BC: Rozen 1985 on “Place-Names of the Island Halkomelem Indian People”
Another valuable study from David L. Rozen (who documented some Chinook Jargon songs of Vancouver Island) is…
What’s so bad about Mesatchie Lake?
(Image credit: CanoeVancouverIsland.com)
“Place-Names of the Island Halkomelem Indian People” (1985 MA thesis in Anthropology, University of British Columbia).
Page 218 of Rozen’s thesis has this entry:
231. Mesachie Lake / mesátsi7 (AJ) ‘bad’, ‘wicked’ [Note that this lake and the small settlement adjacent to it take their name from the Chinook Jargon term “miss-ah-chee” and there is no Island Halkomelem term for these places.]
I hypothesize that this place name is a pretty recent one, probably bestowed during the later colonial/frontier era. There are a number of published accounts of its origin, but I particularly appreciate this one from Rolli Gunderson in the local Lake Cowichan Gazette:
The word Mesachie (Lake) is purported to have been a First Nations word meaning wild, quick, unruly, fierce, lively or spirited. Since the lake itself, at times, was all of those things, the word Mesachie stuck. According to an April 1945 newspaper article, early First Nations people believed that a “spirit” dwelled in the lake which caused thrashing to the water which then caused huge whitecaps. (With three valleys converging at the lake, the wind would blow three ways at one time causing this extreme weather.) The belief was that the “whole place”, lake, land and surrounding mountains, including Mesachie Mountain, was “spirited”.
The Chinuk Wawa word is spelled másháchi in the Southern dialect (Grand Ronde), and as mesaachi in my BC Learners Alphabet. And yes, the word can refer to non-human things, including water, in normal Chinook Jargon usage. You might compare the name Mesachie Lake (lake with Cultus Lake, BC, and with Skookumchuck Narrows, BC…
Page 286:
Victoria matúliye7 (#258)
Vancouver pankúpe7 (#282)
… Place-names numbered 258 and 282 above are clearly “Halkomelemized” terms derived from the noted English place-name.
I want to specify that these place names were part of BC’s Northern Chinook Jargon, and were (the) normal pronunciations of both of them in NCJ. ‘Victoria’ was also pronounced Biktoli.
A final observation: all 3 place names we’ve looked at here have, in their Hul’q’umi’num pronunciations, a final < 7 >, which is a glottal stop /ʔ/. This is the way speakers of that language have made these words ending in vowels — which is an uncommon thing for Salish — into something more Indigenous-sounding to them.
