Opitsaht


Opitsaht, spelled also as Opitsat and Opitsitah, is a community of the Tla-o-qui-aht people of the Nuu-chah-nulth nation, located at the SW end of Meares Island in Clayoquot Sound. During the era of the Maritime Fur Trade, Opitsaht was the seat of Wickaninnish, chief of the Tla-o-qui-aht, and contained 200 ornately carved buildings typical of Nuu-chah-nulth villages. John Kendrick made a strong alliance with Wickaninnish in the summer of 1791. Although Wickaninnish remained an ally of Kendrick, the good feelings towards Americans that Kendrick had built were ruined by Kendrick's former partner Robert Gray. The original village of Opitsaht was lost when Gray ordered it destroyed by the cannons of the Columbia Rediviva as part of a falling-out with the Tla-o-qui-aht when Gray evacuated his erstwhile "fort" nearby on Meares Island, known as Fort Defiance. Today Opitsaht is one of the main villages governed by the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nations, the band government of the Tla-o-qui-aht people.
The population of Opitsat Indian Reserve No. 1, which is named after the village and is an official land status used by Statistics Canada as a census area, was 174 at the Census of 2006.