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Haida
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The Haida are an indigenous nation of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. The Haida territories comprise the archipelago of the Queen Charlotte Islands, known in the Haida language as Haida Gwaii ("land of the Haida"), and the southern half of Prince of Wales Island in the southernmost Alaska Panhandle, which is the home of a subgroup called the Kaigani Haida. Haida territories lie in both Canada and the United States, as do those of the Tlingit, Tsimshian, and Coast Salish.
The term "Haida Nation" can and does refer to both the people and their government on Canadian territory, the Council of the Haida Nation; the government for those in Alaska is the Central Council Tlingit Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska.
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The Haida are an indigenous nation of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. The Haida territories comprise the archipelago of the Queen Charlotte Islands, known in the Haida language as Haida Gwaii ("land of the Haida"), and the southern half of Prince of Wales Island in the southernmost Alaska Panhandle, which is the home of a subgroup called the Kaigani Haida. Haida territories lie in both Canada and the United States, as do those of the Tlingit, Tsimshian, and Coast Salish.
The term "Haida Nation" can and does refer to both the people and their government on Canadian territory, the Council of the Haida Nation; the government for those in Alaska is the Central Council Tlingit Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska. Their ancestral language is the Haida language, which has been classified as a Na-Dene language, but today is usually considered to be a language isolate. In addition to those Haida residing in the Queen Charlottes and Prince of Wales Island, there are also many Haidas in various urban areas in the western United States and Canada.
Haida society continues to be very engaged in the production of a robust and highly stylized art form. While frequently expressed in large wooden carvings (totem poles) or ornate jewellery, it is also moving quickly into the work of populist expression such as Haida manga. Haida art is a leading component of Northwest Coast art.
History
Haidas were respected along the coast as traders and feared as warriors and slavers. Their great skills of seamanship, their superior craft and their relative protection from retaliation in their island fortress added to their aggressive posture towards neighboring tribes. War was always subject to rules of engagement, and lineage relationships and ceremonies frequently described the course of battle. Slaves were the common result of war and this labor force not only provided additional economic capacity, it also allowed for the successful captor to collect substantial intellectual property in the way of names. In addition to their military dominance, the Haida created notions of wealth, such as the first totem poles on the coast and the first bent boxes embellished with designs describing their concept of "The One Under the Sea".
Diamond Jenness, an early anthropologist at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, described the Haida as the "Indian Vikings of the North West Coast".
- "Those were stirring times, about a century ago, when the big Haida war canoes, each hollowed out of a single cedar tree and manned by fifty or sixty warriors, traded and raided up and down the coast from Sitka in the north to the delta of the Fraser River in the south. Each usually carried a shaman or medicine man to catch and destroy the souls of enemies before an impending battle; and the women who sometimes accompanied the warriors fought as savagely as their husbands."
The Haidas' ability to travel was dependent upon a supply of Western Red cedar trees that were carved and steamed into their famous Pacific Northwest canoes. Carved from a single tree, a vessel could sleep 15 adults head to toe, and was propelled by up to 60 paddlers (who often included women). When engaged in sea battles, Haidas wore armor made out of red cedar and mammal hide. They protected themselves with shields and stout helmets; their weapons included bows and arrows, stone maces, and spear-throwers. They tied cedar bark ropes to heavy stone rings that were hurled to smash enemy canoes and that could quickly be retrieved for subsequent throws. A stone weighing 18 to 23 kg (40 to 50 pounds) could shatter the side of a dugout canoe and cause it to founder. Most tribes avoided sea battles with the Haida and tried to lure them ashore for a more equitable fight. The Tsimshian developed a signal fire system to alert their villages on the Skeena River as soon as Haida vessels entered inshore waters.
The incidence of warfare was undoubtedly accelerated in the half century from 1780 to 1830, when the Haida had no effective enemies except the many European and American traders on their shores who would rather trade than fight. During this period, the Haida successfully captured more than half a dozen ships. One was the Eleanora, taken by Nangitlagadaa (aka "chiefs") of the village of Skungwai (or Ninstints) in retaliation for the maltreatment Chief Koyah had received from its captain. An even more spectacular event was the capture of the Susan Sturgis by Chief Weah (Matthews) of Masset, and the somewhat suspect rescue of its crew by Albert Edward Edenshaw. In such conflicts, the Haida quickly learned the newcomers' fighting tactics, which they used to good effect in subsequent battles, as Jacob Brink notes:
- "As early as 1795, a British trading ship fired its cannons at a village in the central part of the archipelago because some of the crew had been killed by the inhabitants, and the survivors had to put hastily to sea when the Indians fired back at them. They found out later that the Indians had used a cannon and ammunition confiscated from an American Schooner a few years earlier."
Swivel guns were added to many Haida war canoes, although initially the recoil on discharge caused the hulls of many craft to split.
Fortified sites were part of the defensive strategy of all Northwest Coast groups for at least 2,000 years. Captain James Cook was so impressed with one Haida fort off the west coast of Graham Island that he called it Hippah Island after the Maori forts he had seen in New Zealand. Military defences at Haida forts included stout palisades, rolling top-log defences, heavy trapdoors and fighting platforms supplied with stores of large boulders to hurl at invaders.
In 1856, an expedition in search of a route across Vancouver Island was at the mouth of the Qualicum River when they observed a large fleet of Haida canoes approaching and hid in the forest. They observed these attackers holding human heads. When they came to the mouth of the river, they came upon the charred remains of the village of the Qualicum people and the mutilated bodies of its inhabitants, with only one survivor, an elderly woman, hiding terrified inside a tree stump. Also in 1856, the USS Massachusetts was sent from Seattle to Port Gamble, Washington Territory on Puget Sound, where indigenous raiding parties made up of Haida from territory claimed by the British and Tongass (Cape Fox tribe Tlingit) from territory claimed by the Russians had been raiding and enslaving the Coast Salish people there. When the Haida and Tongass warriors refused to acknowledge American jurisdiction and to hand over those among them who had attacked the Puget Sound Native American communities, a battle ensued in which 26 natives and one soldier were killed. In the aftermath of this, Colonel Isaac Ebey, a US military officer and the first settler on Whidbey Island, was shot and beheaded on 11 August 1857 by a small Haida fleet, in retaliation for the killing of a respected Haida citizen during similar raids the year before. British authorities demurred to pursue or confront any northern indigenous nations as they passed northward through waters the British nevertheless claimed authority over and Ebey's killers were never caught.
Villages
Historical Haida villages were:
* Masset The name Masset, received from pre British contact between Haidas and the Spanish actually includes three separate and adjoining communities,
Calendar
The Haida's calendar:
- April/May- Gansgee 7laa kongaas
- May/Early June- Wa.aay gwaalgee
- June/July- Kong koaas
- July/August- Sgaana gyaas
- August/September- K'ijaas
- September/October- K'alayaa Kongaas
- October/November- K'eed adii
- November/December- Jid Kongaas
- December/January- Kong gyaangaas
- January/February- Hlgiduum kongaas
- February/March- Taan kongaas
- March- Xiid gayaas
- April- Wiid gyaas
Notable Haidas
- Florence Davidson, artist and memoirist
- Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, artist
- Reg Davidson, artist
- Robert Davidson, artist
- Freda Diesing, artist
- Charles Edenshaw, artist
- Gerry Marks, artist
- Bill Reid, artist
- Jay Simeon, artist
- Skaay, mythteller
- Guujaaw, aka Gary Edenshaw, artist and politician, current President of the Council of the Haida Nation
- Richard H. Carle Sr., Chief Y'eil Iwaans (Big Raven)
Anthropologists and scholars
Below if a brief list of anthropologists and scholars who have done research on the Haida.
- Emily Carr deserves mention as an early chronicler of the heraldic poles and long houses through her paintings
See also
Further reading
- Blackman, Margaret B. (1982; rev. ed., 1992) During My Time: Florence Edenshaw Davidson, a Haida Woman. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
- Boelscher, Marianne (1988) The Curtain Within: Haida Social and Mythical Discourse. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.
- Bringhurst, Robert (2000) A Story as Sharp as a Knife: The Classical Haida Mythtellers and Their World. Douglas & McIntyre.
- Geduhn, Thomas (1993) "Eigene und fremde Verhaltensmuster in der Territorialgeschichte der Haida." (Mundus Reihe Ethnologie, Band 71.) Bonn: Holos Verlag.
- Harris, Christie (1966) Raven's Cry. New York: Atheneum.
- Huteson, Pamela (2007) "Transformation Masks" Surrey, B.C. Canada: Hancock House Publishers LTD. ISBN- 13 978-0-88839-635-8 and ISBN- 10 0-88839-635-X
- Snyder, Gary (1979) He Who Hunted Birds in His Father's Village. San Francisco: Grey Fox Press.
- Stearns, Mary Lee (1981) Haida Culture in Custody: The Masset Band. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
- , Rev. Charles Harrison, publ. Church Missionary Society/Seeley, Jackson & Halliday, London, England, 1884.
- Yahgulanaas, Michael Nicoll (2008) "Flight of the Hummingbird" Vancouver; Greystone Books.
External links
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