kinikinik from Mississippi Valley French
Lots of us here in the Pacific Northwest know the word “kinnikinnick”. The spelling might be tricky. (I personally have to check every time I write it!)
It’s also sort of nebulous what plant product the word refers to.
I remember my dad pointing out Arctostaphylus uva-ursi, bearberry, to me as “kinnikinnick” on a hike. So that’s my association with the word.
Arctostaphylos uva-ursi (image credit: Wikipedia)
If you’ve read any significant amount of regional lore, you may also know that the word kinnikinnick traditionally applies to a pipe-smoking mixture. A tobacco equivalent was concocted by mixing dried mullein leaves, willow bark, or any of a range of other botanical materials. My experiments making and smoking it a few years ago had…okay results, but I bet an expert could make a fine blend.
This is a word of Chinuk Wawa. The 2012 Grand Ronde Tribes dictionary enters it as kʰinikʰinik, with variant forms being kʰinik and kʰilikʰinik.
In that word’s entry, the dictionary notes that it’s “shared by Canadian French and local English, and could have entered Chinuk Wawa from either” (page 272).
I thought it might be nice to share a specific source as an authority on the French side.
John Francis McDermott’s 1941 “Glossary of Mississippi Valley French” gives the following entry:
kinikinik, kinikinick, Ind., n.m. An Indian smoking mixture made principally of various kinds of bark. By Ruxton spelled kinnik-kinnik…; by E. James, kinne canick…; by Townsend, kanikanik…; by Arese, canicanick… See bois roulé.
[At that entry, Coues’ edition of Lewis & Clark is cited as telling that the Sioux used the word kinikinik for what “the French traders call bois roulé“. My nonnative understanding of the latter phrase is as ‘rolled or smoothed wood’. Anyone have more insight?]
An interesting little bit of extra information for your Jargon appreciation.
It is probably from Lanape këlëkënikàn :
smoking mixture (tobacco and sumac leaves)
http://www.talk-lenape.org/detail?id=1904
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Thanks for showing us a source form! The word is definitely Algonquian and surely Eastern, so Lenape is an excellent candidate. So I wonder if it entered Mississippi Valley French via English…
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I am not a smoker but I know the plant you show as “kinnikinnick”.
I have seen many references to this plant being used as(part of) a smoking mixture, but never the specifics of how it was used. “Bois roulé”, which does mean literally ‘rolled wood’, provides a hint. Like tobacco, the mixture has to be contained in something, such as a natural substance which can readily be rolled. Before there was paper, some kind of thin bark must have been used, especially the bark of “paper birch”, which splits into several thin, pliable layers.
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Hayu masi, MLT, I really appreciate your bringing up this notion of what the rolling refers to…
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