History

Archaeological discoveries in Heiltsuk and Kwak-waka’wakw territories indicate human occupation for over 9,000 years. On the west coast of Vancouver Island, Nuu-chah-nulth history has been traced back for about 4,000 years.

Wakashan peoples constructed large multi-family houses from the huge stands of cedar trees in the lush coastal rain forest. Split cedar planks, slung on a framework of posts and beams, could be removed and transported from place to place. Planks also covered the roof, being weighed down with poles and rocks as protection against the high winds of winter storms. Inside these large structures, heat and light came from several fires, which were also used for cooking, while boxes and baskets containing stored food supplies and ritual gear were stacked along the walls. Inner support posts might be carved with figures that were the inherited rights of the chiefly occupants.

Villages of such houses lined the beaches in protected areas along the coast. Hundreds of people gathered at winter villages, which consisted of one or more rows of houses facing the water. During other times of the year people were dispersed at resource camps, often taking with them the planks from their winter houses for temporary shelters. Some families owned house frames at several village sites, moving the planks between them.

Contact with Europeans began in the late eighteenth century. The 1774 encounter between a Spanish ship and several canoes of Nuu-chah-nulth on western Vancouver Island marks the initial contact in this area. Four years later, the arrival of Captain James Cook at Nootka Sound ushered in a period of more intensive contact. In the decades that followed, relations between natives and outsiders centred on trade, particularly for the soft pelts of the sea otter. A few ambitious and well-situated Nuu-chah-nulth chiefs, such as Muquinna in Nootka Sound and Wikinanish in Clayoquot Sound, greatly increased their personal and economic power through widespread trade monopolies. The northern Wakashans, away from the open coast, were less frequently visited by European traders.

Although the early trade period was generally peaceful, occasional hostilities did occur. In 1792, in reaction to a perceived plot against his ship, the American trader Robert Gray turned his cannons on one of Wikinanish’s major villages, completely destroying it. A decade later, in 1803 Muquinna, likely a successor to the chief of the same name who greeted Cook, reacted to an insult from a ship’s captain by seizing the ship and killing all but two of the crew.

This period of contact was short-lived, since by the end of the eighteenth century the sea otter had been hunted to local extinction. As the maritime trade declined, the Hudson’s Bay Company established permanent land-based trading posts. Fort McLoughlin was built in Heiltsuk territory in 1833, leading many Heiltsuk to relocate around it. Similarly, when Fort Rupert was established on northern Vancouver Island in 1849, four independent Kwakwaka’wakw groups joined together in its vicinity.

In the mid-nineteenth century, conflicts with colonial authorities led to the destruction of several Kwak-waka’wakw and Nuu-chah-nulth villages by the British navy. Epidemic diseases, such as measles and smallpox, also took a dreadful toll. One of the worst outbreaks began around Fort Victoria in 1862. Quickly spreading up the coast and far into the interior, it greatly reduced native populations and forced the abandonment of many villages. The modern Haisla, Heiltsuk, and Oweekeno were formed as several groups in each case coalesced at a single location. The number of politically separate villages among the Kwakwaka’wakw, Nuu-chah-nulth, and Ditidaht also was greatly reduced.

Great social and economic changes took place in the following decades. Christian missionaries were a major source of change since many of them actively discouraged traditional practices. At the same time, declining populations continued to induce many Wakashans to amalgamate in villages around the missions or trading posts, a trend that further speeded the process of acculturation. Meanwhile, Euro-Canadian settlements increasingly sprang up on Wakashan lands, disrupting native life but providing new economic opportunities. Labour in Euro-Canadian ventures integrated some Wakashan groups into the commercial economy.

Except for a Hudson’s Bay Company agreement at Fort Rupert, no treaty or other legal negotiations ceded Wakashan lands. Beginning in the 1880s, however, the federal government assigned reserves for all Wakashan groups, thereby reinforcing its claims to the Wakashans’ remaining traditional territories. Today, each Wakashan First Nation holds a number of small, scattered reserves. Isolation from schools, roads, and jobs has prompted many families to move to nearby towns or more distant cities.