 Port Simpson), B.C.He was probably the son of Arthur Wellington Clah, an hereditary chief and prominent early Christian convert who had taught the Tsimshian language to the Anglican lay missionary William Duncan in the 1850s.In 1903 Boas wrote to Clah, on the recommendation of his Tlingit-Kwakwaka'wakw informant George Hunt, expressing an interest in finding someone with whom to work on a description of Tsimshian culture.