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. The name Gitlaan means literally "people of the Stern Canoe." Their traditional territory includes the watershed of the Zimacord River, a tributary of the Skeena River. An area of the riverbank there resembled from the distance a canoe-stern, hence the name of the tribe. Since 1834, the Gitlaan have been based at Lax Kw'alaams, when a Hudson's Bay Company fort was established there. In 1887, the great majority of the Gitlaan tribe moved from Lax Kw'alaams and Metlakatla, B.C., with the Anglican lay ministerWilliam Duncan to found the new community of "New" Metlakatla, Alaska. However, a small Gitlaan contingent remained behind in B.C. In the absence, though, of surviving members in Lax Kw'alaams of the House of Gwiskyaan, the royal line that traditionally had provided successors to the chieftainship of the Gitlaan tribe, a Nisga'a family from a related Laxgibuu house-group moved to Lax Kw'alaams to become the new royal house of the Gitlaan. This matriline included or came to include sons of the Gispaxlo'ots house-chief and Hudson's BayCompany employee Arthur Wellington Clah, including Albert Wellington, who served as chief of the Gitlaan with the name Gwisk'aayn until his death in 1913. Wellington's sister's son, William Beynon, who was to become the renowned ethnologist, moved from Victoria, B.C., to Lax Kw'alaams at that time to preside over Wellington's funerary rites and assume the title Gwisk'aayn and with it the chieftainship of the Gitlaan, in accordance with Tsimshian rules of matrilineal succession, though there was initial opposition based on the fact that Beynon had become "enfranchised" as a Canadian citizen. Beynon was chief of the Gitlaan until his death in 1958. The name Niisłaganuus has since been restored to use in replacement of Gwiskyaan. Chief Niisłaganuus was Henry Helin, then Henry's son Barry Helin, and presently Barry's nephew Randy Dudoward Sr. In 1935 William Beynon recorded that Gitlaan people in Lax Kw'alaams included 4 members of the Gispwudwada, 8 member of the Ganhada, and 9 members of the Laxgibuu, each clan being represented by only one house-group.
