A decaying totem pole was the only sign of an old Ahousaht village that stood here two hundred years ago.

The Cuttle Islands is a group of small islands, just south of the Acous Peninsula, where an Ahousaht village once stood. From our campsite on one of the islands, it was a short paddle over to the former village site, but to our disappointment, the longhouses that once stood there have completely disappeared. We only found one decaying totem pole lying on the ground. Adjacent to the Acous Peninsula is Battle Bay, where the Ahousaht once fought a decisive battle with the Otsosaht people. So many Otsosaht perished that the tribe became nearly extinct. Alan D. MacMillan, the author "Since the Time of the Transformers, the Ancient Heritage of the Nuu-chah-nulth, Ditidaht and Makah", writes: "Warfare also played a major role... Often hostilities were driven by a desire to appropriate the territorial holdings of another group, particularly if these contained such vital economic resources as rivers with salmon runs. The conquerors killed or enslaved the area's occupants and took possession of the territory. A well-documented example of such wars of conquest is the expansion of the Ahousaht, formerly restricted to a small area of the outer coast, who, in the early nineteenth century, nearly exterminated the Otsosaht and absorbed their territory along with its rich salmon streams."