Gwaay'haanas

Gwaay Haanas belongs to the southern Haida Gwaii island world, centred on Moresby Island and neighbouring islands. Haida villages occupied this forested maritime landscape long before foreign traders arrived. At Tanu, Skedans and SGang Gwaay, large longhouses used substantial posts and beams around tiered house pits. Carved poles displayed the crests of Raven and Eagle clans, expressing identities and relationships within the village communities.

From the late eighteenth century, maritime fur trading brought increasingly frequent British and American visitors. Beginning in 1787, the trade expanded through the early nineteenth century as Haida hunters supplied sea otter pelts for distant markets. Imported goods were eagerly sought, and the exchange generated substantial wealth. At its height, visiting ships recorded obtaining more than a hundred pelts in a day from some villages. The intensity of hunting devastated sea otter populations and altered Haida cultural life. Foreign commerce thus developed through existing coastal communities and their maritime skills, while placing severe new pressure on the animals around which that commerce revolved.