Kiis'gwaay

Kiis Gwaay is the northern and largest of the great islands of Haida Gwaii. Forests cover the island, while its shores open onto bays and channels of the Pacific. Haida villages stood around the coast, including Kiusta in the northwest, where houses faced a sheltered bay. Canoes linked these communities with fishing grounds and with other peoples along the coast.

In 1787 the British captain George Dixon sailed along the islands, trading with Haida communities for sea otter pelts. At Kiusta and neighbouring villages he acquired valuable skins for the trade across the Pacific. The visits of such ships made the archipelago a centre of maritime commerce, bringing foreign goods into a society whose chiefs and houses already maintained extensive coastal connections.