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Massett, the principal and probably oldest village of the Hyda Nation, is pleasantly situated on the north shore of Graham Island, at the entrance to Massett Inlet, Fifty houses, great and small, built of cedar logs and planks, with a forest of carved poles in front, extend along the fine beach.
Smithe, Chief Commissioner of Lands and Works of the Province of British Columbia: SIR On the 5th of May, having secured the services of two Hyda Indians, one a native of Ninstints, the extreme southern village of the Hyda nation, familiar with the shores of the southern portion of Moresby, and also of Provost Island, and the other of Gold Harbor, well acquainted with the northwestern coast of Moresby Island, I proceeded from Skidegate by canoe southward, circumnavigating the islands above mentioned, and also crossing them from shore to shore at two different points, and penetrating inland sufficiently far in several other places to determine the general character of the section of country under examination.
Smallpox and the corruption of their women have been the principal causes of their destruction. The Hyda women, being good looking compared with those of the other coast tribes, have for twenty years been the special prey of the coarse libertines of a large floating population, until virtue is almost unknown among them.
There is only one more Hyda village to the southward, Ninstints, with 30 inhabitants, 20 houses, 25 carved poles, and 20 burial columns, occupying a rock-bound islet lying off the south-west coast of Moresby Island, near the western entrance to Houston Stewart Channel. There are five other villages on the west coast of the islands, all abandoned, and most of them in ruins.
They are inhabited exclusively by the Hyda Indians, now numbering about 800 souls, who live in the villages of Massett and Skidegate, on Graham Island; Gold Harbor, on Maud Island, in Skidegate Inlet; Cumshewa, on Moresby Island; Skedance, on Lyell Island: Tanoo, or Laskeek, on Tanoo Island, and at Ninstints, on a little island opposite the west coast entrance to Houston Stewart Channel.
Bear, wild geese, duck, and grouse also contribute to their food supply, although the present generation of Hydas are not very successful hunters, seldom penetrating far inland in search of game. Hyda Villages.
I was highly pleased with the first glimpses of Hyda land, its pleasant sloping shores and long stretches of splendid beaches being in marked contrast to the forbidding, rock-bound coast which had extended for hundreds of miles along our northward course.
Massett is the principal village of the Hyda nation, now containing a population of about three hundred and fifty Indians, 40 occupied houses, 50 carved poles, and the ruins of many ancient lodges. The Hudson Bay Company have had a Trading Post here since 1855, Mr. Alexander McKenzie having been their agent for the last six years.
Desiring to possess some small article of Hyda manufacture, I gave a young Indian jeweler a two-and-a-half dollar gold piece at 9 o'clock in the morning with instructions to make from it an eagle. Before 1 o'clock the same day he brought me the bird so well made that not many jewelers could improve upon it. Food Supplies.
Soon after my arrival at Skidegate, a Hyda young man called at my cabin to see if I would not take a rather comely Indian girl, about twenty years of age, who accompanied him, to live with me, and neither seemed in the slightest degree embarrassed, either in making the proposition or when it was declined.
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