The Gitzaxłaał are one of the 14 tribes of the

Tsimshian The Tsimshian (; ) are an Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. Their communities are mostly in coastal British Columbia in Terrace, British Columbia, Terrace and ...

nation in

British Columbia British Columbia is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Situated in the Pacific Northwest between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that ...

, 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 na ...

resident at

Lax Kw'alaams A lax is a salmon. LAX as an acronym most commonly refers to Los Angeles International Airport in Southern California, United States. LAX or Lax may also refer to: Places Within Los Angeles * Union Station (Los Angeles), Los Angeles' main tr ...

(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 Rupe ...

, 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 remot ...

, 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), originally the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trading Into Hudson’s Bay, is a Canadian holding company of department stores, and the oldest corporation in North America. It was the owner of the ...

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 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 Edmundson was ...

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), also known as Gusgai'in or Gusgain, was a Canadian hereditary chief of the Tsimshian Nation and an oral historian. He served as an ethnographer, translator, and linguistic consultant to many anthropologists who s ...

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