time there were reportedly only 140 [[Inughuit]].{{r|"Dick"|p=61}} (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,{{r|"Dick"|p=55}} who each called it {{langnf|iu-Latn|Umingmak Nuna|land of [[muskox]]en}}.<ref name="Science1885"/>