Chinlac

Chinlac is the site of a former Dakelh (Carrier) village on the West bank of the Stuart River about 1 km upstream from its junction with the Nechako River. Oral tradition considers it to have been one of the major Carrier settlements. The site is strategically located at a shallow point in the river where a weir could easily be used to harvest running salmon.[1] The remain of the weir can still be seen from the meadow.

Chinlac is an anglicization of Carrier Chunlak, itself a contraction of duchun nidulak - "logs customarily float to a point", which describes the way in which driftwood accumulates in the shallows where the weir was built.[2]

According to oral tradition, the village was destroyed around 1745 by Chilcotin raiders from Nazko, on the Nazko River. (Although Nazko is now a Carrier village, it was Chilcotin at the time.) [3] The meadow contains the traces of 13 lodges. In the surrounding bush are the remains of hundreds of cache pits.

One lodge site was excavated in 1951-1952 by a team led by Charles Edward Borden. Among other things, he found a Song dynasty (960-1127 CE) Chinese coin, indicating the existence of trade with the Pacific Coast if not Asia prior to European contact.[4]

References
  1. Morice, Adrien-Gabriel. 1905. History of the Northern Interior of British Columbia. Toronto: William Briggs. pp. 14-19.
  2. Poser, William. 2008. Saik'uz Whut'en Hubughunek - Stoney Creek Carrier Lexicon. Vanderhoof: Saik'uz First Nation. p.53.
  3. Morice, Adrien-Gabriel. 1905. History of the Northern Interior of British Columbia. Toronto: William Briggs. pp. 14-19.
  4. Cranny, Michael William. 1986. Carrier settlement and subsistence in the Chinlac/Cluculz Lake area of Central British Columbia. MA thesis, University of British Columbia.

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