Xaayda

The Haida, who call themselves X̱aayda, are a Northwest Coast people whose home is the Haida Gwaii archipelago off British Columbia and, after an early eighteenth-century migration, southern Prince of Wales Island in Alaska, where the migrants are the Kaigani Haida.

Their language is a linguistic isolate, and their matrilineal society, built around the red cedar that reached the islands some 7,500 years ago, raised great carved houses and monuments under the potlatch system; seamanship, trade, raiding and slave-keeping were all part of Haida life.

The Spanish explorer Juan Pérez made the first recorded European contact in 1774, and British captain George Dixon opened the sea-otter trade in 1787, drawing the Haida into the China fur trade. Between 1780 and 1830 they fiercely defended their waters, seizing American and European ships and mounting captured cannons on their canoes.