Northern Chinook Jargon “pak” for “carrying a load”
There’s a great chance this is partial proof that Chinuk Wawa is a gold-rush language of British Columbia! (Hat tip to linguist William Turkel.)
The western North American English word pack, in the 1800s, meant ‘to transport a heavy load by horse or human power’, and also ‘a heavy load being carried in that way’.
Horse packing (image credit: Nice Art Gallery)
As we’ll see from one example below, it was clearly connected with the gold-rush era of the mid-1850s+ for British Columbia residents.
At that time, horse packing was a major service provided by Indigenous people, and Mexicans, for a fee.
Bill Turkel wrote an article 20 years ago demonstrating that Chinook Jargon wasn’t really present in BC until those gold rushes. I’ve echoed his reasoning and amplified it over the years.
Here, from a number of issues of the great CJ newspaper “Kamloops Wawa” (‘Kamloops Speaks’), are illustrations of this word’s use in northern-dialect Jargon.
The word turns up in exactly the same distribution as in English. It can be a (transitive) verb all by itself. (Notably, not requiring the typical Jargon prefix mamuk- to function that way). And it can be a noun.
Typical of words borrowed into the northern dialect from English, pak has a more specific meaning than any previously existing synonyms such as lolo — which meant any kind of ‘carrying’. (Also, lolo couldn’t be a noun. )
Here, you’re also going to see other words loaned from locally spoken 1800s English, such as bush ‘the bush (wilderness)’, pisis ‘pieces’, etc., as well as the Mexican Spanish word mula ‘mules’.
Pak as a transitive verb:
Shusta kanamokst iaka tanas klaska aias
‘Justin with his child were very’klahawiam kopa oihat: saia ukuk Amiin tawn kah
‘pitiful on the journey; that Amiens town that’klaska klatwa: aias masashi ukuk oihat
‘they were going to was far away; that road was very awful;’klaska pak klaska pasisi, klaska makmak, klaska
‘they packed their blankets (and) food on their backs; they’kamp kopa bush…’
‘camped in the bush…’
— Kamloops Wawa issue #98, 01 October 1893, page 159
and
…iaka mimlus ukuk musmus, wik kata iaka
‘…that cow is dead, it can’t’kuli. Ikta wik maika mash [Ø] kopa iht lisak
‘walk. Why don’t you put it in a sack’pi maika pak iaka. Ilip mamuk kyut iaka kopa
‘and you can pack it. First cut it up into’tanas ayu pisis…
‘several pieces…’
— Kamloops Wawa issue #175a – April 1899, page 46
and
Kanawi klaska kakshit klaska kot, pi
‘All of them tore up their coats, and’klaska wiht pak klaska iktas kopa klaska
‘they also packed their belonging on their’mula, pi klaska kilapai kopa tawn.
‘mules, and they went back to town.’
— Kamloops Wawa issue #201 – June 1902, page 134
asdf
Iaka mitlait iht skukum
‘He had a strong’strap pus lolo iaka iktas pus iaka kuli lipii kopa oihat,
‘strap to carry his belongings when he was walking on the trail,’pi iaka lolo ukuk til iktas kopa iaka latit kakwa Tomson sawash
‘and he could carry those heavy things with his head like the Thompson Indians’ankati pus klaska pak ayu iktas kopa tkop man.
‘used to when they packed a lot of things for White people.’
— Kamloops Wawa #211, September 1904, page 13
Pak as a noun:
Kopa oihat
‘Along the way’iaka nanich iht tanas kluchmin iaka lolo iht
‘he saw this one girl carrying one’aias til pak, pi iaka mamuk ukuk pak kopa
‘huge pack, and she put that pack down on’ilihi, iaka sit dawn kopa ston.
‘the ground; she sat down on a rock.’…
Pi iaka iskom ukuk til pak pi lolo [Ø] kopa tawn.
‘And she picked up that heavy pack and carried it to town.’
— Kamloops Wawa issue #169 – October 1898, pages 154-155
Bonus fact:
Pak has a homophone in Chinuk Wawa.
One of the words for ‘Easter’ is Pak, from French Pâques.
How likely do you think it is that folks ever confused the two words?
