The Kwaktiutl village of Xumtaspi-Nawittl

The Kwaktiutl village of Xumtaspi-Nawittl

British Columbia
Nahwitti
Jacobsen
Kwaktiutl
19th century

The source is a photograph of the village in Vancouver Island called Xwamdasbe, translated as ‘Place where there is otter’. The photograph includes fishery housing with the house on the right featuring three painted family crests. There are also totem poles and a painting of a figure crouching over a doorway. Advertisements designed to attract Anglo-American seamen are also present emphasising the friendliness towards the white man. The source is significant because it was an area of tension in Native/European colonial relations. Three decades earlier in 1850 the British Royal Navy shelled the Nahwitti that were retreating as the Brits destroyed and burned their villages. This was the first use of colonial military force against an aboriginal community on Vancouver Island.

Source consulted:
Peter Nabokov, Robert Easton, Native American Architecture, (Oxford, 1990)

E. Dossetter

First Nations: Land Rights and Environmentalism in British Columbia

http://www.firstnations.de/fisheries/kwakwakawakw-kwakiutl.htm

1881

David Cook

American Museum of Natural History

N/A

Visual - photograph

19th century British Columbia