These Hyda fishermen were from a small tribe on the Pacific Coast, between Vancouver & Queen Charlotte’s. 1855. The Haida are known for their craftsmanship, trading skills, & seamanship. They are thought to have been warlike & to practise slavery. Canadian Museum of Civilization anthropologist Diamond Jenness has compared the tribe to Vikings.
Oral histories & archaeological evidence indicate that the Haida have occupied Haida Gwaii for more than 17,000 years. In that time they have established an intimate connection with the islands' lands & oceans, established highly structured societies, & constructed many villages. The Haida have also occupied present-day southern Alaska for more than the last 200 years, the modern group having emigrated from Haida Gwaii in the 18C.
Prior to contact with Europeans, other Indigenous communities regarded the Haida as aggressive warriors & made attempts to avoid sea battles with them. Archaeological evidence shows that Northwest coast tribes, to which the Haida belong, engaged in warfare as early as 10 000 BC. Though the Haida were more likely to participate in sea battles, it was not uncommon for them to engage in hand-to-hand combat or long-range attacks. Analyses of skeletal injuries dating from the Archaic period show that Northwest coast nations, particularly in the North where most Haida communities were situated, engaged in battles of some sort, though the number of battles is unknown. The presence of defensive fortifications dating from the Middle Pacific period show that the incidence of battles rose somewhere between 1800 BC & AD 500. These fortifications continued to be in use during the 18C as evidenced by Captain James Cook’s discovery of one such hilltop fortification in a Haida village. Numerous other sightings of such fortifications were recorded by other European explorers during this century.
There were multiple reasons that motivated Haida people to commit warfare. Various accounts explain that the Haida went to battle more for revenge & slaves than for anything else. According to the anthropologist Margaret Blackman, who has done research on the Haida since the 1970s, warfare on Haida Gwaii was primarily motivated by revenge. Many Northwest coast legends tell of Haida communities raiding & fighting with neighboring communities because of insults. Other causes included disputes over property, territory, resources, trade routes & even women. However, a battle between a Haida community & another often did not have simply one cause. In fact, many battles were the result of decades old disputes. The Haida, like many of the Northwest coast Indigenous communities, engaged in slave-raiding as slaves were highly sought after for their use as labor as well as bodyguards & warriors. During the 19C, the Haida fought physically with other Indigenous communities to ensure domination of the fur trade with European merchants. Haida groups also had feuds with these European merchants that could last years. In 1789, some Haidas were accused of stealing items from Captain Kendrick, most of which included drying linen. Kendrick seized two Haida chiefs & threatened to kill them via cannon-fire if they did not return the stolen items. Though the Haida community complied at the time, less than two years later 100 to 200 of its people attacked the same ship.
The missionary W.H. Collison describes having seen a Haida fleet of around forty canoes. However, he does not provide the number of warriors in these canoes, & there are no other known accounts that describe the number of warriors in a war party. The structure of a Haida war party generally followed that of the community itself, the only difference being that the chief took the lead during battles; otherwise his title was more or less meaningless. Medicine men were often brought along raids or before battles to “destroy the souls of enemies” & ensure victory. Battles between a group of Haida warriors & another community sometimes resulted in the annihilation of either one or both of the groups involved. Entire villages would be burned down during a battle which was a common practice during Northwest coast battles. The Haida burned their warriors who died in battles, though it is not known if this act was done after each battle or only after battles in which they were victorious. The Haida believed that fallen warriors went to the House of Sun, which was considered a highly honorable death. For this reason, a specially made military suit for chiefs was prepared if they fell in battle. The slaves belonging to the chiefs who died in battle were burned with them.
The Haida used the bow & arrow until it was replaced by firearms acquired from Europeans in the 19C, but other traditional weapons were still preferred. The weapons that the Haida used were often multi-functional; they were used not only in battle, but during other activities as well. For instance, daggers were very common & almost always the choice of weapon for hand-to-hand combat, & were also used during hunting & to create other tools. One medicine man’s dagger that Alexander Mackenzie came across during his exploration of Haida Gwaii, was used both for fights & to hold the medicine man's hair up. Another dagger that Mackenzie obtained from a Haida village was said to be connected to a Haida legend; many daggers had individual histories which made them unique from one another. The Haida wore rod-and-slat armor. This meant greaves for the thighs & lower back & slats (a long strip of wood) in the side pieces to allow for more flexibility during movement. They wore elk hide tunics under their armour & wooden helmets. Arrows could not penetrate this armor, & Russian explorers found that bullets could only penetrate the armor if shot from a distance of less than 20 feet. The Haida rarely used shields because of their developed armor.
The Haida conducted regular trade with Russian, Spanish, British, & American fur traders & whalers. According to sailing records, they diligently maintained strong trade relationships with Westerners, coastal people, & among themselves.
Like other groups on the Northwest Coast, the Haida defended themselves with fortifications, including palisades, trapdoors & platforms. They took to water in large ocean-going canoes, each created from a single Western red cedar tree, & big enough to accommodate as many as 60 paddlers. The aggressive tribe were particularly feared in sea battles, although they did respect rules of engagement in their conflicts. The Haida developed effective weapons for boat-based battle, including a special system of stone rings weighing 18 to 23 kg (40 to 51 lb) which could destroy an enemy's dugout canoe & be reused after the attacker pulled it back with the attached cedar bark rope. The Haida took captives from defeated enemies. Between 1780 & 1830, the Haida turned their aggression towards European & American traders. Among the half-dozen ships the tribe captured were the Eleanor & the Susan Sturgis. The tribe made use of the weapons they so acquired, using cannons & canoe-mounted swivel guns.
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 & hid in the forest. They observed these attackers holding human heads. When the explorers reached the mouth of the river, they came upon the charred remains of the village of the Qualicum people & the mutilated bodies of its inhabitants, with only one survivor, an elderly woman, hiding terrified inside a tree stump.
Also in 1857, the USS Massachusetts was sent from Seattle to nearby Port Gamble, where indigenous raiding parties made up of Haida (from territory claimed by the British) & Tongass (from territory claimed by the Russians) had been attacking & enslaving the Coast Salish people there. When the Haida & Tongass (sea lion tribe Tlingit) warriors refused to acknowledge American jurisdiction & to hand over those among them who had attacked the Puget Sound communities, a battle ensued in which 26 natives & one government soldier were killed. In the aftermath of this, Colonel Isaac Ebey, a US military officer & the first settler on Whidbey Island, was shot & beheaded on 11 August 1857 by a small Tlingit group from Kake, Alaska, in retaliation for the killing of a respected Kake chief in the raid the year before. Ebey's scalp was purchased from the Kake by an American trader in 1860. The introduction of smallpox among the Haida at Victoria in March 1862 significantly reduced their sovereignty over their traditional territories, & opened the doorway to colonial power. As many as nine in ten Haidas died of smallpox & many villages were completely depopulated.
The Haida also created "notions of wealth", & Jenness credits them with the introduction of the totem pole (Haida: ǥyaagang) & the bentwood box. Missionaries regarded the carved poles as graven images rather than representations of the family histories that wove Haida society together. Chiefly families showed their histories by erecting totems outside their homes, or on house posts forming the building. Their social organization was matri-lineal. As the islands were Christianised, many cultural works such as totem posts were destroyed or taken to museums around the world. This significantly undermined Haida self-knowledge & further diminished morale.
