forced to depart without having set foot on Haida Gwaii. The Haida conducted regular trade with Russian, Spanish, British, and American fur traders and whalers. According to sailing records, they diligently maintained strong trade relationships with Westerners, coastal people, and among themselves. Trade for sea-otter pelts was initiated by British Captain George Dixon with the Haida in 1787. The Haida did well for themselves in this industry and until the mid-1800s they were at the centre of the profitable China sea-otter trade. Although they had gone on expeditions as far as Washington State, at first they had minimal confrontations with Europeans. Between 1780 and 1830, the Haida turned their aggression towards European and American traders. Among the dozens of ships the tribe captured were the Eleanor and the Susan Sturgis. The tribe made use of the weapons they so acquired, using cannons and canoe-mounted swivel guns. 19th century British colonial authorities formally annexed Haida Gwaii in 1853 by establishing the Colony of the Queen Charlotte Islands. It was later integrated into the Colony of British Columbia in 1858. Colonial authorities backed their claims using gunboat diplomacy, both in Haida Gwaii and more broadly throughout northeastern Pacific coastal indigenous title territories. Also in 1857, the was sent from Seattle to nearby Port Gamble, where indigenous raiding parties made up of Haida (from territory claimed by the British) and Tongass (from territory claimed by the Russians) had been attacking and enslaving the Coast Salish people there. When the Haida and Tongass (sea lion tribe Tlingit) warriors refused to acknowledge American jurisdiction and to hand over those among them who had attacked the Puget Sound communities, a battle ensued in which 26 natives and one government soldier were killed. In the aftermath of this, Colonel Isaac Ebey, a U.S. military officer and the first settler on Whidbey Island, was shot and beheaded on 11 August 1857 by a small Tlingit group from Kake, Alaska, in retaliation for the killing of a respected Kake chief in the raid the year before. Ebey's scalp was purchased from the Kake by an American trader in 1860. The smallpox epidemic of 1862 The 1862 Pacific Northwest smallpox epidemic began in March 1862 when a steamship called Brother Jonathan arrived in Victoria from San Francisco containing a passenger infected with smallpox, 1862 March 26. At the time thousands of indigenous people lived in villages outside the walls of