1 The following text is the version submitted for publication reproduced here as a convenient means for communicating research results. There may or may not be minor editorial changes in the actual published version. Please refer to the original publication for accurate pagination and for quotation purposes.
Images of the Nineteenth-Century Economy of the Tsimshian James A. McDonald
INTRODUCTION Largely basing their opinions upon the earliest ethnographic reports, anthropologists tend to view the nineteenth-century Tsimshian as having comprised a traditional hunting and gathering economy (cf. Usher 1974: 29ff, who relies largely upon this anthropological viewpoint). In reviewing some historical accounts, biographies, and archival works, a different image develops that shows Tsimshian intimately connected, from the earliest contact period, with the commercial and industrial development of the northwest region of British Columbia, both as traders and as labourers. At least one work has incorporated such information into the ethnographic account of British Columbia (Knight 1978). This encouraged me to begin preliminary research on official government reports, to secure additional data specifically on the Tsimshian. What follows is a brief survey of the results to date. I hope the evidence presented here will help correct the commonly held view that Indians were not part of the modern economic development, which began in the nineteenth century, and modify the reconstruction of traditional Tsimshian society as having been shunted off from the main track into reserves that had no part in that process. On the contrary, Indians were often critical to the success of various industries.
THE ETHNOGRAPHY The principal ethnographers to consult for a description of the nineteenth-century economy are Franz Boas (1889, 1916) and Viola Garfield (1939, 1966). Other early works are far too brief, although they do provide important points for study (for example, Dorsey 1897, 1898). When later works discuss economic matters, they do not depart from the general anthropological picture depicted in the Boas-Garfield writings. Boas visited the Skeena in 1888 as a consultant hired to report on the contemporary conditions of the Indians, in order to avoid potential hostilities during economic development.
2 The results of this reconnaissance for the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) and the dominion government were recorded in 1889 and expanded upon elsewhere, especially in his contributions to Tsimshian Mythology (1916). Overall, I would characterize his descriptions of the Tsimshian social economy as class-divided, tribal society engaged in fishing (by means of hooks, weirs, traps, and harpoons), hunting, gathering of food, and the traditional practice of a variety of other productive activities. He also mentions the division of labour by sex, class, and region. The latter involved the Tsimshian in extensive trade relationships with each other and non-Tsimshian-speaking peoples. In reading Boas, one cannot but visualize a traditional Northwest Coast society. For his BAAS supervisor, the anthropologist Horatio Hale, the conclusion was also clear: The Province of British Columbia offers probably the best field of ethnological research now to be found in North America. This distinction is...of much importance...the tribes of the Province have thus suffered less displacement and change from foreign influences than those of any other region. They still for the most part occupy their original seats, and they retain to a large extent their primitive customs and beliefs (Boas 1889: 797, emphasis added). Viola Garfield’s description of the Tsimshian economy and its organization does not differ from Boas’s statements, although she does provide more detailed descriptions of several aspects of the social economy, such as the potlatch, the social organization of the economy, and the seasonal movement on the land. She also documents changes in economic organization and ownership that occurred in the 1930s, and mentions cannery work, the Department of Indian Affairs (D.I.A.), the Indian laws, Christian institutions — and brass bands.
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY ECONOMY For brevity, I will not go further into the ethnography, but instead immediately utilize the non-anthropological works to provide a survey of what was a much richer economic pattern than that recorded by the ethnologists. The general synopsis of my findings is that, aside from the “traditional” activities that are described ethnographically, the Tsimshian were also significantly involved in industrial production, manufactures, mercantile enterprises, and wage labour. These sectors of their developing economy were also important for understanding the dynamics of their way of life in the nineteenth century and the changes they were experiencing. Contact with the European Market During the first half of the century, the Tsimshian economy was largely based on fishing, hunting, and production for both domestic use and trade. With the arrival of the European trading ships after Captain Cook’s voyage in 1778 and the establishment of Fort Simpson in 1832, legaic and other Tsimshian chiefs quickly expanded their trading privileges to include the European
3 market (Garfield 1939: 183). Through such monopolies, they could control a large amount of the trade, especially that of the land-based Hudson’s Bay Company and, to some degree, could regulate the prices of furs (Fisher 1977: 30). At the same time, disease, notably smallpox, decimated the Indian population. The fur traders found this detrimental to the trade but also gained an advantage as “troublesome” chiefs died or the military strength of hostile groups was reduced. The Baymen themselves had access to innoculations, but only mention distributing the medicine to some chiefs, who happened to be “friendly” (for example, Legaic) as defined by the terms of the fur trade (Fort Simpson Journal, 1836: H.B.C.A., P.A.M.B. 201/a/3 fo. 772). As the chiefs’ monopolies were competitively expanded (cf. Robinson 1978), more and more Indian groups came to be incorporated into the network. The Gitksan, for instance were already traditing at inland markets with the Coastal Tsimshian for European commodities from American sailing ships when the Hudson’s Bay Company’s trader/explorers reached them, arriving from the east in 1826. From that first contact, the Baymen could not afford to match the prices offered by the Tsimshians. The abilities of Trader Brown, who was charged with extending the trade in the Babine Lake area, were under question as a result of the unexpected and serious competition. The actual anthropological data on this time are incomplete. It is difficult to trace, for example, what economic reorganization occurred, or how labour power was reallocated as a result of the fur trade, but the benefits of a great social productivity, along with the new wealth that was realized in the form of luxury goods and cheaper commodities, such as western cloths, rice, molasses, gunpowder, and other products, flowed primarily to the chiefs and through them to the rest of the Tsimshian. Others offer suggestions of important organizational modifications occurring within Tsimshian society during this time. Marius Barbeau (1937) felt that the trade led to a crystallization of the social organization and to the development of extensive hunting territories with inviolate frontiers. (This latter point may actually have more to do with the privatization of territories for the exclusive use of chiefs, rather than the extension of the Tsimshian frontiers to incorporate more land.) Robin Fisher (1977: 46-47) argues that five changes to social organization are correlated with the fur trade: (1) the creation of new mercantile leaders such as Legaic, (2) the concentration of wealth in their hands, (3) the consolidation of the power of leaders, (4) the centralization of nine tribes around Port Simpson, and (5) the use of the European trade as a factor in inter-tribal politics. Further support comes from Michael Robinson (1978), who even argues that a new, more complex political organization (“proto-statedom”) was being created by the chiefs. Thus, while it may be true that the trader made no attempt “to change any basic structures or beliefs of the Indian” (Usher 1974: 36), it is debatable to say that the trade “made no extensive impact upon Indian society” other than an intensification of cultural practices, as Usher goes on to suggest (ibid.). Colonial Extensions
4 The further growth of the colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia in the second half of the nineteenth century led to important changes which, while a part of the economic development of the region, also contributed to the erosion of Tsimshian economic and political dominance within their own territories. The first change came as a result of the clash of Anglo-Russian commercial rivalries in the Crimean War. To defend their North American interests from a possible attack from the Pacific or Alaska, the British established a naval base at Esquimalt and a volunteer militia at Victoria (Lower 1975: 66). After the war, the base was retained, expanded, and, on occasion, deployed against the native populations. From my own enquiries in archives and other historical sources, I found reference to six policing actions by the navy and militia from Esquimalt, seven more involving illegal trading in their territory, and frequent “tours” by warships, especially after the Department of Indian Affairs bought its own gunboat, the Rocket. These actions occurred between 1859 to 1888, by which time the government had established a resident bureaucracy and the Indian fishermen were about to become involved in organizing industrial unions. (See Fisher 1977, Large 1957; the D.I.A. reports for 1875, 1879, 1881, 1883, 1886, 1888, and the Hudson’s Bay Company Annual Journals for 1862 through 1866. See also p. 000 for specific incidents.) The Tsimshian chiefs were no longer the dominant power in their own territories. It must be noted, though, that the loss of this position was less the result of the British military than it was a consequence of the growing commercial nexus that was enmeshing the Tsimshian in relationships that are comparable to those of modern neo-colonialism in Africa. The gunboat diplomacy of the British and, later, Canadian governments did not cast this net; they only held it. The second change was the arrival of the first evangelical missionary, William Duncan, in 1857. With him began an era of directed cultural change (Usher 1974: 30) in which model communities were established and European ideologies of religion, morals, race, and work were propagated on a new and more earnest scale. Although the effects of the missionaries were uneven, with some communities requesting ministers (for example, Port Simpson; see Knight 1978: 60) and others remaining true to the old beliefs (for example, Kitkatla), the effects of the missionaries’ new social and economic orders undermined the unity of Tsimshian production and, overall, must have been destabilizing to the Tsimshian tribes. If nothing else, the demands of the missionary ideology (for example, against matrilineal inheritance) provided individuals caught between two allegiances. An excellent illustration of this conflict can be found in Barbeau’s story of the unfortunate Kamalmuk in “The Down fall of Temlaham,” 1928, with an escape from the social expectations and economic obligations of the tribe. Mercantile chiefs, such as Legaic and Tsebassa, profited by converting to Christianity and moving into the modern townsites (cf. Garfield’s accounts of similar manoeuvering in Port Simpson, 1939: var.) Finally, beginning in the 1860s, the imperial and industrial economy of Great Britain surrounded Duncan’s utopia with a variety of business and labour opportunities. The primacy of the Hudson’s Bay company as the economic representative of Europe was ending as a new industrial regime slowly took over, accompanied by colonial society and government. Tsimshian Businesses In 1865, the Western Union Telegraph,on its way from the U.S.A. to England via Siberia,
5 entered the region (Large 1957: 24ff), bringing wage labour to the Gitksan and beginning a lucrative river freighting industry that would be dominated by the Coastal Tsimshian. Later, the Bay economized its supply strategy for the northern posts by abandoning the long Fraser River route in favour of the Skeena waterway. Hazelton was established as a major supply depot, and Tsimshian freighters were the main means of transportation. The Bay was definitely the main customer of the freighting business, but the river always bustled with traffic as gold prospectors, miners, loggers, settlers, missionaries, surveyors, and others made their way inland. In the 1890s, at least two hundred Indians and forty canoes were employed (a minimum estimate, D.I.A., 1895: 165). The first contracts fell to Port Simpson, but the Metlakatlans under Chief Legaic proved more competitive (large 1958: 26) and came to dominate. He and, undoubtedly, other chiefs could use their freighting incomes to strengthen their social and economic positions in the area, both within tribal society and beyond it. Evidence of this comes from an incident in the 1860s when a band of Kitselas, fearing competition from a party of surveyors they suspected to be merchants, allowed passage only when the captain convinced them otherwise. Some Kitselas were hired into the crew (Large 1957: 26). The available data are not conclusive, but the freighting business probably complemented the fur trade in Tsimshian political economy as a source of power. The freighters were certainly motivated by more than altruistic concerns, as illustrated by the continually rising cargo rates: Tsimshian commercial interests drove the prices up from $4 to $5 a ton in 1871 (Large 1957: 30) to $60 a ton in 1890 (Wicks 1976: 30)The HBC had no choice but to accept these increases, which it did grudgingly, often predicting the ruin of the company (Dorsey 1898: 181). At the same time, the company was elsewhere revolutionizing its transportation system by converting to steamers. The ability of the Bay to heavily capitalize its transportation was used to undercut the labour-intensive native operations. On the Skeena, the first successful passage to Hazelton was managed by an HBC steamer in 1891 with others soon following suit. Canoe freighting collapsed overnight (D.I.A. 1895: 165) and, with it, Tsimshian control over Skeena transportation. Economically, this ended a service business and created unemployment, but other opportunities were available to the freighters and crewmen, including work on the steamers. Politically, the loss damaged the power base of the chiefs, but it also increased the dependency of many migrant Tsimshian workers. This was accomplished by providing boats, owned by the foreign and colonial industrialists, to transport workers’ families and possessions to the job at the start of a season and back to their homes, far up river, at the end. This later became a problem for Tsimshian workers pressing wage demands at the fish canneries and attempting to organize union activity (see Knight 1978: 97) There were other Indian businesses. Duncan’s Metlakatla is often held up as a model of success with its craftsmen, stores, mills, factories, market house, and so forth, but Port Simpson had similar accomplishments, together with some families who became influential as a result of their business operations (Knight 1978: 60). According to one d.I.A. agen, “many different enterprises...are being started and wholly managed by the advanced natives, with every reasonable prospect of an average measure of success” (quoted in Knight 1978: 62). The Dudowards owned a store in Port Simpson, and with their schooner, the Georgina, develpoed a trading business that reached up and down the coast. Tsimshians also owned and operated stores
6 in aiyansh, Kincolith, Lakalsap, Hazelton (Knight 1978: 60-61), and Hartley Bay (Campbell, this volume). Other commercial ventures in the North West Agency included clam and fish canneries; the manufacture or marketing of oil, canoes, fish boats, nets, houses, and handicrafts; and the bootlegging of liquor for sale to the Bay and for export. When foreign forestry operations began, independent logging crews from Port Simpson quickly organized to supply the mills (Knight 1978: 115). Elsewhere sawmills were set up. Such experiences gave the Tsimshian a different perspective on their traditional resources: the forest, for one, was being viewed as an industrially important resource. The variety of business operations conducted by the Tsimshian, from their successful competition with the Bay to their local industries and mercantile enterprises, deserves more detailed documentation. Enterprising individuals had access to new sources of wealth, if they could mobilize it effectively. As a result, these people were often linked to old and new positions of power (see Knight 1978: 277, n.16). Garfield (1939: var.) Describes some moves to reduce traditional obligations, but to consider the effects of commerce (either in the first or second half of the century) as only destructive seems excessive and ignores the history of the fur trade. More data on Tsimshian business activities are needed, not only because that aspect of Tsimshian economic history is but little know, but also because it will help evaluate the often stereotyped notions that Indians cannot be successful in business because they do not trust one another, have family jealousies and rivalries, lack experience, enjoy too much high living, or are unable to keep proper accounts and business records. This list of alleged inadequacies comes from a turn of the century D.I.A. report (cf. Knight 1978: 64), but elements of it show up even now in socioeconomic studies. Over sixty years of commerce and industry by the Tsimshian during the nineteenth century is dramatic evidence to the contrary, and some other explanations for the oppressive problems of Indian enterprises must be sought. Tsimshian Labour Wage labour became important during the second half of the nineteenth century. Tsimshian workers were found in numerous occupations: freighting, fishing, cannery work, logging, mill work, sealing, mining, steamer crews, domestic service, longshoring, packing, railroad construction, in a variety of trades (blacksmiths, painters, and so forth), in stores, and at many casual occupations. These jobs were usually, if not always, integrated with fishing, hunting and trapping. The Western Union Telegraph line (1865-68) and the HBC’s Hazelton depot (after 1868) are usually considered the first major sources of employment in the northwest region (Garfield 1951: 9). Previously, very few jobs had been accepted. Fort Simpson provided some source of employment, but only a small portion of the local poulation ever worked for the company. Basically, the Tsimshian were at the fort to advance their own enterprises (as middlemen), not to service the Bay (Fisher 1977: 30). In 1874, Georgetown Mills opened operations, hiring Tsimshian labour for logging, sawmill operations, longshoreman work, and other industry-related jobs (Knight 1978: 115). Then the establishment of the first cannery, on the Skeena, in 1977, started a boom that quickly involved nearly all the Tsimshian in any of several ways. From San Francisco to Alaska, the early fishing industry depended upon cheap Indian
7 labour, and the Northwest was no exception. At first the Indian fisherman was at an advantage, since his labour was necessary for the companies. He could supply his own boat and gear (for a while this remained true even after technological innovation, which occurred rapidly, had converted Indian fishing procedures into a clearly “non-traditional” operation). In addition, the Indian could fish for sockeye, which he considered to be less desirable than other fish for eating, with but little disruption to his accustomed economic cycle. Finally, he could enlist his wife’s help if she preferred not to work under the unpleasant conditions of canning factoreis. The companies were quick to change these circumstances. In their efforts to maximize their profits and fight stiff competition, they increased the productivity of their operations through continual innovation in fishing techniques, bringing progressively efficient and expensive equipment into their operations. They also improved their competitive edge by catching the fish further and further from the crowded river mouths and introducing better equipment and refrigeration facilities; they also controlled would-be rival (and Indian) fishermen with licensing, requiring the use of company gear, and hiring Indian recruiters (to ensure an adequate supply of “good” workers). Development of industrial discipline and governmental regulations (which were drafted and consolidated in the 1890s with the assistance of industrial lobbies in Victoria) also strengthened the companies’ position. Finally, they encouraged nonnative fishermen to enter the area and thereby increase competition within the labour force (cf. Ross MS). All these moves weakened the Tsimshian position in fisheries; by the turn of the century, only one-half of the licences on the Skeena and Nass Rivers were worked by Indians (Knight 1978: 83). On shore, Tsimshian women dominated the packing process in the ethnically segretated plants and were considered to be invaluable. Because canning was dirty, miserable, and lowpaying, the canneries found it difficult to retain an adequate work force. Strategies to overcome the labour problem included regulations reducing the number of women pullers in the boats, hiring some fishermen to ensure that their wives would work at the cannery, and locating near villages where a female labour supply would be readily available (for example, Spukshut, the site of Port Essington). Such relocation of plants could mean the difference between success and failure for a cannery (Ross, MS, p. 50). The use of Tsimshian women in the canneries was probbly more disruptive to the economy than the participation of the fishermen. Women worked inside the canneries in a situation which was definitely that of factory work (for a description, see Knight 1978: 88-89) and were less able to combine traditional duties with the new working day than were the fishermen. These women had to postpone their household chores until the evenings and days off. Often they replaced their home-cooked fish with a canned substitute. Such a situation must have been a great burden. Why, then, would they tolerate it? The differential participation of men and women in fishing may provide a clue. First, as plant workers, the women, much more than the fishermen, were in a subordinate situation. Alienated from owning the means of production or the product of their labours, having only their labour power to sell, the women lost a significant part of their productive day to the cannery. The fishermen had more control over their production since they owned their gear and product. Yet wage labour may have been attractive to women because it improved their overall productivity. DeLaguna suggests that catching fish wa traditionally never a problem on the coast;
8 more important was the actual preservation, which by traditional methods consumed a great deal of labour time (DeLaguna 1979). Since canning was a more efficient method for an individual, the women may have found an advantage by buying the canned fish, which cost less in labour time, or by using the new technology at home, freeing time for wage labour. Canned fish and other commercially available food was already evident in homes in 1888 (for example, Boas, in Rohner 1967: 97). Given the domestic production problems of factory work, the difficulties that the canners experienced in maintaining an adequate labour supply should serve as a measure of the difficulty women encountered in finding a balance between preserving fish and other resources for food and canning fish for wages to buy other commodities. Wages contributed to improving the living conditions of their families, but were not a complete substitute for other forms of work. First, a significant part of a woman’s productive day had been taken over by industry. Second, the functional relationships between women’s and men’s work were damaged. The concentration of many fishermen near canneries, especially large ones, may have made it difficult for the women to maintain some adequate level of domestic production without greater movements on the land and a more dispersed settlement pattern. Wage work for women relieved some of the problems but also compounded other, for when the fishermen were unemployed it was difficult to return to the old movements if the women needed to keep a job. Even if individual families reunited briefly to harvest fish, game, and other resources, the total output of the society through traditional methods of production would have been reduced. Wages might have made up for the reduction, but it meant that every family needed to maintin a certain level of income to sustain their altered mode of living (as may be seen among the modern Inuit of Lancaster Sound; see McDonald 1978). Given the problems associated with incorporating wage labour into the economic cycle, why was it attractive? Force was not a factor. The area seemed to support the population adequately (much reduced by disease after contact). It seems, simply, that the overall level of productivity rose. First, wages could buy commodities with comparatively lower unit costs in labour time, and that either compensated for the more costly products of indigenous labour or were entirely new. When these commodities were incorporated into the total social product, the Indians may have felt the rise of their living standard. Second, wage work improved the flow of such goods into the Tsimshian economy simply because it increased the number of direct buyers and broadened the points of contact beyond the realm of the mercantile chiefs and trade. Whether this also gave people a significant chance to advance themselves, regardless of their inherited privileges, cannot be ascertained; but Garfield mentions instances of people operating outside of the Tsimshian (or “tradition”) system (Garfield 1939: var.). Third, wage labour must have been attractive because the industries of the time were labour-intensive. The productivity of the are encouraged industrial growth but, generally speaking, most expansion, until the close of the century, did not alter the labour-capital ratio (see, for example, the analysis of the early fishing industry by Ross 1967). Economic development meant, basically, an ever-increasing work force. This situation is, theoretically, the most favourable to labour. The opinions in various reports from the D.I.A. support the theory, and I have already indicated that the income (including wages) of the freighters increased. Presumably, the same was true of other industries where a labour shortage persisted.
9 Other Aspects of the Tsimshian Economy To complete this economic survey, I want to emphasize that despite the spread of commercial activity and wage labour into indigenous activity, fishing, hunting, gathering, trapping, and intertribal trading remained crucial to the Tsimshian of the nineteenth century. The relative importance of each increased in relation to the distance of a population form the main employment areas of the coast, and it appears that a study in this question of socio-geography should be undertaken. (It has been touched on by anthropologists, but only as a problem of “traditional society.” Nonetheless, Halpin 1973, chapter 3 provides a most useful basis for such a study.) Finally, I should mention that since Confederation, the government has injected into the economy goods and money in the form of medical supplies, relief to the destitute, and subsidized schools. More data are needed on the impact these infusions have made on the indigenous economy. The reproduction of Tsimshian labour power in the nineteenth century was definitely dependent upon both the so-called traditional and modern means of making a living. Given this conclusion, is it essential to know how extensive the Tsimshian involvement was in what should be described as a world economy and how important it was to their livelihood. The answers to these questions are not easily forthcoming; some of them have been discussed, but a series of points should be added to my survey. 1. The figures provided by D.I.A. on native productivity in British Columbia reveal a dramatic increase during the decade of the 1880s from just over a quarter of a million dollars to nearly four million, a jump of 1332 per cent. By the turn of the century, the income of the Indians in the North West Agency along was over a quarter of a million dollars. Little wonder the department was so pleased with its northern wards. (A word of caution about these figures: they are gross estimates from lists of industries in which natives dominated. Nonetheless, they clearly show the surge of industrial activity in those industries.) 2. Credit for much of the region’s productivity was given to the Tsimshian people and D.I.A. reports continually praised the greater efficiency and reliability of Tsimshian labourers over Chinese and white workers. 3. The government’s pleasure with the Tsimshian “progress” was not entirely altruistic; material benefits arose from it. For example, as early as 1881, Metlakatla paid $5,000 in taxes, almost the equivalent of that year’s combined salaries for the superintendent and his resident superintendent ($5,400). The agency system was paying for itself and could soon expand. More important, taxes of this amount indicate a considerable cash revenue for the population at a very early date. 4. Tsimshian labour exhibited an ever-growing sensitivity to economic cycles in other parts of the world. Depressions in salmon, timber, and furs were especially critical. In D.I.A. reports this sensitivity is revealed in observations recorded during good years that the population was making great “advancements towards civilization.” During bad years, hardships were noted and Indians were driven back onto the land, sometimes becoming destitute and requiring government relief.
10 5. During the recessions people migrated in search of wages. The distance involved increased over the years, and by the mid 1880s migrant workers were going to the railroad camps on the Fraser and to the hopfields of Washington State. In the latter case, the likelihood of even receiving employment was as low as the pay, and such migrations must have been the result of genuine need or desperation. 6. The list of occupations in the population grew continually, as has been mentioned already. Canning, logging, and commercial fishing primarily generated this growth. 7. Finally, there was a growing resistance from the Tsimshian to the colonization of their land and the appropriation of their resources by foreign interests. This included land claims, agitation for the recognition of resource and human rights, and militant trade union activity. The first two were an expression of traditional values and commercial interests, often simultaneously. The union activity was the result of wage employment and included leadership roles. The resistance is the subject of my last section.
THE RESISTANCE The Tsimshian involvement with the world economy was not straightforward, mediated as it was by a colonial government and an imperial economy. In attempting to maintain as much control of their economic activities as possible, in competing with other businessmen, in selling their labour power, and in retaining ownership rights to their territorial resources, the Tsimshian employed a variety of forces to resist the growing erosion of their political and economic power: newspapers, petitions, delegations, blockades, occupations, strikes, and threats of violence. The history which I have collected on the resistance begins immediately after Confederation (further research is required to extend this further back in time). In 1872, Gitksan villagers closed the Skeena to navigation until the government sent a military expedition from the north Pacific Command Headquarters at Esquimalt to open the river and adjudicate the dispute over the destruction of some Gitksan property (large 1957: 32). In 1884, the Gitksan threatened to close it again. That same year the Port Essington people, angered by the process of land appropriation, stopped the surveyors from completing their tasks (D.I.A. 1884: 282). The development of canneries, together with their encroachment on Tsimshian fishing grounds, created unrest as early as 1879 when chiefs at Kitkatla confiscated the nets of one company that had been exploiting the village fisheries (Department of the Interior 1879: 113). The potential for conflict was becoming serious enough that the government bought a gunboat, the Rocket, to assist Superintendent Powell in his duties. On its first tour of the coast, in 1879, Powell was carefull to demonstrate the boat’s strength, especially at Port Simpson where the Tsimshian happened to have organized an “Indian Volunteer Company of Rifles� (Department of the Interior 1879: 112). Nonetheless, the threat of violence became more serious in the 1880s, and the government was well aware of the colonial wars then being fought throughout the Empire. So, when the dispute between Rev. Duncan and the Church Missionary Society (CMS) spilled into the community of Metlakatla, the D.I.A. retained a cutter from the U.S. Navy to keep the peace (D.I.A. 1884: 1xi). Again, in 1885, at the height of this controversy, when Metlakatla people
11 forcibly occupied CMS building, H.M.S. Cormorant arrived offshore (D.I.A. 1886: xi-xii and 98). The eventual move by Duncan and his supporters to establish New Metlakatla outside of British territory the following year was a dramatic protest against colonial policies, but it did not end the troubles in old Metlakatla. There, and elsewhere, concern was growing over the loss of economic and political rights. Most prominent among these was that of land, with its related questions of access to productive areas and resources that were strategic for domestic and commercial purposes. The government in Victoria, however, refused to acknowledge Tsimshian rights to commercially important resources (cf., B.C. 1887). In the face of many such instances of blatant disregard, the resistence was carried on in different forms, as dictated by immediate realities such as the growing resolution and hostility from the provincial and dominion governments. Metlakatla and Port Simpson refused to accept the agent assigned to the new North West Agency (D.I.A. 1884: 117). Eventually an agent did establish himself, but bu 1888 Port Simpson and Greenville people were protesting his behaviour and the laws that were being imposed upon them (d.I.A. 1889: xci). Canadian laws were destroying the Tsimshian legal system and contributing to a redistribution of political and economic rights within Tsimshian society. One example was the trespass laws, which circumvented Tsimshian privileges in productive areas (see Garfield 1939: 282). Other “troubles” which arose through the 1880s were over the Nass River oolachan grounds (D.I.A. 1885: 119), over the new anti-potlatch laws (ibid.), over the behaviour of police (D.I.A. 1888: xci), and over land issues. The D.I.A.’s concern over a potential outbreak of civil disobedience peaked during the turbulent years of the ware against the Métis in the Northwest Territories, when reports of the participation of Prairie Indians were being printed back to back with descriptions of unrest among the Tsimshian. However, the presence of the navy and a general economic recovery proved calming influences on the coast; and by the end of the decade, the North Weest Coast Agency had quieted down. In 1890, only the Port Essington people remained agitated enough to hinder the surveyors (D.I.A. 1890: xxxi). Instead, a new form of resistance and protest was taking shape. B.C.’s first fish strike, that of the Fraser river in 1893, included native fishermen from the north (see North and Griffin 1974: 2). In 1894, the Skeena was struck by fishermen, supported by female cannery workers (Knight 1978: 96-97. Broader based strikes in 1896 and 1897 stopped fishing on both the Skeena and the Nass (Knight 1978: 97). In 1900, the B.C. Fishermen’s Union was organized, with a local in Port Simpson, one of the first outside the Fraser area (ibid.). Tsimshian fishermen provided critical leadership in these events, and Tsimshian brass bands now were seen at rallies and marches.
CONCLUSION There appears to be enough information to conclude that the generally-held view of the Tsimshian economy during the nineteenth century is inadequate and glosses over many intriguing and important processes of social change. The full description of the economy still requires comprehensive ethnographic research.
12 The data I have currently examined suggests a considerable similarity between Tsimshian and immigrant workers. Both combined hunting, fishing, and trapping with a seasonal cycle of wage employment. In the nineteenth century, none of these elements alone could support a person; nor could a strictly “traditional” economic system or a “traditional” industrial system. To understand the interrelationships of these elements, biographical works such as that by Walter Wicks (1976), a German immigrant at the turn of the century, are informative. His descriptions of the basic economic pattern have relevance to the study of any wage-labour population (Tsimshian, German, or any other nationality) in the Northwest at the time. Knight suggests that the distinctive nature of Indian work patterns in the new industries may well be exaggerated by comparing them to idealized middle-class standards rather than to the responses of non-Indian workers in the same industries of the time. ...A good deal of...traditional Indian work patterns seem in reality to be variants of an ethos once common to most primary resource workers in B.C. (Knight 1978: 19). On the other hand, wealthy Tsimshians, including those engaged in private enterprises, probably did not live in a manner so closely comparable to immigrant businessmen of similar economic position. Finally, how does all this fit into Boas’s ethnography? It does not. A first explanation of the discrepancy is that he meant to provide a reconstruction of Tsimshian society, but it must be remembered that Boas was on an assignment of the BAAS and the dominion government explicitly designed to generate a systematic account of the current conditions respecting the northwest tribes (see Hale’s introductory remarks to Boas’s report, 1889: 801). In other words, Boas was expected to, and he purported to, relate how people actually behaved. Yet, the evidence is clear that much was missed. The empiricist seems to have let an element of romanticism creep into his work on the Tsimshian; not, perhaps, into what he described, but in what he failed to describe, that is, in his selection of ethnographic data. Boas, obviously, did not concern himself with the everyday life of people who were a part of cash economy, even though the very people he interviewed were workers, either in Cunningham’s company town or as far away as Victoria. Neither was Boas overly concerned with the military expedition which preceded him, the measles epidemic spread from the hopfields by migrant workers, Metlakatla’s request for municipal government, political petitions against the D.I.A., or the recovery of the world market and with it Tsimshian employment, all of which were reported by the D.I.A. agent during the year of Boas’s fieldwork, all of which were important to the lives of the people. This may not have been his personal project, but the point is that caution must be exercised in using his material to study the economic and political life of the people with whom he spoke. This is a problem with other ethnographers of the Northwest Coast (see McDonald, MS), especially those trained by Boas (for example, Sapir, Garfield). As a phenomenon in the history of the social sciences, it requires more attention than would be appropriate to give it now. In his conclusions, Boas left an image of an atrophied society. Only in his private letters is there a hint of its ongoing richness and vitality. While in Port Essington, Boas wrote in his diary: “I am sure you want to know what kind of a place this is” (in Rohner 1969:93). He then went on to describe Cunningham’s cannery, the factory work of the two hundred Indian canners
13 and six hundred Indian fishermen, the company residences and cabins in which the Indians lived, the western clothing styles of the workers, scrip wages, the company story, and the two Christian Churches. To conclude, I suggest that the ethnography of the nineteenth century Tsimshian economy is actually an historically incorrect superpositioning of divergent elements, taken from a conceptualization of the Tsimshian past that has never been rigorously studied. This is possible now, as it may not have been many years ago, using the wealth of primary data now available in archives. The nineteenth century must be sorted out and reconstructed, not as a stage (either traditional, neo-traditional, or transitional) or as a series of stages (traditional-modern, for example), but as a complex and continuous process of change, in order to understand the interplay between the new economic possibilities and changing social life, both in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries.
Note 1.
I wish to thank the Village of Kitsumkalum for drawing my interest to the study of Tsimshian history and economic life. Their support is gratefully acknowledged.
From: Margaret Seguin, editor. The Tsimshian: Images of the Past: Views for the Present. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1984. 40-57.