Cha'atl is located on Skidegate Inlet and is partly exposed to swells from the open Pacific Ocean. The shoreline is steep and mostly rocky, with only a few places to draw up large canoes, but the site does enjoy a southern exposure and is far enough up the channel for protection from storms. During the early nineteenth century, the town was a large community: John Work's census counted 561 people, making it the third-largest community on Haida Gwaii after Masset and Skidegate. The population consisted of both Raven and Eagle families, who lived in about three dozen houses scattered in several rows.

While the location of Cha'atl gave it ideal access to passing trading vessels, the switch in trade after 1834 to the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Simpson put the town into decline. The town chief of Cha'atl was Wadatstaia, brother of Chief Skotsgai of Kaisun. The discovery of gold on the islands in 1849 led to a gold rush that sustained Cha'atl until the 1860s, when devastating epidemics greatly depopulated the community. The inhabitants began to move to the eastern end of Skidegate Inlet in the 1850s, but Cha'atl was still used by Haida seal hunters until after the turn of the century.

At the end of the nineteenth century, Charles F. Newcombe made a complete photographic and oral history record of Cha'atl and collected many artifacts that are now scattered among museums around the world. The site was by then heavily overgrown with only four small fish camp houses still habitable. The tangled growth was an extra inducement to the British Columbia artist Emily Carr, who painted one of her most famous Haida scenes from the beach at Cha'atl village.

Although a large fire destroyed part of the town after George M. Dawson's visit in 1878, it is still remarkable today for its well-carved house frontal poles. Unfortunately, none of the magnificent free-standing poles were removed to museums, and today only one, which belonged to the late Solomon Wilson of Skidegate, still survives.

On this mortuary box from Cha'atl village, a particularly impish- looking Raven peers from between its wings. The box may date from the smallpox epidemic that swept the village in the 1860s. Collected in 1897 by Charles F. Newcombe. CMC VII-B-547 (S85-3278)