Constance Cox

Who was Constance Cox?

Constance Cox was a Canadian schoolteacher of part Tlingit ancestry who lived and taught with the Gitksan First Nation in northwestern British Columbia and served as interpreter for several anthropologists.

She was born to Thomas and Margaret Hankin in Hazelton, B.C., and was considered, despite her mixed ancestry, the first white child born in that community. She was baptised by William Ridley, Bishop of the Church of England's Caledonia diocese. Her father, Thomas Hankin, sponsored a $3,000 potlatch feast to present the infant Constance to the large population of Gitksans who had come to live at Hazelton. Hankin, a former Hudson's Bay Company employee, had founded Hazelton on his English godmother's legacy, built a store there, and also provided founding investments in the cannery communities of Inverness, and Port Essington, B.C. Margaret Hankin was Tlingit on her mother's side, while her father was an HBC employee. Margaret spoke seven different First Nations languages and passed much of this profiency on to Constance.