Star Trek: 10 Alien Encounters Before First Contact
2. Sky Spirits - Tattoo
The Sky Spirits were a race of Delta Quadrant aliens who visited Earth some 43,000 years before Voyager encountered them on their homeworld. When they first arrived on Earth, they encountered a group of nomadic people with no spoken language. It was these peoples' respect of the land that endeared them to the Sky Spirits.
These aliens were technologically advanced, but their technology was constructed in such a way that it worked in harmony with the land. They gave the people that they encountered a genetic code that would leave the knowledge of their relationship with them, and pass it down through the generations.
As human civilisations grew, the descendants of these 'Inheritors' broke apart, so that when the Sky Spirits next encountered humans, they believed that their friends had been wiped out by other humans. Chakotay was able to convince them that while there may be fewer of them, they were not altogether gone. Chakotay's tribe, descended from the Rubber Tree People, were one such group of survivors.