Grant settled in the Sooke area that same year. Nitinaht-speaking Indians employed by Grant told him that the “Natives around Patchana…or Pt. San Juan…are numerous, those at Nittinat [Nitinat Lake area] still more so.” No actual estimates of the numbers of Ditidaht or Pacheenaht were given at this time.
James Douglas compiled a census in 1853, based on data obtained in previous years from various sources. In the Douglas census, the Indians of this region were identified only as “Netenet” [Nitinaht] and their place of habitation was identified only as “Point San Juan” [presumably, Port San Juan]. This “Netenet” census enumerated 250 “Men with Beards,” 258 women, 29 boys, and 2 girls, totalling 539.
Two years after this Douglas census, additional data were provided by Peter Francis and W.E. Banfield. In a letter written to Governor Douglas in July 1855, Francis and Banfield said they had been trading with Indians for the past 12 months along the west coast of Vancouver Island. They estimated the total population of the “Nettinets” to be 800 including men, women, and children. Of this population, 250 were said to be “able bodied men.”
In 1858, Banfield identified the “Pachinett” as “a branch of the Netinett tribe.” He said the Nitinahts lived between “Ohiat head” [Cape Beale, west from Pachena Point and Pachena Bay] and Port San Juan. Banfield stated there were “about five hundred” Nitinahts but only “about twenty” Pacheenahts living at Port San Juan. A separate Banfield census, likely made in 1858 or 1859, stated this figure of 20 Pacheenahts referred only to adult males, representing one third of the population. Similarly, a figure of 200 Nitinahts given in this same census was also said to be one third of the population. This suggests, for the late 1850s, a Ditidaht population of 600 and a Pacheenaht population of 60. Robert Brown stated that in 1863-1864, the “Nettinahts…had four hundred fighting men” and added that “a few years earlier they were estimated at a thousand.” Brown distinguished the “Nettinahts” from the “Pachenats” whose population in 1863, he stated, “did not exceed sixty.”
Indian Affairs records beginning in the early 1880s provide additional estimates of the Ditidaht population. Harry Guillod, Indian Agent for the west coast of Vancouver Island, reported that when he took a census in the summer of 1881, there were “90 Nitinat men” of a total population of 280 Nitinats “living in four rancheries [settlements] between Cape Beale and Pacheena” [Port San Juan]. Guillod identified the “Pacheena” [Pacheenaht] Indians separately. Subsequent estimates of the Ditidaht population included totals of 271 in 1883, and 220 in 1889. In a census prepared in 1914 for the Royal Commission on Indian Affairs, 40 Ditidaht families were enumerated, with a total population of 155.
The present-day Ditidaht Nation population is about 350, of whom approximately 120 live on our Malachan Indian Reserve at Nitinat Lake. We maintain an elementary school for our younger children and offer them instruction in Ditidaht language and culture. We are preparing curriculum materials to teach our children their history.