According to
George F. MacDonald, basing his estimation off of the accounts given by informants to
John R. Swanton during the 1900-1901
Jesup Expedition, the town of Tanu likely did not exist earlier than 1735, approximating that the town was in existence for 110 to 165 years before the time of the village's final resident town chief, G̲itkun John Williams, at the turn of the 20th century. The first settlers at Tanu arrived from Cumshewa Inlet, of the two closely aligned Eagle lineages, Those-Born-at-
Skedans (
K’uuna) and the
Djigua-Town-People – among the most powerful Eagle families on the islands at the time. The first town chief of Tanu, Xe-u, was a member of the former. The village was recorded to have a population of 545 inhabitants at around 1840 by
John Work of the
Hudson's Bay Company, making it one of the largest in the archipelago. The decision to relocate was made that year, with the surviving population moving north and establishing the village of
New Clew, near the ancestral ‘old story town’ of Djigua. The new village was occupied until 1897; the residents then followed the island-wide consolidation of the Haida people to
Graham Island, and settled at the southern town of
Skidegate. Visiting the village in 1883,
James G. Swan recorded that there were thirty-one mortuary poles and fifteen mortuary houses, far outnumbering the remaining frontal house poles and longhouses. MacDonald speculates that soon before the relocation to New Clew, the mortuary remains of more than fifty individuals were interred in a mass gravesite at the prompting of Christian missionaries. == Village site ==