EURIPTERID

TSAXIS: BEAVER HARBOUR HISTORY

The Big House at Tsaxis designed by Tony Hunt

Fort Rupert was and still is an historic Kwagu'ł (Kwakiutl) village by the name of Tsaxis with evidence of occupation reaching back as far as 6000 years before the present. 

Coal was discovered in the adjacent area in 1849 and the Hudson’s Bay Company made the decision to open a coal mine and build a fort the same year. 

The supply of coal in the area was short-lived and overtaken by new fields developed at Nanaimo. 

Although the fort was initially built to protect the coal mining operation, it immediately became the hub of colonial activity along the central coast of British Columbia and northern Vancouver Island. It remained an important post for trade and resupply for the remainder of the 19th Century.

Sadly, most of the records—-reports and financial accounts—-from Fort Rupert have been lost. 

Robert Hunt had been the last Hudson’s Bay Company Factor (Chief Trader) at Fort Rupert.  The records show that he started as a labourer for the HBC in 1850, at £25 per year. His salary was quickly doubled shortly after he started at Fort Rupert. I am guessing that many salaries went up at that time on the Northwest Coast, because the discovery of gold in California in 1849 led to a labour shortage. Robert Hunt met and married Mary Ebbets, a Tlingit noblewoman from Tongass, Alaska. 

Robert Hunt’s brother, who I believe came round Cape Horn with him on the HBC ship the “Norman Morrison”, disappears from the historical record at this time. Did he head off to California? 

From the few remaining records from the 1870s, we learn that Robert Hunt was the last HBC Factor and then its owner. Robert Hunt passed it to his daughter Jane Charity and her husband Harry Tennyson Cadwallader. 

His immediate superiors at Fort Victoria were pleased with his work, his ingenuity in keeping the fort in good repair, and with his reliability. As many of you know, Robert ended up purchasing the fort, including 600 acres of land, in the 1880s. I have not been able to locate any records or reports from Robert’s time at his one-man post on the Nass River.  

Cousin Alec Hunt, who drove trucks up to Port Hardy in the late sixties, and often visited with mom and dad, told my cousin John Lyon that according to family lore, Aunt Lizzie, George and Sarah’s sister, was born up north while Robert ran the trading post on the Nass River. 

Four Kwakwaka’wakw families (septs) settled at Fort Rupert to exploit the trading opportunities the post presented. These groups came to be known collectively as the Kwagu'ł (pronounced Kwa-gyu-thl) or Fort Rupert Kwakiutl Band. 

These groups are identified by Galois (1994) as Walas Kwakiutl (Lakwilala), Komkiutis, Kwakiutl (Kwágu7lh), and Kweeha (Komoyoi).

A catastrophic episode occurred at the village in 1865. Captain Nicholas Edward Brooke Turnour, commanding the British Navy's steam corvette Clio, arrived at the Fort to demand the surrender of three Fort Rupert Kwagu'ł charged with murdering an a man from Nawitti. 

After issuing a number of ultimatums, the Navy ship shelled the adjacent village, often referred to as Ku-Kultz, destroying a large section of it, in addition to about 60 canoes. 

According to anthropologst Johan Adrian Jacobsen, there in 1881, the Navy attack severely impacted the village and its inhabitants. 

Many moved across the strait to the inlets of the mainland, while another 250 to 300 returned and rebuilt the devastated village. (Gough, 1984: 82-84).

There is an image here of Tsaxis circa 1866 by Franz Boas detailing the house ownership by Kwakwaka’wakw family.

From the Bill Reid Centre: https://www.sfu.ca/brc/virtual_village/Kwakwaka_wakw/tsaxis--fort-rupert-.html

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