Nass River
The Nass River flows west from the Coast Mountains into Portland Inlet, northeast of Prince Rupert. Nass River was labelled on early exploration maps as “Naas”, “Nasse”, and “Nas”.1 In this correspondence, Douglas refers to the Nass or Simpson's River.
In 1793, Captain George Vancouver visited the river and was told, likely by the Tlingit, that it was called “Ewen Nass”, with “ewen” meaning great or powerful.2 Nass comes from the Tlingit word meaning food basket, which refers to the abundance of salmon and eulachon in the river; the Nisga'a know the river as Lisims, which means murky.3
  • 1. Andrew Scott, The Encyclopedia of Raincoast Place Names (Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 2009), 420.
  • 2. Ibid.
  • 3. Ibid.
Mentions of this place in the documents
People in this document

Douglas, James

Vancouver, George

Places in this document

Fort Rupert, or T'sakis