Key moments in our post-contact history

The Ma’amtagila have existed since long before settlers arrived on this land. You can learn more about our history in Our Myths. These are some important events in our recent history, known as the Common Era.

Common ErA:
leaving Itsekin & hiladi

1890s
the move to kalugwis village

The main home villages of the Ma’amtagila are Itsekin and Hiladi. They were one of four sites originally recognized by the Joint Indian Reserve Commission (1876-88). Itsekin was called Etsekin Indian Reserve No. 1, though it was also known as Matilpi or Man-teel-th-pe Village.

During the late 19th century, most of the Ma’amtagila began moving from Itsekin and Hiladi to the nearby Tlowitsis village of Kalugwis. There are several factors that led to this move. The main was disease.

According to UBC geographer Cole Harris, the population of North America fell by 90% in the century following contact. Oral history suggests that the Ma’amtagila’s move from Matilpi village to Kalugwis was at least in part motivated by the attempt to escape the smallpox epidemics.

Cole Harris names the Johnstone Strait, where the Ma’amtagila territory is, as one of three epicentres of depopulation due to epidemiological catastrophe

In some cases, disease came before settlers, as with the smallpox presumably carried to the Salish Sea by Spanish explorers in 1782. Captain Vancouver reporting witnessing smallpox scars on men he met during initial voyages in the 1790s. This continued with a smallpox epidemic in 1862 that killed approximately 20,000 Indigenous people on Vancouver Island alone. Estimating the full extent of loss of life through disease is near impossible, as there is no reliable record of pre-contact population numbers, or even of those lost throughout the nineteenth century. We know that disease and death caused a massive upheaval in the lives and communities along the Salish Sea. 

In his testimony before the McKenna-McBride Commission in 1914, Matilpi Chief Lagis cited smallpox as the main reason for relocating. A secondary factor was the growing dependence on settler sites for survival. The Matilpi village was isolated than Kalugwis village, which was closer to the nations of Village Island (Mamalilikulla) and Gilford Island (Kwikwasut'inuxw).

Chief Lagis told the commission that Kalugwis was closer to the canneries where most of his people were then employed

It was also closer to Alert Bay, location of the region’s only residential school. Residential school attendance became mandatory in 1920, forcing many families to relocate closer to the school sites in order to facilitate visits to their children.