The first settlement of Europeans on Tsimshian territory occurred in 1834 when the chief of the Gispaxlo'ots tribe invited the Hudson's Bay Company to build their fort at Laxhlgu'alaams, just north of the mouth of the Skeena. From the outset, the HBC depended on the Tsimshian for most of their food and exchanged trade goods for hundreds of bundles of dried salmon annually, well into the middle of the century.

In the 1870s, small canneries began to appear in isolated areas at the mouths of the Nass and Skeena Rivers. While their presence on Tsimshian territory was contested, the canneries presented an opportunity for the Tsimshian to trade and sell fish from their fishing grounds.

The Tsimshian continued to travel to their summer fishing villages where they not only harvested their winter supply of salmon but also fished for the canneries. The two villages pictured here were in the territory of the Kitkatla tribe, south of the mouth of the Skeena River, the first one on Banks Island, the other at Lowe Inlet.

Around the same time as the canneries started to appear, BC became a province of Canada, and the federal Fisheries Ministry began to issue dictates concerning the Northwest Coast fishery. The Minister refused to acknowledge the exclusive fishing sites of the Tsimshian and Gitksan lineages. While his position did not change what was happening on the ground at that time, it was met with resistance - even within the government - and the legality of it is contested to this day.

The situation that developed in 1890 at Lowe Inlet illustrates what began to take place on the ground as the canneries became larger and developed their own fishing fleets.

Fisheries Guardian M.K. Morrison reported that the Kitkatla tribe of the Tsimshian were threatening to cut cannery boat nets at Lowe Inlet if they persisted in fishing. Chief Seeks (Shakes) had told Morrison:

"I do not want any Whitemen to fish here please tell your chief I have fished at Low's Inlet for 8 years, it is the principal support of myself and people, I do not want to make trouble, but will do my best to hold the exclusive right for myself and people to fish this Low Inlet water."

Morrison also reported that Kitkatla on Banks Island had threatened to shoot anybody who lowered a net into their waters. Not wanting to provoke further a violent confrontation, the Lowe's Inlet Canning Company purchased fish directly from Native fishers, in doing so paying more then it would have paid employees to catch the fish, and shipped 6000 cases of salmon. The canneries wanted greater control over the resource however, and the Ministry of Fisheries began efforts to legislate aboriginal title out of existence.

As the canneries grew in size and importance in the new BC economy, they also became an integral part of the Tsimshian and Gitksan economy. While the Tsimshian and Gitksan continued to sell fish from their fishing sites, some also worked in the canneries' gillnet fishing fleets. The fishermen were towed out to fishing grounds in skiffs, 18' to 26' long equipped with oars and a sprit sail, where they remained fishing for 5 days. Walter Wicks, a newcomer to the coast who lived and worked with the Tsimshian, described his memories.

"The boats were manned by two men, one casting the net over the stern while the other rowed until the full two hundred fathoms of net was laid out on the water. When it came time to pick up, the man rowing would back the boat toward the net, while his partner hauled in.. Often in stormy weather or thick fog, when the tugs would be unable to find us, we would row or sail for shelter to some anchorage. At the age of thirteen I have pulled a heavily loaded fish boat for nine hours in the night."

His comments also reflect conservation issues that developed as a result of the changing nature of the fishery.

"In one day's catch I have seen five thousand salmon heaved overboard because there was not time to can them before contamination set in. Imagine a fisherman hauling in five hundred humpback salmon in one night's drift and be obliged to heave four hundred of them overboard, retaining only one hundred to deliver to the cannery, and all this work for the fabulous sum of $1.00 to be divided between two men."