Did those hunters sell/trade their best kayaks and paddles to the strangers who showed up in ships and went away again?

Even if they did, we have absolutely no idea what made a kayak qualify as "best".

We tend to evaluate kayak designs based on how we use them and hold them to the standards we feel are important for us.

The original kayak builders used them to acquire their food. We use them to play. We can speculate on speed, efficiency, stability, etc. and assume that these characteristics were valued in something like the same manner we value them. I submit that this is completely is completely wrong-headed.

Where we may value how a kayak moves while paddling, a hunter may really appreciate the action of the kayak as he throws a harpoon. Or maybe his favorite kayak is the one he made where he recycled the masik made by his favorite uncle. The hunter may not like a kayak that otherwise performs well because he feels it has bad luck due to that time he almost died using the kayak. Even coming up with examples implies a level of insight we just don't have.

It is like putting on fatigues and running around in the woods with a paint ball gun doesn't even start to simulate real combat and does not particularly enlighten 12 year old boys about being a soldier.

Short of forcing ourselves into an Arctic survival situation with a qajaq, there is no way to truly understand why a traditional kayak is the way it is. And any efforts to interpret are going to be highly skewed by our own preferences.