Chinlac

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title: "Chinlac" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["archaeological-sites-in-british-columbia", "dakelh-communities", "former-populated-places-in-british-columbia"] description: "Former village in British Columbia, Canada" topic_path: "philosophy" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinlac" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Former village in British Columbia, Canada ::

Chinlac is the site of a former Dakelh (Carrier) village in northeastern British Columbia, Canada. The site is 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 located at a shallow point in the river where a fishing weir could be used to harvest running salmon. Remains of the weir can still be seen from the meadow.

Chinlac is an anglicization of the Carrier 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, on the Nazko River. (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. Among other things, he found a Chinese coin of Song Dynasty design, indicating trade with the Pacific Coast at an unknown time prior to direct Carrier contact with Europeans or Asians.

References

References

1. Morice, Adrien-Gabriel. (1905). "History of the Northern Interior of British Columbia.". William Briggs.
2. Poser, William. 2008. Saik'uz Whut'en Hubughunek - Stoney Creek Carrier Lexicon. Vanderhoof: Saik'uz First Nation. p.53.
3. "Saik'uz Carrier Dictionary".
4. Morice, Adrien-Gabriel. 1905. History of the Northern Interior of British Columbia. Toronto: William Briggs. pp. 14-19.
5. Cranny, Michael William. 1986. [https://circle.ubc.ca/handle/2429/26390 Carrier settlement and subsistence in the Chinlac/Cluculz Lake area of Central British Columbia]. MA thesis, University of British Columbia.
6. Keddie, Grant. (1990-03-19). "The Question of Asiatic Objects on the North Pacific Coast of America: Historic or Prehistoric?". Royal British Columbia Museum.

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::