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Updated: May 17, 2025
Nin-Ging-Wash, the ranking chief of Skidegate, is about 65 years old, thick-set, broad-faced, with a grave expression, and quiet reserved manner. He was introduced to me as the richest Indian on the island, as having the best houses, finest canoes and youngest wife.
I have measured several spruce trees, and also red cedars from thirty to thirty-three feet in circumference, the finest specimens having been found on Skidegate and Massett Inlets. With the exception of those localities, I have seen no place upon the islands, where the available quantity of these woods is sufficient to warrant the erection of mills for their manufacture for exportation.
Judge James G. Swan, who, under the direction of the U. S. Government, visited the islands in 1883, and voyaged in a canoe from Massett to Skidegate, gave in a lecture before the Provincial Legislature of British Columbia, the first public confirmation of the entrances to the inlets and harbors on the west coast of Graham Island, approximately, as reported by Captain Marchand.
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.
It occupied an elevated situation about a mile from the sea shore, and consisted of an excavation about 100 feet square, surrounded by an embankment of earth and stones, which could hardly have been made except by human hands. Near the close of the thirteenth day we reached the Indian village of Skidegate, comprising thirty houses and 100 people.
There are no harbors, except for small boats, between Massett and Skidegate Inlets by the east coast. Islands.
The small diameter of the islands south of Skidegate Channel leaves but little room at any point for an interior beyond the range of the human eye, when standing upon the summits of the highest mountains, after having traversed their shores.
We found Chief Skidegate and several of his people securing their spring supply by means of traps, from a creek flowing into Copper Bay, and Chief Skedance en route for the same purpose to a small stream emptying into Cumshewa Inlet from Louise Island. The rivers, which I followed to their source, rise in lakes and small swampy mountain basins.
Immense schools of dog-fish feed on the shoals off the north and eastern shores of the islands, herring of good size and excellent quality visit Skidegate and other inlets in such great quantities that their spawn forms an important article of diet with the natives. Flat-fish, rock-cod, salmon and brook-trout, clams and mussels are plentiful. Black Cod.
There is a noticeable difference in favor of the deportment of those Hydas of Massett and Skidegate who have come under the influence of missionary training. Domestic Relations. The Hydas generally enter the marriage state in early youth, the females frequently between the ages of fourteen and sixteen.
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