Ditid'aa'tx

The Ditidaht are a people of southwestern Vancouver Island, centred on Nitinat Lake, a long lake and inlet on the Pacific coast. They are related to the Nuu-chah-nulth, whose language belongs to the Wakashan family, and both peoples lived from the sea, the rivers and the forest of this coast.

Contact with European and American traders came through the maritime fur trade. Cook reached Nootka Sound in 1778, and by about 1790 Spain and Britain were in a bitter dispute over that sound, settled under the Nootka Convention. Across the Nuu-chah-nulth world, smallpox and malaria killed more than ninety per cent of the people before 1830, and many communities broke up or were absorbed into their neighbours.