Talk:Nahwitti (trading site)

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Location? edit

Latest comment: 3 months ago2 comments1 person in discussion

Hello, I did some research about the Tlatlasikwala recently and have a question about the location of this site. The article places it at Cape Sutil where the river and modern day reservation of this name are. However this history article from a local newspaper seems to give a different or even self-contradicting account:

"There was also a Chief known as Nahwitti, and a place the First Nations referred to as Nahwitti (first a location at Cape Sutil, later a village on Hope Island). The river which we now know at the Nahwitti was originally known to the First Nations as “wuda staade” (having cold water). [...] Trading posts on the West Coast of Vancouver Island were closed and the main trading area on the Island became ‘Newitty’ (which was actually at Shushartie Bay)."

The village on Hope Island is also known as Xwamdasbe (and variations thereof) in the literature and might or might not be identical with Bull Harbour. Does anyone here have reliable information about the place/name/identity of these places? Irrwichtel (talk) 15:05, 9 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

I have done some further research on the trading site, the nahwitti incident and the Tlatlasikwala on the whole. First I checked some books by Barry M. Gough which gave contradicting information, not only between books, but even within one from page to page. I finally got my hands on a copy of Robert Galois: Kwakwaka'waka Settlements, 1775-1920. This should be the authoritative work on the subject. Galois notes that the historical sources on the matter are scarce and contradictory and have given way to equally contradicting interpretations in the scholarly literature. He seems quite sure though that the importent trading site was not at Cape Sutil, but at Shushartie Bay. There was a village on the Cape (that may or may not have been the one destroyed in 1851), but that was not the trading center. Irrwichtel (talk) 13:57, 22 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

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