Alfred Dudoward

Who was Alfred Dudoward?

Alfred Dudoward was an hereditary chief from the Tsimshian nation in British Columbia, Canada, who was instrumental in establishing a Methodist mission in his community of Port Simpson, B.C.

Dudoward was a member of the Gitando tribe, one of the nine Tsimshian tribes based in Lax Kw'alaams. His mother was Mrs. Elizabeth Lawson, who held the hereditary name Diiks and was also known as Elizabeth Diex. Alfred was of mixed Native and white ancestry, his father having been Félix Dudoire/Dudouaire, a French Canadian tailor in the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Simpson. He succeeded to his maternal uncle Paul Sgagweet's hereditary name-title Sgagweet in 1887 upon his uncle's death, in accordance with the rules of matrilineal succession. This established him as chief of the Gitando tribe.

In 1871 Dudoward married Mary Catherine, later known as Kate Dudoward, who was the daughter of a Tsimshian mother and a non-Native customs officer named Holmes. Kate's mother had been killed the year before in an ambush en route from Victoria, B.C., to Lax Kw'alaams, where she had been traveling to assume a chieftainship for which there was no male heir. Kate assumed the chieftainship instead.