Nass River (B.C.)

The Nass River is a river in northern British Columbia, Canada. It flows 380 km (240 mi) from the Coast Mountains southwest to Nass Bay, a sidewater of Portland Inlet, which connects to the North Pacific Ocean via the Dixon Entrance. Nass Bay joins Portland Inlet just south of Observatory Inlet. The English name "Nass" is derived from the Tlingit name Naas which means "intestines" or "guts" in reference to the river's large food capacity in its fish (Naish & Story 1963; Leer, Hitch, & Ritter 2001). Can also be a Tlingit word for "food depot". Former spellings are Naas and Nasse. The Nisga'a name for the river is K'alii Aksim Lisims "Lisims (river name) Valley". The Gitxsan name is Git-Txaemsim meaning People of Txeemsim (Raven or Trickster); Xsitxemsem in the dialect of the Gitanyow). Lisims means "murky" in Nisga'a, referring to the river's silt-laden flow. The last 40 km (25 mi) of the river are navigable. The river is a commercially valuable salmon fishery. The basin of the Nass is the location of the first modern-day treaty settlement in British Columbia, between the government of that province and the Nisga'a Nation. The name Nisga'a is a reduced form of [naːsqaʔ], which is a loan from Tongass Tlingit, where it means "people of the Nass River". On the term: Archdeacon W. H. Collison, an authority on this subject, and who has resided at Kincolith, Nass bay, since 1883, states as follows: - "The term Nass is from the Tlingit tongue, and when, as was probable, the Tlingits from Tongass, at the entrance to Observatory inlet, met Captain Vancouver they gave him their name for the river, i.e., Nass, which means literally "the stomach," from the fact that their food supplies of salmon, oolachan.. a noted fishery."