Arthur Wellington Clah
Encyclopedia
Arthur Wellington Clah was a Canadian First Nations employee of the Hudson's Bay Company
Hudson's Bay Company
The Hudson's Bay Company , abbreviated HBC, or "The Bay" is the oldest commercial corporation in North America and one of the oldest in the world. A fur trading business for much of its existence, today Hudson's Bay Company owns and operates retail stores throughout Canada...

 at Lax Kw'alaams
Lax Kw'alaams
Lax-Kw'alaams , usually called Port Simpson, is an Indigenous village community in British Columbia, Canada, not far from the city of Prince Rupert. It is the home of the "Nine Tribes" of the lower Skeena River, which are nine of the fourteen tribes of the Tsimshian nation...

 (Port Simpson), B.C., who was also a hereditary chief in the Tsimshian
Tsimshian
The Tsimshian are an indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast. Tsimshian translates to Inside the Skeena River. Their communities are in British Columbia and Alaska, around Terrace and Prince Rupert and the southernmost corner of Alaska on Annette Island. There are approximately 10,000...

 nation, an anthropological informant, and an extensive diarist.

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
Gispaxlo'ots
The Gispaxlo'ots are one of the 14 tribes of the Tsimshian nation in British Columbia, Canada, and one of the nine of those tribes making up the "Nine Tribes" of the lower Skeena River resident at Lax Kw'alaams , B.C...

, one of the "Nine Tribes" of Lax Kw'alaams.

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
Laxgibuu
The Laxgibuu is the name for the Wolf "clan" in the language of the Tsimshian nation of British Columbia, Canada, and southeast Alaska. It is considered analogous or identical to identically named clans among the neighboring Gitksan and Nisga'a nations.The name Laxgibuu derives from gibuu, which...

 (Wolf clan) of the Nisga'a
Nisga'a
The Nisga’a , often formerly spelled Nishga and spelled in the Nisga’a language as Nisga’a, are an Indigenous nation or First Nation in Canada. They live in the Nass River valley of northwestern British Columbia. Their name comes from a combination of two Nisga’a words: Nisk’-"top lip" and...

 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.

When the Anglican lay minister William Duncan
William Duncan (missionary)
William Duncan was an English-born Anglican missionary who founded the Tsimshian communities of Metlakatla, British Columbia, in Canada, and Metlakatla, Alaska, in the United States...

 arrived in Port Simpson in 1857, Clah taught him the Tsimshian language
Coast Tsimshian
Coast Tsimshian, known by its speakers as Sm'algyax, is a Tsimshianic language spoken by the Tsimshian nation in northwestern British Columbia and southeastern Alaska...

 in exchange for instruction in English, a mutual education which began through the medium of Chinook Jargon
Chinook Jargon
Chinook Jargon originated as a pidgin trade language of the Pacific Northwest, and spread during the 19th century from the lower Columbia River, first to other areas in modern Oregon and Washington, then British Columbia and as far as Alaska, sometimes taking on characteristics of a creole language...

. Clah also became a mediary between Duncan and the Tsimshian. Clah converted to Christianity but never entirely abandoned potlatch
Potlatch
A potlatch is a gift-giving festival and primary economic system practiced by indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of Canada and United States. This includes Heiltsuk Nation, Haida, Nuxalk, Tlingit, Makah, Tsimshian, Nuu-chah-nulth, Kwakwaka'wakw, and Coast Salish cultures...

ing. In a famous incident, Clah intervened and saved Duncan's life when Clah's own tribal chief, Ligeex
Ligeex
Ligeex is an hereditary name-title belonging to the Gispaxlo'ots tribe of the Tsimshian First Nation from the village of Lax Kw'alaams , British Columbia, Canada. The name, and the chieftainship it represents, is passed along matrilineally within the royal house called the House of Ligeex...

, ordered Duncan at gunpoint (some versions say knifepoint) 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
William Henry Pierce
William Henry Pierce , also known as W. H. Pierce, was a Canadian First Nations missionary for the Methodist church and a member of the Tsimshian nation in northwestern British Columbia. He is best known for his memoir, From Potlatch to Pulpit, which was the first published book by a...

, the Methodist missionary.

For nearly fifty years, from the late 1850s until his death, Clah kept a remarkably detailed diary, which is now housed by the Wellcome Library
Wellcome Library
The Wellcome Library is founded on the collection formed by Sir Henry Wellcome , whose personal wealth allowed him to create one of the most ambitious collections of the 20th century. Henry Wellcome's interest was the history of medicine in a broad sense and included subjects like alchemy or...

 in London. The diary affords an unmatched insight into daily life in a nineteenth-century Tsimshian community.

In 1903 the anthropologist Franz Boas
Franz Boas
Franz Boas was a German-American anthropologist and a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology" and "the Father of Modern Anthropology." Like many such pioneers, he trained in other disciplines; he received his doctorate in physics, and did...

 wrote to Clah, having been referred to him by his Tlingit-Kwakwaka'wakw
Kwakwaka'wakw
The Kwakwaka'wakw are an Indigenous group of First Nations peoples, numbering about 5,500, who live in British Columbia on northern Vancouver Island and the adjoining mainland and islands.Kwakwaka'wakw translates as "Those who speak Kwak'wala", describing the collective nations within the area that...

 informant and collaborator George Hunt
George Hunt (ethnologist)
George Hunt was a Tlingit consultant to the anthropologist Franz Boas who through his contributions is considered a linguist and ethnologist in his own right...

, expressing an interest in recording Tsimshian culture. Eventually, Clah turned the correspondence over to Henry W. Tate
Henry W. Tate
Henry Wellington Tate was an oral historian from the Tsimshian First Nation in British Columbia, Canada, best known for his work with the anthropologist Franz Boas....

 -- 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
Marius Barbeau
Charles Marius Barbeau, , 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...

, who was collecting information on Tsimshian social organization. Clah's grandson, William Beynon
William Beynon
William Beynon was a hereditary chief from the Tsimshian nation and an oral historian who served as ethnographer, translator, and linguistic consultant to many anthropologists....

, served as interpreter and facilitator and went on to become a renowned ethnographic fieldworker in his own right. Clah died in Lax Kw'alaams the following year.

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