1913: Potato(es) Illahee is BC Chinuk Wawa
From the British Columbia town that soon moved & renamed itself to Prince George…
Similar but different: an ancient water-potato garden at Katzie, BC (image credit: Live Science)
We find a newspaper report that helps confirm that “Potatoes Illahee” is a Northern Dialect place name.
That Thompson Salish community, a.k.a. “Potato Gardens”, is named twice in “Seeking Alibi in Defense of Indians”.
It says a lot that people didn’t only call it “Potato Illahee”, which could be a normal phrase in English.
Folks also called that place “Potatoes Illahee“, a phrase that’s not possible in Pacific Northwest English as I’ve grown up speaking it — but a perfectly normal Jargon way to talk.
We hardly ever use a plural noun as a modifier of a second noun, in a compound, in North American English.
In Chinuk Wawa, however, nouns just don’t have grammatical number. So “potato” & “potatoes” mean the same thing in Jargon.
And therefore, either form can be used translating “Potato Gardens”.
Here’s the evidence:
• • •
— from the Fort George (BC) Herald of March 29, 1913, page 1, column 5
