The Gitzaxłaał are one of the 14 tribes of the

Tsimshian The Tsimshian (; tsi, Ts’msyan or Tsm'syen) are an Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast. Their communities are mostly in coastal British Columbia in Terrace, British Columbia, Terr ...

nation in

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...

, Canada, and one of the nine of those tribes making up the "Nine Tribes" of the lower

Skeena River The Skeena River is the second-longest river entirely within British Columbia, Canada (after the Fraser River). Since ancient times, the Skeena has been an important transportation artery, particularly for the Tsimshian and the Gitxsan—whose n ...

resident at

Lax Kw'alaams Los Angeles International Airport , commonly referred to as LAX (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary international airport serving Los Angeles, California and its surrounding metropolitan area. LAX is located in the W ...

(a.k.a. Port Simpson), B.C. The name ''Gitzaxłaał'' means literally "people of (an unidentified variety of shrub)." Their traditional territory includes the watershed of the

Ecstall River The Ecstall River is a tributary of the Skeena River in the province of British Columbia, Canada. It originates in the Kitimat Ranges, and flows about to the lower tidal reach of the Skeena River at Port Essington, about southeast of Prince Ru ...

, a tributary of the Skeena River, including the now abandoned town,

Port Essington Port Essington is an inlet and historic site located on the Cobourg Peninsula in the Garig Gunak Barlu National Park in Australia's Northern Territory. It was the site of an early attempt at British settlement, but now exists only as a remote ...

, B.C. They also own areas on Dundas Island. Since 1834, they have been based at Lax Kw'alaams, when a

Hudson's Bay Company The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC; french: Compagnie de la Baie d'Hudson) is a Canadian retail business group. A fur trading business for much of its existence, HBC now owns and operates retail stores in Canada. The company's namesake business div ...

fort was established there. The chieftainship of the Gitzaxłaał is associated with the hereditary name-title Niisho'ot. The anthropologist

Viola Garfield Viola E. Garfield (December 5, 1899 – November 25, 1983) was an American Anthropology, anthropologist best known for her work on the social organization and plastic arts of the Tsimshian nation in British Columbia and Alaska. Early life Viola E ...

wrote in 1938 that Niisho'ot at that point was an elderly man who had succeeded his mother's brother Henry Nelson to the title, in accordance with rules of matrilineal succession. However, he was one of only three members of his house-group (matrilineal family) in Lax Kw'alaams and so had "adopted his daughter's son as his nephew" to ensure his succession. In 1935

William Beynon William Beynon (1888–1958) was a Canadian hereditary chief of the Tsimshian Nation and an oral historian; he served as ethnographer, translator, and linguistic consultant to many anthropologists who studied his people. Early life and education ...

recorded that Gitzaxłaał people in Lax Kw'alaams included only 4 members, all of them members of the

Ganhada The Ganhada (variously spelled, but often as G̱anhada) is the name for the Raven "clan" (phratry) in the language of the Tsimshian nation of British Columbia, Canada, and southeast Alaska. It is considered analogous or identical to the G̱anada ( ...

(Raven clan).

Bibliography

*Garfield, Viola E. (1939) "Tsimshian Clan and Society." ''University of Washington Publications in Anthropology,'' vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 167–340. *Marsden, Susan (2002) "Adawx, Spanaxnox, and the Geopolitics of the Tsimshian." ''B.C. Studies,'' vol. 135, pp. 101–135. {{DEFAULTSORT:Gitzaxlaal Tsimshian