Hagwilget

Hagwilget stands at the Bulkley Canyon near the meeting of the Bulkley and Skeena rivers. The fishing places there lay within Gitxsan territory, while Wet'suwet'en communities farther upstream depended on salmon reaching the canyon at present-day Witset. Around 1820 a rockslide obstructed the river and disrupted those upstream runs. Salmon gathered below the blockage, making the lower canyon a particularly valuable fishing place.

Wet'suwet'en families moved down to this site through agreement with its Gitxsan owners. Their settlement at Tse Kya, or Rock-foot, grew from that practical response to a damaged fishery. The confluence was already a gathering and trading place, so the move also placed the newcomers within an established network of neighbouring communities. Hagwilget's early nineteenth-century growth depended on access to fish negotiated across existing territorial rights, as much as on the new conditions created by the slide.