William Beynon
Encyclopedia
William Beynon 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.
Beynon was born 1888 in Victoria, British Columbia
, son of a Welsh steamer-captain ("Captain Billy" Beynon) and a Tsimshian woman of Nisga'a
ancestry. Although some sources describe Beynon as being himself Nisga'a or as being matrilineally Nisga'a, the truth is slightly more complicated. Beynon's maternal line leads back to members of the Laxgibuu
(Wolf clan) of the Nisga'a nation, but members of his line had been moved from the Nass River
to Port Simpson, British Columbia, the largest Canadian Tsimshian community, to fill a power vacuum there when nearly the entirety of the Gitlaan
tribe (one of Lax Kw'alaams's "Nine Tribes") migrated to Metlakatla, Alaska
, in 1887.
Beynon's maternal grandfather was the Tsimshian chief and Hudson's Bay Company
employee Arthur Wellington Clah
. Beynon was the only one of six brothers raised fluent in the Tsimshian language
. When Mrs. Beynon's only surviving brother, Albert Wellington, died in 1913, William moved to Port Simpson to assume his uncle's hereditary title, Gwisk'aayn, in accordance with Tsimshian rules of matrilineal succession, making him chief of the Gitlaan
tribe until his death.
Beginning in 1914, he was hired as a translator and transcriber by the anthropologist Marius Barbeau
, then in the employ of the Geological Survey of Canada. Barbeau and Beynon's series of interviews with Lax Kw'alaams chiefs and elders in 1914-15 has been called by the anthropologist Wilson Duff
"one of the most productive field seasons in the history of [North] American anthropology." In 1916 Beynon continued the same type of work, on his own, with the Tsimshians of Kitkatla
, B.C., a trip which was marred by a measles epidemic and being shipwrecked for ten days on an uninhabited island with Chief Seeks of the Kitkatla tribe. As Beynon increased his facility with phonetic transcription and with his own people's traditions -- which, as a formerly assimilated urbanite, he was quickly learning -- he began to work more and more under his own direction. In the 1920s he worked with Barbeau with elders from the Kitsumkalum
and Kitselas
Tsimshian and the Gitksan nation, in and around Terrace, British Columbia
.
From 1918 to 1924, Beynon worked extensively up and down the coast collecting museum artifacts for Sir Henry Wellcome, executor of the estate of William Duncan
, the founder of Metlakatla, Alaska -- where Beynon spent considerable time as Wellcome's local representative.
From 1929 until 1956, when he became ill, he continued to send Barbeau his own fieldnotes, covering every conceivable aspect of the culture and traditions of the Tsimshian, Gitksan, and Nisga'a peoples, with a special emphasis on carefully recorded oral narratives. His tour de force was a 200-page description of a four-day potlatch
and totem-pole-raising feast in the Gitksan village of Gitsegukla in 1945. This has recently been issued in book form.
Wilson Duff has called the resulting thousands of pages of Barbeau-Beynon fieldnotes, now housed at the Canadian Museum of Civilization
, "the most complete body of information on the social organization of any Indian nation".
In 1931, Beynon was one of the four founding members of the Native Brotherhood of British Columbia
, an indigenous-rights organization founded in Port Simpson.
From 1932 to 1939 Beynon sent the anthropologist Franz Boas
approximately 250 transcribed narratives which have become the monumental "Beynon Manuscripts," now housed by the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia.
In the early 1930s Beynon facilitated the immensely productive Port Simpson fieldwork of Boas's student Viola Garfield
. Many pages of Garfield's voluminous field notebooks are actually filled out in Beynon's handwriting.
In 1953 Beynon worked with the anthropologist Philip Drucker
, of the Smithsonian Institution
. For Drucker Beynon wrote his own, as yet unpublished, synthesis of the complex lineage histories of the Tsimshianic-speaking peoples.
Beynon died in 1958 in Prince Rupert, B.C. Although he had spent most of his life earning his living in canning and fishing, like most of his fellow Tsimshians, he made as large and valuable a contribution to Northwest Coast ethnology as any professional anthropologist. His published and unpublished works continue to be an invaluable resource for the Tsimshian, Gitksan, and Nisga'a peoples.
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 (British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
, Canada) and an oral historian who served as ethnographer, translator, and linguistic consultant to many anthropologists.
Beynon was born 1888 in Victoria, British Columbia
Victoria, British Columbia
Victoria is the capital city of British Columbia, Canada and is located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island off Canada's Pacific coast. The city has a population of about 78,000 within the metropolitan area of Greater Victoria, which has a population of 360,063, the 15th most populous Canadian...
, son of a Welsh steamer-captain ("Captain Billy" Beynon) and a Tsimshian woman of 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...
ancestry. Although some sources describe Beynon as being himself Nisga'a or as being matrilineally Nisga'a, the truth is slightly more complicated. Beynon's maternal line leads back to members 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 nation, but members of his line had been moved from the Nass River
Nass River
The Nass River is a river in northern British Columbia, Canada. It flows from the Coast Mountains southwest to Nass Bay, a sidewater of Portland Inlet, which connects to the North Pacific Ocean via the Dixon Entrance...
to Port Simpson, British Columbia, the largest Canadian Tsimshian community, to fill a power vacuum there when nearly the entirety of the Gitlaan
Gitlaan
The Gitlaan 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...
tribe (one of Lax Kw'alaams's "Nine Tribes") migrated to Metlakatla, Alaska
Metlakatla, Alaska
Metlakatla is a census-designated place on Annette Island in Prince of Wales-Hyder Census Area, Alaska, United States. At the 2000 census the population was 1,375.- History :...
, in 1887.
Beynon's maternal grandfather was the Tsimshian chief and 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...
employee Arthur Wellington Clah
Arthur Wellington Clah
Arthur Wellington Clah was a Canadian First Nations employee of the Hudson's Bay Company at Lax Kw'alaams , B.C., who was also a hereditary chief in the Tsimshian nation, an anthropological informant, and an extensive diarist....
. Beynon was the only one of six brothers raised fluent in 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...
. When Mrs. Beynon's only surviving brother, Albert Wellington, died in 1913, William moved to Port Simpson to assume his uncle's hereditary title, Gwisk'aayn, in accordance with Tsimshian rules of matrilineal succession, making him chief of the Gitlaan
Gitlaan
The Gitlaan 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...
tribe until his death.
Beginning in 1914, he was hired as a translator and transcriber by 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...
, then in the employ of the Geological Survey of Canada. Barbeau and Beynon's series of interviews with Lax Kw'alaams chiefs and elders in 1914-15 has been called by the anthropologist Wilson Duff
Wilson Duff
Wilson Duff was a Canadian archaeologist, cultural anthropologist, and museum curator.He is remembered for his research on First Nations cultures of the Northwest Coast, notably the Tsimshian, Gitxsan, and Haida, and especially for his interest in their plastic arts, such as totem poles...
"one of the most productive field seasons in the history of [North] American anthropology." In 1916 Beynon continued the same type of work, on his own, with the Tsimshians of Kitkatla
Kitkatla
The Kitkatla are one of the 14 bands of the Tsimshian nation of the Canadian province of British Columbia, and inhabit a village, also called Kitkatla , on Dolphin Island, a small island just by Porcher Island off the coast of northern B.C. Because of this they have sometimes been called Porcher...
, B.C., a trip which was marred by a measles epidemic and being shipwrecked for ten days on an uninhabited island with Chief Seeks of the Kitkatla tribe. As Beynon increased his facility with phonetic transcription and with his own people's traditions -- which, as a formerly assimilated urbanite, he was quickly learning -- he began to work more and more under his own direction. In the 1920s he worked with Barbeau with elders from the Kitsumkalum
Kitsumkalum
Kitsumkalum is one of the 14 bands of the Tsimshian nation of British Columbia, Canada, and is also the name of their Indian Reserve just west of the city of Terrace, British Columbia, where the Kitsumkalum River flows into the Skeena River...
and Kitselas
Kitselas
Kitselas, Kitsalas or Gits'ilaasü are one of the 14 tribes of the Tsimshian nation of British Columbia, in northwestern Canada. The original name Gits'ilaasü means "people of the canyon." The tribe is situated at Kitselas, British Columbia, at the upper end of Kitselas Canyon, which is on the...
Tsimshian and the Gitksan nation, in and around Terrace, British Columbia
Terrace, British Columbia
Terrace is a city on the Skeena River in British Columbia, Canada. The Kitselas people, a tribe of the Tsimshian Nation, have lived in the Terrace area for thousands of years. The community population fell between 2001 and 2006 from 12,109 with a regional population of 19,980 to 11,320 and...
.
From 1918 to 1924, Beynon worked extensively up and down the coast collecting museum artifacts for Sir Henry Wellcome, executor of the estate of 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...
, the founder of Metlakatla, Alaska -- where Beynon spent considerable time as Wellcome's local representative.
From 1929 until 1956, when he became ill, he continued to send Barbeau his own fieldnotes, covering every conceivable aspect of the culture and traditions of the Tsimshian, Gitksan, and Nisga'a peoples, with a special emphasis on carefully recorded oral narratives. His tour de force was a 200-page description of a four-day 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...
and totem-pole-raising feast in the Gitksan village of Gitsegukla in 1945. This has recently been issued in book form.
Wilson Duff has called the resulting thousands of pages of Barbeau-Beynon fieldnotes, now housed at the Canadian Museum of Civilization
Canadian Museum of Civilization
The Canadian Museum of Civilization is Canada's national museum of human history and the most popular and most-visited museum in Canada....
, "the most complete body of information on the social organization of any Indian nation".
In 1931, Beynon was one of the four founding members of the Native Brotherhood of British Columbia
Native Brotherhood of British Columbia
The Native Brotherhood of British Columbia is a province-wide First Nations rights organization founded in the Tsimshian community of Port Simpson , British Columbia, in 1931. The Tsimshian ethnologist and chief William Beynon and Chief William Jeffrey were among its four founding members...
, an indigenous-rights organization founded in Port Simpson.
From 1932 to 1939 Beynon sent 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...
approximately 250 transcribed narratives which have become the monumental "Beynon Manuscripts," now housed by the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia.
In the early 1930s Beynon facilitated the immensely productive Port Simpson fieldwork of Boas's student Viola Garfield
Viola Garfield
Viola E. Garfield was an American anthropologist best known for her work on the social organization and plastic arts of the Tsimshian nation in British Columbia and Alaska.-Early life:...
. Many pages of Garfield's voluminous field notebooks are actually filled out in Beynon's handwriting.
In 1953 Beynon worked with the anthropologist Philip Drucker
Philip Drucker
Philip Drucker was an American anthropologist who specialized in Native American peoples of the Northwest Coast of North America.In the 1940s he worked for the Bureau of American Ethnology in Washington, D.C.-Bibliography:...
, of the Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...
. For Drucker Beynon wrote his own, as yet unpublished, synthesis of the complex lineage histories of the Tsimshianic-speaking peoples.
Beynon died in 1958 in Prince Rupert, B.C. Although he had spent most of his life earning his living in canning and fishing, like most of his fellow Tsimshians, he made as large and valuable a contribution to Northwest Coast ethnology as any professional anthropologist. His published and unpublished works continue to be an invaluable resource for the Tsimshian, Gitksan, and Nisga'a peoples.
Works
- Anderson, Margaret Seguin, and Marjorie HalpinMarjorie HalpinMarjorie Halpin was a U.S.-Canadian anthropologist best known for her work on Northwest Coast art and culture, especially the Tsimshian and Gitksan peoples.She earned an M.A. from George Washington University in 1963...
(eds.) (2000) Potlatch at Gitsegukla: William Beynon's 1945 Field Notebooks. Vancouver: UBC Press. - Beynon, William (1941) "The Tsimshians of Metlakatla, Alaska." American Anthropologist (new series), vol. 43, pp. 83-88.
- Beynon, William (1999) "Nda ckshun Tckaimsom dis Laggabula -- When Tckaimson and Laggabula Gambled." In: Alaska Native Writers, Storytellers & Orators: The Expanded Edition, ed. by Ronald Spatz, Jeane Breinig, and Patricia H. Partnow, pp. 44-47. Anchorage: University of Alaska.
- MacDonald, George F.George F. MacDonaldGeorge F. MacDonald is a Canadian anthropologist and museum director who pioneered archaeological and ethnohistorical research on the Tsimshian and Gitksan and was the director of the Canadian Museum of Civilization from 1983 to 1998....
, and John J. CoveJohn J. CoveJohn J. Cove is a Canadian anthropologist known for his work with the Gitksan First Nation of northern British Columbia.He was a Professor of anthropology and sociology at Carleton University in Ottawa....
(eds.) (1987) Tsimshian Narratives. Collected by Marius Barbeau and William Beynon. (Canadian Museum of Civilization Mercury Series, Directorate Paper 3.) 2 vols. Ottawa: Directorate, Canadian Museum of Civilization.
Sources
- "B.C. Indian Authority Dies" (obituary for William Beynon). Vancouver, B.C., Province, February 11, 1958, p. 28.
- Cove, John J. (1985) A Detailed Inventory of the Barbeau Northwest Coast Files. (National Museum of Man Mercury Series, Canadian Centre for Folk Culture Studies, Paper 54.) Ottawa: National Museums of Canada.
- Duff, Wilson (1964) "Contributions of Marius Barbeau to West Coast Ethnology." Anthropologica (new series), vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 63-96.
- Garfield, Viola E. (1939) "Tsimshian Clan and Society." University of Washington Publications in Anthropology, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 167-340.
- Halpin, Marjorie M. (1978) "William Beynon, Ethnographer, Tsimshian, 1888-1958." In American Indian Intellectuals: 1976 Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society, ed. by Margot Liberty, pp. 140-156. St. Paul: West Publishing Company.
- Nowry, Laurence (1995) Marius Barbeau, Man of Mana: A Biography. Toronto: N.C. Press.