Ursa Minor's own article already explains that Polaris has not always been, and will not always remain, the pole star, with Thuban and Vega taking its place before and after across the long cycle of precession. Within Ursa Minor itself, two other stars carried the practical burden of marking true north for a very long stretch of that same cycle, before Polaris had drifted close enough to the pole to be fully trusted.
Kochab and Pherkad, the two brighter stars forming the outer edge of the Little Dipper's bowl, were known in medieval Arabic and later European navigational tradition as the Guardians of the Pole, al-farqadain in Arabic, meaning roughly the two calves. For centuries before Polaris sat near enough to the true celestial pole for sailors to rely on it directly, navigators judged true north from the position of Kochab and Pherkad relative to it instead, a working method precise enough for practical seafaring even without a star sitting exactly on the pole itself.
Polaris has since drifted close enough to the pole, and will remain so for some centuries yet, that the older method built around its two guardian neighbours has fallen out of practical use entirely, surviving now only in the names themselves and in the navigational manuals that once depended on them.
The Little Bear's tail gets the modern attention, but its bowl held the working solution before the tail's own star was reliable enough to trust alone.