Gitando

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The Gitando are one of the 14 tribes of the Tsimshian nation in British Columbia, Canada, and one of the nine of those tribes making up the "Nine Tribes" of the lower Skeena River resident at Lax Kw'alaams (a.k.a. Port Simpson), B.C. The name Gitando means literally "people of the other side." Their traditional territory includes the watershed of the Exstew River, a tributary of the Skeena River. Since 1834, they have been based at Lax Kw'alaams, when a Hudson's Bay Company fort was established there. They are closely related to the Gispaxlo'ots, another of the Nine Tribes, who have an adjacent territory.

The chieftainship of the Gitando resides with the hereditary name-title Sgagweet, the holder of which is chief of the House of Sgagweet, a Laxsgiik (Eagle clan) house-group (extended matrilineal family) of the Gitando. The anthropologist Viola Garfield reported in 1938 that the name was held by Paul Sgagweet, who died in 1887 and was commemorated by a 15-foot totem pole representing a Gnawing Beaver, which was still standing in the 1930s. Paul Sgagweet bequeathed the name to his sister's son; this person was almost certainly Alfred Dudoward, who was instrumental in establishing a Methodist mission at Lax Kw'alaams. Dudoward had no (matrilineal) heirs and so adopted his own son and a niece into the house. The son inherited the name Sgagweet after Dudoward's death in 1914 or 1915 and was holding it when Garfield was writing in 1938. He had designated the niece's son as his successor.

In 1935 William Beynon recorded that Gitando people in Lax Kw'alaams included 14 members of the Gispwudwada (Killerwhale clan) (1 house-group), 17 members of the Ganhada (Raven) (1 house-group), and 25 members of the Laxsgiik (Eagle) (2 house-groups, including the House of Sgagweet, with 5 members).

George Kelly was a member of the House of Sgagweet who was adopted into the Gispaxlo'ots in order to perpetuate the House of Ligeex, a house closely related to Sgagweet.

The anthropologist Marius Barbeau, in a survey of totem poles, described several poles belonging to various Gitando Laxsgiik houses which had stood in Lax Kw'alaams. One, a Sgagweet pole depicting a Standing Beaver, stood until at least 1947.

In addition to the House of Sgagweet, other Gitando houses include:

  • House of Gilasgamgan -- Laxsgiik (Eagle clan)
  • House of Gistaaku -- Laxsgiik (Eagle)
  • House of Gamayaam -- Gispwudwada (Killerwhale)
  • House of Niisxłoo -- Laxsgiik (Eagle)
  • House of Niisyagayunaat -- Ganhada (Raven)
  • House of 'Nluulax -- Laxsgiik (Eagle)

[edit] Sources

  • Barbeau, Marius (1950) Totem Poles. 2 vols. (Anthropology Series 30, National Museum of Canada Bulletin 119.) Ottawa: National Museum of Canada.
  • Garfield, Viola E. (1939) "Tsimshian Clan and Society." University of Washington Publications in Anthropology, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 167-340.
  • Neylan, Susan (2003) The Heavens Are Changing: Nineteenth-Century Protestant Missions and Tsimshian Christianity. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
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