Henry W. Tate

Who was Henry W. Tate?

Henry Wellington Tate was an oral historian from the Tsimshian First Nation in British Columbia, Canada, best known for his work with the anthropologist Franz Boas.

Little is known of his early life in Lax Kw'alaams, B.C. He was probably the son of Arthur Wellington Clah, an hereditary chief and prominent early Christian convert who had taught the Tsimshian language to the Anglican lay missionary William Duncan in the 1850s.

In 1903 Boas wrote to Clah, on the recommendation of his Tlingit-Kwakwaka'wakw informant George Hunt, expressing an interest in finding someone with whom to work on a description of Tsimshian culture. Clah turned the correspondence over to Tate, and Tate began to send Boas information, especially transcribed oral narratives, through the mail. It seems certain that Boas and Tate never met face to face. The result was Boas's long 1916 monograph Tsimshian Mythology. When that volume appeared, Boas wrote in its preface that "Mr. Tate died in April 1914."

One of the few insights into Tate's life in Tsimshian Mythology comes in a discussion of clan-to-clan adoption, citing Tate's adoption from the Laxsgiik into the Gispwudwada of the Gispaxlo'ots tribe by his maternal grandfather, and his subsequent adoption of his own daughter into the Gispwudwada as well.