I was watching a documentary about the exploration of Canada, and there were several mentions of British explorers learning local ways of getting around, among other things snowshoes. This got me wondering why they never developed skis (at least the cursory search I did only indicated northern Russian and Scandinavian origins of skiing).
When comparing technological solutions to problems across cultures, it's rarely useful to ask why one didn't develop the same solution another did. There are simply too many constraints that go into any particular technology and the question itself has overtones of "why is one culture less advanced?". In any case, snowshoes and skis solve similar problems with different tradeoffs. It's not really possible to talk about which is better or worse, because they do each have benefits the other lacks.
Snowshoes:
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Excellent on rough terrain | Speed is limited to roughly walking pace. |
| Better flotation on loose powder | Less efficient movement on packed snow. |
| Higher weight capacity in more snow types | -- |
| More durable | More difficult to construct |
| Usable in more environments than skis | No one realized that until airplanes became a thing |
| Better in dense vegetation | -- |
Skis:
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Faster | Sometimes |
| Better downhill | You often can't climb up what you just descended without snowshoes |
| More efficient movement | Except in loose snow |
| Easier to construct | Easier to break |
| -- | Unwieldy in dense vegetation |
| -- | Less flotation |
| Better on packed snow | Worse on loose snow |