A 700-Year-Old Inuit Carving of a European in a Cross Robe May Be the Earliest Indigenous Depiction in the Americas

A small wooden figurine from an early Inuit house on Baffin Island, in Nunavut, Canada, shows a figure in a long robe with a cross on the front. The Canadian Museum of History dates the carving to about 1350, roughly 140 years before Columbus’s first voyage. The museum says the figure likely represents a Norseman, and describes the carving as the earliest depiction of a European in the Western Hemisphere. This is a feature on an object excavated in 1977, not a new discovery.

What the figurine looks like

The driftwood carving stands about 5.4 cm (2.1 inches) tall and is on display at the museum. The robe resembles garments worn by Norse Christians in Greenland in the 11th to 13th centuries. The face is featureless and the arms are stumpy, which the museum says is typical of 14th-century Inuit carvings. Depicting a non-Inuit person is unusual in this tradition.

The Norse connection

Greenlandic Norse visited the eastern Canadian Arctic between about 1000 and 1400, according to the museum, and Norse sagas mention a land called Helluland that most likely means Baffin Island. The Norse likely traded metal and cloth with the Thule, the ancestors of the Inuit, for walrus ivory, and European-origin objects turn up in early Inuit houses on Baffin Island. The museum suggests the figurine may commemorate a meeting between the two peoples. It predates sustained European contact, which began in the late 15th century.

What to keep in mind

The identification as a Norseman is probable, not certain, and the commemoration idea is tentative. The “earliest” label comes from the museum’s own caption. The date of about 1350 is the museum’s figure, and another Canadian source places the carving in the 13th century, so the exact age is not settled. The photo shows the figurine from the front, where the cross is not clearly visible.

Sources

Details come from Live Science (12 October 2026, by Kristina Killgrove) and the Canadian Museum of History’s own page and caption (KeDq-7:325). We did not see the museum’s catalogue entry for the findspot. Image credit: Canadian Museum of History, IMG2009-0063-0154.