Arthur Wellington Clah, (1831 – 1916), was a Canadian First Nations employee of the Hudson's Bay Company at Lax Kw'alaams (Port Simpson), B.C., who was also a hereditary chief in the Tsimshian nation, an anthropological informant, and an extensive diarist. Leopold I 1831 (MDCCCXXXI) was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ... 1916 (MCMXVI) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... The Hudsons Bay Company (HBC) is the oldest commercial corporation in North America and is one of the oldest in the world. ... Lax Kwalaams, usually called Port Simpson, is a First Nations village community in British Columbia, Canada, not far from the city of Prince Rupert. ... The Tsimshian (usually pronounced in English SIM-shee-an), translated as People Inside the Skeena River, are a Native American and First Nation people who live around Terrace and Prince Rupert, on the north coast of British Columbia and the southernmost corner of Alaska on Annette Island. ...

Arthur Wellington was his English name. "Clah" is a spelling of one of his hereditary Tsimshian names, Ła'ax. He also held the name T'amks, which carries with it leadership of a matrilineal house-group of the same name in the Gispaxlo'ots, one of the "Nine Tribes" of Lax Kw'alaams. Please wikify (format) this article or section as suggested in the Guide to layout and the Manual of Style. ...

Clah was born in 1831 at a settlement called "Laghco," near where the Hudson's Bay Company established Fort Simpson at Lax Kw'alaams in 1834. He married Catherine (a.k.a. Dorcas) Datacks, of the Laxgibuu (Wolf clan) of the Nisga'a nation. Catherine was niece of the wife of W. H. McNeill, the HBC's chief trader at Fort Simpson. Clah began working as McNeill's house servant but gradually came to be a trader in his own right. The Laxgibuu (variously spelled) is the name for the Wolf clan (phratry) in the language of the Tsimshian nation of British Columbia, Canada, and southeast Alaska. ... Nisgaa flag Mask with open eyes, worn during winter halait ceremonies, 18th–early 19th century The Nisaa (pronounced Nis-gah) are of the First Nations of Canada. ...

When the Anglican lay minister William Duncan arrived in Port Simpson in 1857, Clah taught him the Tsimshian language in exchange for instruction in English, a mutual education which began through the medium of Chinook Jargon. Clah also became a mediary between Duncan and the Tsimshian. Clah converted to Christianity but never entirely abandoned potlatching. In a famous incident, Clah intervened and saved Duncan's life when Clah's own tribal chief, Ligeex, ordered Duncan at gunpoint to cease tolling churchbells on the day of his (Ligeex's) daughter's initiation into a Tsimshian secret society. Ligeex later became a key convert of Duncan's. This incident is described both by Clah himself and by an eyewitness, his nephew the Rev. William Henry Pierce, the Methodist missionary. William Baines (1832-1918) was an English-born Anglican missionary who founded the Tsimshian communities of Metlakatla, British Columbia, in Canada, and Metlakatla, Alaska, in the United States. ... Coast Tsimshian, known by its speakers as Smalgyax, is a Tsimshianic language spoken by the Tsimshian nation in northwestern British Columbia and southeastern Alaska. ... Chinook Jargon was a trade language (or pidgin) of the Pacific Northwest, which spread quickly up the West Coast from Oregon, through Washington, British Columbia, and as far as Alaska. ... A potlatch was a ceremony among certain American Indian tribes, including tribes on the Pacific Northwest coast of the United States and the Canadian province of British Columbia. ... Ligeex (variously spelled: Legaic etc. ...

For nearly fifty years, from the late 1850s until his death, Clah kept a remarkably detailed diary, which is now housed by the Wellcome Institute in London. The diary affords an unmatched insight into daily life in a nineteenth-century Tsimshian community.

In 1903 the anthropologist Franz Boas wrote to Clah, having been referred to him by his Tlingit-Kwakwaka'wakw informant and collaborator George Hunt, expressing an interest in recording Tsimshian culture. Eventually, Clah turned the correspondence over to Henry W. Tate -- who, indications are, was his own son -- which led to the first detailed descriptions of Tsimshian culture. In 1915 Clah, near death, served as informant to the anthropologist Marius Barbeau, who was collecting information on Tsimshian social organization. Clah's grandson, William Beynon, served as intepreter and facilitator and went on to become a renowned ethnographic fieldworker in his own right. Clah died in Lax Kw'alaams the following year. Franz Boas Franz Boas (July 9, 1858 – December 21, 1942[1]) was one of the pioneers of modern anthropology and is often called the Father of American Anthropology. Born in Germany, Boas worked for most of his life in North America. ... A Tlingit totem pole in Ketchikan ca. ... Kwakwakawakw (also Kwakiutl, pronounced Kwa-gyu-thl) is a term used to describe a group of Canadian First Nations people, numbering about 5,500, who live in British Columbia on northern Vancouver Island and the mainland. ... Marius Barbeau Credit: J. Alex Castonguay/Library and Archives Canada/C-034447 Charles Marius Barbeau (March 5, 1883 – February 27, 1969), also known as C. Marius Barbeau, or more commonly simply Marius Barbeau, was a Canadian ethnographer and folklorist who is today considered a founder of Canadian anthropology. ... William Beynon (1888-1958) was a hereditary chief from the Tsimshian nation (British Columbia, Canada) and an oral historian who served as ethnographer, translator, and linguistic consultant to many anthropologists. ...

Bibliography

• Arctander, John W. (1909) The Apostle of Alaska: The Story of William Duncan of Metlakahtla. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company.

• Galois, R. M. (1997/1998) "Colonial Encounters: The Worlds of Arthur Wellington Clah, 1855-1881." B.C. Studies, no. 115/116, pp. 105-147.

• Maud, Ralph (2000) Transmission Difficulties: Franz Boas and Tsimshian Mythology. Burnaby, B.C.: Talonbooks.

• Neylan, Susan (2003) The Heavens Are Changing: Nineteenth-Century Protestant Missions and Tsimshian Christianity. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

• Pierce, William Henry (1933) From Potlatch to Pulpit, Being the Autobiography of the Rev. William Henry Pierce. Ed. by J. P. Hicks. Vancouver, B.C.: Vancouver Bindery.

• Roth, Christopher F. (2001) Review of Transmission Difficulties. Anthropologica, vol. 43, no. 1, pp. 123-124.

• Wellington Clah, Arthur (1997) "How Tamks Saved William Duncan's Life." Recorded by William Beynon, 1950. In Tsimshian Narratives 2: Trade and Warfare, ed. by George F. MacDonald and John J. Cove, pp. 210-212. Ottawa: Directorate, Canadian Museum of Civilization.

External links

• Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online