After European contact, which included Captain Cook’s arrival in 1778, English, French, Spanish, Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese and Portuguese were gradually added to the mix. On the Pacific Coast at the time, there were dozens of First Nations languages, including Haida, Tlingit, Tsimshian, Nuu-chah-nulth, Haisla, Heiltsuk, Kwakwaka'wakw, Salishan and Chinook. “I think it comes from here,” she said, gesturing toward the rocky cliffs and dense green forest.Ĭhinook Wawa was developed to ease trade in a place where there was no common language. When I asked if they knew where the word Skookumchuck comes from, there was a puzzled silence.

They’re not entirely correct – historically, skookum meant strong or impressive, and chuck meant water (saltchuck meant the sea), but once words become part of a local lingo they can change with time. Big and awesome.” And chuck, I asked? “That’s the ocean,” they replied. Almost in chorus, an entire crowd of kayakers answered. Some Chinook Wawa still exists in place names and slang, but the meanings are so deeply buried in Pacific Northwest culture that the words come with more of a feeling than a definition, and most residents can’t say which language the terms evolved from.Ĭurious what these visitors to the Skookumchuck Narrows might know about the site’s name, I waited for a Vancouver kayaker named Jill to step away from the furious water, then asked if she knew what Skookum means. It was used so extensively that it was the language of courts and newspapers in the Pacific Northwest from about 1800 to 1905. Known as Chinook Jargon or Chinook Wawa (‘wawa’ meaning talk), this was a trade, or pidgin, language that combined simplified words from the First Nations languages of Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka), Chinook and others, as well as from French and English. I later learned that words like potlatch, saltchuck, kanaka, skookum, sticks, muckamuck, tyee and cultus were from a near-forgotten language that was once spoken by more than 100,000 people, from Alaska to the California border, for almost 200 years. They were terms I always thought were common English, but they turned out to be unknown beyond the boundaries of my Pacific Coast home. Like many from British Columbia, I grew up with an easy familiarity with a handful of strange words.

Australia’s ancient language shaped by sharks.

A 500-year-old fight to save a language.

With the exception of the Makah and a few of their neighbors, they were the only Native Americans on the Pacific coast who hunted whales. The so-called Nootka hats of woven fiber were common among other tribes of this area.

In 1991 there were some 4,000 Nootka in 15 bands in Canada. Traditional Nootka culture was fundamentally that of the Northwest Coast area (see under Natives, North American) they fished for salmon, lived in long wooden houses, and created elaborate totem poles. The Nootka proper are a small group on the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, but the name is also used to refer to the Aht Confederacy, which formerly included more than 20 tribes. Nootka no͝ot´kə, Native North Americans whose language belongs to the Wakashan branch of the Algonquian-Wakashan linguistic stock (see Native American languages).

Nootka language