The paddler wore a tuilik, a garment that was stretched over the rim of the kayak coaming and sealed with drawstrings at the coaming, wrists, and hood edges. The word 'kayak' means 'man's boat' or 'hunter's boat', and native kayaks were a personal craft, each built by the man who used it-with assistance from his wife, who sewed the skins- and closely fitting his size for maximum maneuverability. Native builders designed and built their boats based on their own experience and that of the generations before them passed on through oral tradition. It is considered a kayak although it was originally paddled with single-bladed paddles, and typically had more than one paddler. An umiak is a large open-sea canoe, ranging from 5.2 to 9.1 m (17 to 30 ft), made with seal skins and wood. The Aleut baidarka was made in double or triple cockpit designs, for hunting and transporting passengers or goods. Native people made many types of boats for different purposes. The oldest kayaks remaining are exhibited in the North America department of the State Museum of Ethnology in Munich, with the oldest dating from 1577. Kayaks are believed to be at least 4,000 years old. (Western Alaskan Natives used wood whereas the eastern Inuit used whalebone due to the treeless landscape).

These first kayaks were constructed from stitched seal or other animal skins stretched over a wood or whalebone-skeleton frame. They used the boats to hunt on inland lakes, rivers and coastal waters of the Arctic Ocean, North Atlantic, Bering Sea and North Pacific oceans. Kayaks ( Inuktitut: qajaq ( ᖃᔭᖅ Inuktitut pronunciation: ), Yup'ik: qayaq (from qai- 'surface top'), Aleut: Iqyax) were originally developed by the Inuit, Yup'ik, and Aleut. The world cup competitions in kayaking in Vaxholm, Sweden, photographed by Gunnar Lundh in 1938.

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