Mondo's NAT #207

Native American Tribe series.

Haida (Xa'ida, 'people').

The native and popular name for the Indians of the Queen Charlotte Islands., British Columbia, and the south end of Prince of Wales island., Alaska, comprising the Skittagetan family. By the natives themselves the term may be applied generally to any human being or specifically to one speaking the Haida language. Some authors have improperly restricted the application of the tend to the Queen Charlotte islanders, calling the Alaskan Haida, Kaigani. Several English variants of this word owe their origin to the fact that a suffix usually accompanies it in the native language, making it Ha'de in one dialect and Haidaga'i in the other.

According to their own traditions the oldest Haida towns stood on the east shore, at Naikum and on the broken coast of Moresby island. Later a portion of the people moved to the west coast, and between 150 and 200 years ago a still larger section, the Kaigani, drove the Tlingit from part of Prince of Wales island and settled there. Although it is not impossible that the Queen Charlotte islands were visited by Spaniards during the 17th century, the first certain account of their discovery is that by Ensign Juan Perez, in the corvette Santiago, in 1774. He named the north point of the island, Cabo de Santa Margarita. Bodega and Maurelle visited them the year after. In 1786 La Perouse coasted the shores of the islands, and the following year Capt. Dixon spent more than a month around them, and the islands are named from his vessel, the Queen Charlotte. After that time scores of vessels from England and New England resorted to the coast, principally to trade for furs, in which business the earlier voyagers reaped golden harvest.

The advent of whites was, as usual, disastrous to the natives. They were soon stripped of their valuable furs, and, through smallpox and general immorality, they have been reduced in the last 60 years to one-tenth of then former strength. A station of the Hudson Bay Company was long established at Messet, but is now longer remunerative. At Skidegate there are works for the extraction of dogfish oil, which furnish employment to the people during much of the year; but in summer all the Indians from this place and Masset go to the mainland to work in salmon canneries. The Masset people also make many canoes of immense cedars to sell to other a coast tribes. The Kaigani still occupy 3 towns, but the population of 2 of them, Kasaan and Klinkwan, is inconsiderable. Neighboring salmon canneries give them work all summer.