The People of the Skeena: Tsimshian History and the Missions of William Duncan
By Margaret Ellsworth
Length4h 48m
About this audiobook
Among the Tsimshian, a name, a crest or a fishing station did not truly belong to a house until the claim had been witnessed and paid for at a feast. Chiefs held such things in trust for their houses, and the houses belonged to four great clans, Raven, Eagle, Killer Whale and Wolf. The people's name means, roughly, "inside the Skeena River," and for thousands of years they have lived at its mouth and along the coast beside it, where salmon and eulachon run thick in the silty water.
In 1857 a young English lay missionary named William Duncan arrived at the Hudson's Bay Company post of Fort Simpson. Five years later he led Tsimshian converts down the coast to found Metlakatla, a model Christian village with its own church, sawmill, store and rules. He later quarreled with his own church, the quarrel became a fight over who owned the land, and in 1887 some eight hundred Tsimshian followed him north to Annette Island, Alaska. Their story runs on through the potlatch ban, the epidemics, the long road toward aboriginal title in Canada and the return of feast law. The town they built across the border is today the only Indian reservation in Alaska.
Audiobook details
GenreHistory
Length4 hrs 48 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateSep 19, 2026
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Chapter 1: The River and the Sea
2Chapter 2: The Cedar and the Canoe
3Chapter 3: Feasts of Standing
4Chapter 4: Fort Simpson, 1857
5Chapter 5: Metlakatla on the Skeena
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6Chapter 6: The Schism
7Chapter 7: The Long Canoe Journey
8Chapter 8: Two Metlakatlas
9Chapter 9: The Potlatch Ban and the Law
10Chapter 10: The Great Dying and the Fever
11Chapter 11: The Long Road to Title
12Chapter 12: Feast Law in a New Century
13About the Author
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