History

A fundamental fact of life for the Tsimshian-speaking peoples, as for all First Nations in British Columbia, is the non-recognition of their land rights by non-native society. The only treaties signed with the native people of the province were the Douglas treaties on Vancouver Island in the early 1850s and Treaty 8, which covers territory in the northeast. Natives in other parts of the province have never entered into treaty, and the British Columbia government long claimed that aboriginal land title was extinguished in practice through successive pieces of provincial legislation. Obtaining formal recognition of their rights to land and self-government has been a constant concern of British Columbia First Nations, and in this struggle the Nisga’a and Gitksan peoples played a leading part.

Among all these nations there are ancient accounts of primordial origin within their territories. There are also oral histories for specific groups in each of the areas that point to at least two periods of migration into the northwest coast region, and these histories agree with the findings of archaeological and geological research. In the first period, peoples from the northeast, southwest, and southeast moved into an uninhabited land where the post-glacial climate and geography were very different from that of today. Over several centuries they spread over the entire region and established settlements inland and on the coast. This early period was followed, millennia later, by a period of extensive migration from the north, along the coast, and from the interior down the rivers. Again the people spread out through the entire region in a process that may have taken centuries.

According to Nisga’a tradition, all four Nisga’a clans were established by K’amligihahlhaahl in a primordial village on the upper Nass river. The Nisga’a believe that the land was given to them by the Creator and that they have inhabited their territory since ”time immemorial.” During the period of Christian evangelization in the late nineteenth century, a number of new settlements were established in which the resident missionary sought to establish Christian enclaves. Often these were located in sites more accessible for the emerging transportation system of riverboats on the Skeena and coastal steamers.

Today there are a number of non-native people resident in many of the villages; some are married to community members while others work for the communities. These people often participate actively in cultural and ceremonial activities, and those who are long-time residents are frequently integrated through adoptions into one of the four clans so that they can participate with their neighbours in cultural activities. Numerous community members now reside in urban centres where education and employment are more accessible, especially Terrace and Prince Rupert as well as Vancouver and Seattle, but even after generations they are considered to belong to the lineage of their mothers and grandmothers before them and to have a home in their villages.

Each matrilineal family or house among the Gitksan, Nisga’a, and Tsimshian peoples has a tradition, its adawx (history). The adawx links the family to its territories and establishes rightful ownership of the land and resources, which are managed by the chiefs (in Sm’algyax, sm’oigyet, plural: sm’gigyet; sigidmn’anax: chiefwomen). The adawx are distinct from the widely shared beliefs and stories told by elders. Some adawx tell of migrations of groups to their present territories from a homeland farther east known as Temlaxam. Other histories describe a migration from the north, and still others simply tell of the process by which people explored their territories and established covenants with the supernatural powers that govern them. In these accounts there is sometimes a description of the people already in the area and of how they welcomed the newcomers and let them settle and marry among them.

Human habitation in the area dates back at least thirteen millennia, developing by about 2,500 years ago into the cultural forms encountered at European contact. Though of course the archaeological record cannot identify such features as language or family line, there is no evident break in the record to show one group replacing another. Recent archaeological research suggests that it is likely that the original inhabitants were the ancestors of the Nisga’a, Gitksan, and Tsimshian peoples.

According to the archaeological record, the first several millennia after deglaciation were a time of small communities with self-sufficient economies based on large mammals and berries in the inland areas and on shellfish and sea mammals in coastal locations. When salmon became abundant it was the primary resource for both coastal and riverine groups. Wide dissemination of rare items such as obsidian for tools and weapons and dentalia shells for ceremonial purposes indicates extensive trade, though this may have been managed at the boundaries of each territory in accordance with strict laws of trespass described in oral narratives.

Around 3000 B.C.E. cedar forests became well established in the area and the technology for canoe-making began to develop. Trade became an integral part of the economy. By 1500 B.C.E. there are indications that the organization of society had become more hierarchical and that coastal and inland economies were interdependent. Dried salmon, mountain goat, and caribou, berries, furs, and tanned hides were exchanged for dried seafoods and oolichan grease. Tools and storage containers were essential to this trade, and regional specializations developed in these technologies as well as in ceremonial items. By about 500 C.E. there is evidence for trade prerogatives in which some groups had privileged access to other groups. For instance, trade upriver on the Skeena River with the Gitksan became the prerogative of the leading Eagle clan group at Kitselas, and later another group shared this privilege; such lucrative rights had to be enforced and were sometimes a focus of conflict.

There is some evidence that goods from the Asian mainland were acquired centuries before direct contact, though these are rare and may be from shipwrecks rather than trading networks. It is certain, however, that European trade goods came to the Tsimshian, Nisga’a, and Gitksan before Spanish and British explorers entered the waters of the area in the 1770s. Some trade goods were obtained from Tlingit people trading with Russian settlements in Alaska after 1741, and early acquisitions may also have included goods that had been traded overland great distances from the east or south. The earliest recorded direct contact with Europeans was when the trading vessel Princess Royal visited the Kitkatla area in 1787. The Nisga’a also have accounts of trading directly with the Russians around this time.

The later presence of traders, missionaries, and Indian agents did not radically alter the ancient way of life, for trade goods along with new foods and ideas were added to the existing cultural repertoire without rending the fabric of society. Over time, however, as settlers entered the area to stay, efforts to impose white institutions were followed closely by legislation and regulations with the specific purpose of replacing native practices with Canadian ones. Systems of government, land tenure, justice, education, and resource management as well as religion and family structures were all attacked by laws enforced with escalating rigour. The period from the 1860s to the 1880s was a watershed marked by the influx of foreigners and their weapons; ultimately, a show of military force was used against several communities to quell their attempts to exercise their rights.

The Coast Tsimshian were most accessible, and in 1834 Fort Simpson was built in their territories at present-day Port Simpson. The trade centre became the site of the winter habitations of the coastal Tsimshian, and Nisga’a, Gitksan, other Tsimshian, Haida, and Tlingit came regularly to trade. The traders were not all genteel people by any means, and alcohol abuse and violence involving both company personnel and their Tsimshian neighbours were not uncommon. The first missionary to enter the area was William Duncan, who began his work at Fort Simpson in 1857 and who by 1862 had established the mission village of Metlakatla at the site of an old winter village. By this time, traders and military and government personnel who had become familiar in the area had been joined by gold seekers en route to the Cariboo. Less than a century after Captain George Vancouver’s voyage to the area, occasional tourists were already arriving on coastal steamers.

In 1873, shortly after British Columbia entered Confederation, the first salmon canneries on the Skeena and Nass rivers brought non-native residents to the area in substantial numbers for the first time. While the people of Port Simpson and Metlakatla resisted the use of their territories by others, they came under great pressure as the pace of development escalated and particularly when land was being acquired for the northern terminus of the railroad. Though some missionaries in the area attempted to support the rights of the original inhabitants to their traditional territories, the combined forces of church hierarchies, provincial administrators, federal Indian administrators, and land speculators were arrayed against them. A turning-point for the Coast Tsimshian was the 1887 decision by the missionary William Duncan, as a result of strife with church hierarchy and provincial authorities, to move to Alaska with hundreds of Tsimshian. The turmoil of this period continues to echo in such communities as Lax Kwa’alaams, Metlakatla, and New Metlakatla, Alaska.

The home territories of the Southern Tsimshian were less visited by traders and the people of Gitga’ata and Kitkatla frequently travelled to Fort Simpson to trade. Many converted to Christianity after Duncan established the mission community of Metlakatla, and indeed by 1873 Duncan claimed that all of the Gitga’ata had moved to the new village, which was probably accurate as far as winter residence goes. When Metlakatla was almost depopulated in 1887 by the move of Duncan’s followers to Alaska, modern-day Hartley Bay was founded by a small group of Gitga’ata who did not wish to move so far from their territories. The Kitkatla people were reputedly more conservative, and fewer had became involved with Duncan, though eventually the community hosted a resident Anglican missionary. Kitasoo was closer to Fort McLoughlin and for decades the people from this community tended to see their relations most frequently when the latter were en route to Victoria or to coastal canneries. Klemtu, where the Kitasoo Tsimshian now reside, includes many people who speak the language of the Bella Bella people as well as the Tsimshian-speaking community residents.

The mouth of the Nass River is renowned for the rich oil of the oolican which return in great abundance each year. These small smelt-like fish are valued primarily for their oil, which is traded to the inland and coastal peoples. The quality of the Nass River oolican is particularly rich, and this has traditionally forced the Nisga’a to defend their homeland and resources from invaders. The Nass mouth was visited by Vancouver when he entered the Portland Canal in 1793 and the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) first established Fort Simpson on the Nass River in 1831. However, the HBC moved its establishment to the present site of Port Simpson in 1834. While the territory abounds in wildlife and the temperate rainforest of the coast provided the Nisga’a with an abundance of shellfish and salmon, the climate and isolation of the valley were inhospitable to the sporadic attempts at agricultural settlement. Eventually small reserves were laid out, but their inadequacy – comprising less than 1 percent of the traditional territory

– has led the Nisga’a to engage in a lengthy struggle for their land rights. While settlers have attempted to establish themselves in the Nass valley, much of the area is unsuited to agriculture, and today the major non-native presence in near proximity to the four Nisga’a villages is the logging industry.

The territories of the Gitksan are less remote and also more hospitable to agricultural settlement. By the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the Gitksan were trading goods from Fort St James to their east, but there was no white settlement in their territories until the late 1860s, when the trading town of Skeena Forks or Hazelton was established at Gitanmaax. In evidence presented in the recent court case Delgamuukw v. The Queen, Gitksan elders spoke of the efforts of their parents and grandparents to incorporate these early settlers, most of whom were traders and farmers. A century later the three small neighbouring communities called the Hazeltons are home to the largest body of non-native people who live in the territories of the Gitksan, along with the Gitanmaax band of Gitksan and the Wit’suwit’en community of Hagwilget. Many of the farms in the river valleys that were established by settlers are still occupied, though they cannot compete with large-scale agribusiness and mostly operate as producers of meat and produce for the local region.

In their histories, the Gitksan remember the imposition of the British justice system. The event that first exposed the Gitksan to this system was the so-called Skeena Rebellion of 1872, when the people of Gitsegyukla closed the Skeena River to travellers following the accidental burning of Gitsegyukla by two Euro-American traders. In response, two gunboats were dispatched to restore order. Two other incidents stand out: the 1888 shooting of a Gitksan for a crime for which he had already paid in the Gitksan legal system; and the unsuccessful thirteenyear pursuit of Simon Gunanoot for the alleged murder of a white man in 1906, for which he was finally acquitted after his voluntary surrender in 1919.

Once EuroCanadian institutions became pervasive, the Tsimshian, Gitksan, and Nisga’a entered a period during which communities outwardly accommodated themselves to the new regime while developing strategies of resistance. After the federal government’s passage of antipotlatch legislation in 1885, legislation that was revised and enforced in the 1920s, communities with resident Indian agents hid their activities in various ways. When surveyors were working in the Gitksan area in the 1920s, the Gitanyow confiscated their equipment and sent the surveyors away; in the ensuing court case three Gitanyow men were convicted and two of them were sent to Oakalla prison for several months. Subsequent Gitanyow activity deterred settlers from establishing themselves in the region until a moratorium was finally placed on the sale of land in the region.

In the 1970s the Nisga’a, Tsimshian, and Gitksan peoples accelerated their ongoing political and legal struggles to secure control over their territories and their very existence as peoples. Several pivotal incidents have marked a shift in the relations between the First Nations and governments, notably the Supreme Court recognition in 1973 of aboriginal rights in the Calder case and the establishment of the B.C. Treaty Commission in 1993.

The British Columbia treaty process now involves most of the aboriginal communities in the province. However, entering negotiations does not guarantee territory or resource rights. In fact, since the onset of negotiations with the Nisga’a, the effect of the treaty process has been to unleash a wave of logging and other forms of primaryresource extraction in the northwest, the goal being to make as much profit as possible in the region before a settlement is reached. This has created particular difficulties for interior groups whose territories had been relatively untouched. Forestry harvests in some parts of the northwest have been estimated at three times the sustainable rate over the two decades since the Supreme Court’s decision in Calder.