Gits'iis

The Gits'iis 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 Gits'iis means literally "people of the seal trap." Their traditional territory includes the areas around the Khutzeymateen Inlet and Work Channel, between Lax Kw'alaams and Kincolith, B.C. Since 1834, they have been based at Lax Kw'alaams, when a Hudson's Bay Company fort was established there.

The chieftainship of the Gits'iis resides with the Ganhada (Raven-clan) hereditary name-title Niisyaganaat and the royal house-group (extended matrilineal family) of the same name.

Both William Beynon and the anthropologist Viola Garfield describe in their writings a 1931 potlatch feast at which one Niisyaganaat succeeded another.

The House of Łüüm is another Ganhada house-group in the Gits'iis tribe.

In 1935 William Beynon recorded that Gits'iis people in Lax Kw'alaams included 2 members of the Gispwudwada (Killerwhale clan), 30 members of the Ganhada (Raven), 29 members of the Laxgibuu (Wolf), and 2 members of the Laxsgiik (Eagle).

Bibliography

• Beynon, William (1992) "The Feast of Nisyaganaat, Chief of the Gitsiis." In Na Amwaaltga Tsmsiyeen: The Tsimshian, Trade, and the Northwest Coast Economy, ed. by Susan Marsden, pp. 45-54. (Suwilaay'msga Na Ga'niiyatgm, Teachings of Our Grandfathers, vol. 1.) Prince Rupert, B.C.: First Nations Advisory Council of School District #52.

• Garfield, Viola E. (1939) "Tsimshian Clan and Society." University of Washington Publications in Anthropology, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 167-340.