The Gitlan had village sites at Venn Pass and around the harbour in addition to their main region on the Skeena River.
Bishop Ridley had been assigned by the Church Missionary Society to the seat of the New Caledonia diocese to be located at Metlakatla, BC.
A Nisga'a family from a related Laxgibuu (Wolf clan) House group was married into the Gitlan.
This matriline included or came to include sons of the Gispaxlo'ots House chief and Hudson's Bay Company employee Arthur Wellington Clah, and Albert Wellington, who served as chief of the Gitlan Laxibou with the name Gwisk'aayn until his death in 1913.
Wellington's sister's son, William Beynon, who was to become the renowned ethnologist, moved from Victoria, B.C., to Lax Kw'alaams at that time to preside over Wellington's funerary rites and assume the title Gwisk'aayn and with it the Laxibou chieftainship, in accordance with Tsimshian rules of matrilineal succession, though there was initial hesitation because Beynon had become "enfranchised" as a Canadian citizen.