Chinlac is the site of a former Dakelh (Carrier) village in northeastern

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

. The site is on the west bank of the Stuart River, about upstream from its junction with the

Nechako River The Nechako River arises on the Nechako Plateau east of the Kitimat Ranges of the Coast Mountains of British Columbia, Canada, and flows north toward Fort Fraser, then east to Prince George where it enters the Fraser River. "Nechako" is an angli ...

. Oral tradition considers it to have been one of the major Carrier settlements. The site is located at a shallow point in the river where a

fishing weir A fishing weir, fish weir, fishgarth or kiddle is an obstruction placed in tidal waters, or wholly or partially across a river, to direct the passage of, or trap fish. A weir may be used to trap marine fish in the intertidal zone as the tide reced ...

could be used to harvest running

salmon Salmon () is the common name for several list of commercially important fish species, commercially important species of euryhaline ray-finned fish from the family (biology), family Salmonidae, which are native to tributary, tributaries of the ...

. Remains of the weir can still be seen from the meadow. ''Chinlac'' is an anglicization of

Carrier Carrier may refer to: Entertainment * ''Carrier'' (album), a 2013 album by The Dodos * ''Carrier'' (board game), a South Pacific World War II board game * ''Carrier'' (TV series), a ten-part documentary miniseries that aired on PBS in April 20 ...

word ''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. According to oral tradition, the village was destroyed around 1745 by Chilcotin raiders from

Nazko Nazko is a small ranching and logging community, including a historic First Nations community located 100 km west of Quesnel on the Nazko River in the Central Interior of British Columbia, Canada. Nazko means, "river flowing from the south". ...

, on the

Nazko River The Nazko River is a tributary of the West Road River, one of the main tributaries of the Fraser River, in the Canadian province of British Columbia. It flows through the Fraser Plateau region west of Quesnel. The name "Nazko" comes from Ndazkoh ...

. (Although Nazko is now a Carrier village, it was Chilcotin at the time.) 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 Charles Edward Borden; also Carl Borden; (15 May 1905 – 25 December 1978) was an American- born Canadian professor of archaeology at the University of British Columbia and the author of seminal works on archaeology, pre-history and pre-conta ...

. Among other things, he found a Chinese coin, indicating the existence of trade routes with the Pacific Coast, perhaps in the late 18th century, prior to the Carriers' direct contact with Europeans.Cranny, Michael William. 1986
Carrier settlement and subsistence in the Chinlac/Cluculz Lake area of Central British Columbia
MA thesis, University of British Columbia.

References

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External links

, ''

Vancouver Sun The ''Vancouver Sun'', also known as the ''Sun'', is a daily broadsheet newspaper based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The newspaper is currently published by the Pacific Newspaper Group, a division of Postmedia Network. Published s ...

'', 9 November 2007 Archaeological sites in British Columbia Dakelh communities Former populated places in British Columbia