Abstract

This paper presents some of the results of a recording and conservation project at a little known, historic cemetery located at the mouth of the Nass River, 100 km north of Prince Rupert, B.C. The cemetery was established in conjunction with the founding of Kincolith Mission in 1867 by the London-based Church Missionary Society. With the introduction of Christianity and the rituals of Christian burial, traditional Nisga'a interment practices were deemed unacceptable. The ideals of Victorian England and the deeply held Judeo/Christian concept of a bond between the body and soul, even after death, necessitated a sanctioned resting place for those who had 'died in the faith'. Accordingly, the Kincolith Cemetery was established as 'God's half-acre' for the community, and it has functioned as such up to the present day. The first portion of the paper examines both the spatial and temporal distributions of grave markers at the cemetery. In traditional Nisga'a society, descent and kin recognition are centered around matrilineal clans organized into larger phratries. At Kincolith, the resident missionaries began converting, baptizing, and re-naming individuals according to the protocol of the Church Missionary Society. A Victorian, patrilineal system of descent and kin reckoning was imposed on the residents of the community. Assuming that individuals are buried beside those whom they consider to be their kin, the distribution of grave markers at the Kincolith Cemetery provides an opportunity to gauge the effect of this reorganization on traditional Nisga'a society. The second part of the paper explores the use of grave markers as surrogate mortuary poles which display customary rights to rank and privilege. Many of the grave markers at the Kincolith Cemetery embody traditional, high ranking, clan crest names in their construction, thus demonstrating and validating rights of possession and inheritance.