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