thumb|Tsimshian [[Nisga'a stone mask, made around 1870 - greenish hard stone (Gabbro), pigment; from the Alphonse Pinart collection, Musée du quai Branly in Paris. This stone mask has a twin, without apertures for eyes, residing in the Canadian Museum of History. Separated over one hundred years, the two masks were reunited 1975, when the Paris mask travelled to Canada to appear in the exhibition "Images Stone: B.C." It was then that the relationship between the two masks, expressions of the same face, was re-discovered.]]

The Tsimshian (; ) are an Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. Their communities are mostly in coastal British Columbia in Terrace and Prince Rupert, and Metlakatla, Alaska on Annette Island, the only reservation in Alaska.

The Tsimshian estimate there are 45,000 Tsimshian people and approximately 10,000 members are federally registered in eight First Nations communities: Kitselas, Kitsumkalum, Gitxaala, Gitga'at, Kitasoo, Lax Kw'Alaams, and Metlakatla. The latter two communities resulted in the colonial intersections of early settlers and consist of Tsimshian people belonging to the 'nine tribes.' The Tsimshian are one of the largest First Nations peoples in northwest British Columbia. Some Tsimshian migrated to the Annette Islands in Alaska, and today approximately 1,450 Alaska Tsimshian people are enrolled in the federally recognized Metlakatla Indian Community, sometimes also called the Annette Island Reserve. The Tsimshian honor the traditional Tlingit name of Taquan for this recent location.

Tsimshian society is matrilineal kinship-based, which means identity, clans and property pass through the maternal line. Their moiety-based societal structure is further divided into sub clans for certain lineages. The Tsimshian language has some 27 different terms for 'chief' likely because it is a stratified and ranked society.

Early Euro-Canadian anthropologists and linguists had classified the Gitxsan and Nisgaʼa as Tsimshian, because of apparent linguistic affinities. The three were all referred to as "Coast Tsimshian", even though some communities were not coastal. These three groups, however, are separate nations.

History

Tsimshian translates to "Inside the Skeena River" At one time the Tsimshian lived on the upper reaches of the Skeena River near present-day Hazelton, British Columbia.

According to southern Tsimshian oral history, after a series of disasters befell the people, a chief led a migration away from the cursed land to the coast, where they founded Kitkatla Village, the first of three Southern Tsimshian villages. Kitkatla is still considered to be the most conservative of the Tsimshian villages. although Russian fur traders may have visited northern groups earlier. The confluence of the Skeena and Bulkley Rivers was formerly the site of the Tsimshian village of Kitanmaks and became a new European settlement of Skeena Forks (today known as Hazelton). When the Hudson's Bay Company moved their fort to modern-day Lax Kwʼalaams in 1834, nine Tsimshian tribal chiefs moved to the surrounding area for trade advantage. Many of the Tsimshian peoples in Canada still live in these regions.

Throughout the second half of the 19th century, epidemics of infectious disease contracted from Europeans ravaged their communities, as the First Nations had no acquired immunity to these diseases. The 1862 Pacific Northwest smallpox epidemic killed many of the Tsimshian people. Altogether, at least one in four Tsimshian died in a series of, at minimum, three large-scale outbreaks.

In 1835, the total population of the Tsimshian peoples was estimated at 8,500. The planning and delivery of feast events requires very specific protocols, including those required for the guests. It is untoward to hold out one's hand while payments (also known as 'gifts' by external observers) are being distributed.

The Tsimshian have maintained their fishing and hunting lifestyle (although constrained by colonialism and declining fish and animal population abundances), art and culture, and are working to revitalize the common use of their language. Artists have excelled in traditional mediums and contemporary forms with pieces spread around the world. These artisans practice the tradition of story telling with their chosen mediums.

Ethnobotany

Like other coastal peoples, the Tsimshian fashioned most of their goods out of western red cedar, especially its bark. It could be fashioned into tools, clothing, roofing, armour, building materials, and canoe skins. They used cedar in their Chilkat weaving, which they are credited with inventing. They use the berries of Vaccinium Vitis-idaea ssp. minus as food.

Tribes

The Tsimshian people of British Columbia encompass fifteen tribes:

  • Kitasoo – () together with the Xai'xais, a Heiltsuk group from Kynoch Inlet, they are part of the Kitasoo/Xaixais First Nation at Klemtu (Klemdulxk / Xłmduulxk), British Columbia.
  • Gitga'at – (), as Gitga'at First Nation at Hartley Bay (Txałgiu / Txałgiiw), British Columbia.
  • Gitxaala – ( or ), as Gitxaala Nation they live in the village of Kitkatla (La̱x Klan), British Columbia.
  • Kitsumkalum – () as Kitsumkalum First Nation, in Terrace, British Columbia.
  • Kitselas – () as Kitselas First Nation near Terrace, British Columbia.

Some of the Chiefs of these nine tribes happened to be located at Fort Simpson (later Lax Kw'alaams, British Columbia) when the Indian Agent assigned reserve communities

  • Giluts'aaw
  • Ginadoiks
  • Ginaxangiik
  • Gispaxlo'ots
  • Gitando
  • Gitlaan
  • Gits'iis
  • Gitwilgyoots
  • Gitzaxłaał

Other Chiefs were located at the mission created community of Metlakatla, with some subsequently migrating to Metlakatla, Alaska, newest tribe, with lineages from all Tsimshian tribes.

Clans

The Tsimshian clans are the

  • Gispwudwada (Killer Whale Clan)
  • Ganhada (Raven Clan)
  • Laxgibuu (Wolf Clan)
  • Laxsgiik (Eagle Clan)

Treaty process

The Tsimshian wanted to preserve their villages and fishing sites on the Skeena River and Nass River as early as 1879. They were not able to begin negotiating a treaty with the Canadian government until July 1983. A decade later, fourteen tribes united to negotiate under the collective name of the Tsimshian Tribal Council. A framework agreement was signed in 1997. Due to litigation by one community for commercial fisheries rights, the federal government forced a confidentiality clause against other communities and caused dissolution of the main treaty group and subsequently the TTC. A subset of the Tsimshian First Nations continues to negotiate with the BC Treaty Commission to reach an Agreement-in-Principle that has alienated most members.

Language

The Tsimshian speak a language, called Sm'algyax, which translates as "real or true tongue". The Tsimshian also speak a language variety similar to Gitxsan and Nisga’a (two inland Tsimshianic languages), but differentiated from the regional Tsimshian variations. <!-- the preceding statement is unclear --> In 2016, only 160 people in Canada were Tsimshian speakers.

Some linguists <!-- who? -->classify Tsimshian languages as a member of the theoretical Penutian language group.<!-- Degree of acceptance or controversy? -->

Notable Tsimshian people

thumb|[[Benjamin Haldane, 1907, Tsimshian photographer and musician]]

  • Frederick Alexcee, artist, culture bearer
  • Morgan Asoyuf, artist, culture bearer
  • William Beynon, Gitlaan and ethnographer
  • David A. Boxley, Laxsgiik, carver and culture bearer. First to host a potlatch and raise a totem pole in modern times in Metlakatla, Alaska
  • Arthur Wellington Clah, from the House of Tamks of the Gispaxlo'ots. Translator at Fort Simpson, the first to teach Father Duncan the Sm`algyax language, diarist
  • Marcia Crosby, art historian
  • Alfred Dudoward, hereditary chief of the Gitando, and leader of the Port Simpson Methodist Movement. co-founder of the Native Brotherhood
  • Phil Gray, artist
  • Benjamin Haldane, pioneering photographer from Metlakatla village
  • Calvin Helin – lawyer, author, entrepreneur
  • William Jeffrey, Gitwilgyoats, hereditary chief, activist, carver
  • Rudy Kelly, author and journalist
  • Paul Legaic, hereditary chief of the Gispaxlo'ots and trader.
  • Charles Menzies, Gitxaała, House of Ts'ibasaa, author and anthropologist.
  • Odille Morison, translator and art collector
  • William Henry Pierce, missionary and memoirist
  • Bilham 'neex Loa Ryan, Gitlan, House of Xpe Hanaax, Ganhada, artist and traditional cedar weaver
  • Peter Simpson, Native American rights activist
  • Henry W. Tate, Gispakloats, oral historian, tribal headman
  • Roy Henry Vickers, artist
  • Walter Wright; hereditary chief of the Gits'ilaasü (Kitselas) and oral historian

Anthropologists and other scholars who have worked with the Tsimshian

  • Marius Barbeau
  • William Beynon
  • Franz Boas
  • Philip Drucker
  • Wilson Duff
  • Viola Garfield
  • René Girard
  • Marjorie Halpin
  • Jay Miller

Missionaries who proselytized the Tsimshian

  • William Henry Collison
  • Thomas Crosby, Methodist
  • William Duncan Anglican/independent
  • Edward Marsden, Presbyterian
  • Bishop William Ridley Anglican
  • Robert Tomlinson, Anglican

See also

  • Tsimshian mythology
  • Gitksan language
  • Nisga'a language
  • Coast Tsimshian

Notes

Citations

Bibliography

  • Barbeau, Marius (1950) Totem Poles. 2 vols. (Anthropology Series 30, National Museum of Canada Bulletin 119.) Ottawa: National Museum of Canada.
  • Boas, Franz, "Tsimshian Mythology", in Thirty-First Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1909–1910, pp.&nbsp;29–1037. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1916.
  • Garfield, Viola, "Tsimshian Clan and Society", University of Washington Publications in Anthropology, vol. 7, no. 3 (1939), pp.&nbsp;167–340.
  • Garfield, Viola E., and Paul S. Wingert, The Tsimshian Indians and Their Arts, Seattle: Washington, University of Washington Press, 1951, 1966.
  • Halpin, Marjorie M., and Margaret Seguin, "Tsimshian Peoples: Southern Tsimshian, Coast Tsimshian, Nishga, and Gitksan", In: Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 7: Northwest Coast, edited by Wayne Suttles. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1990, pp.&nbsp;267–284.
  • McDonald, James A. (2003) People of the Robin: The Tsimshian of Kitsumkalum, CCI Press.
  • Miller, Jay, Tsimshian Culture: A Light through the Ages, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.
  • Miller, Jay, and Carol Eastman, eds., The Tsimshian and Their Neighbors of the North Pacific Coast, Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1984.
  • Neylan, Susan, The Heavens Are Changing: Nineteenth-Century Protestant Missions and Tsimshian Christianity, Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003.
  • Roth, Christopher. 2008. Becoming Tsimshian: The Social Life of Names. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
  • Seguin, Margaret, Interpretive Contexts for Traditional and Current Coast Tsimshian Feasts. Ottawa, ON: National Museums of Canada, 1985.
  • Seguin, Marget, ed., The Tsimshian: Images of the Past, Views for the Present. Vancouver, BC: UBC Press, 1984.
  • The Canadian Museum of Civilization – Tsimshian Prehistory
  • Map of Northwest Coast First Nations (including Tsimshian)
  • Tsimshian Text List of Tsimshian Text by Boaz, F.
  • Alaskan Tlingit and Tsimshian Essay by Jay Miller – From the University of Washington Library