Talk:Nicola (Okanagan leader)

DOB issue
I dislike dates of birth with this format ("1780/1785"). User:Skookum1 has informed me that the source gives. Therefore I don't want to be bold by changing it to "c. 1780" or "c. 1785" since I don't know which is more probable. I'm not familiar with a policy or guideline dealing with this, but if anybody has any ideas (apart from "c. 1782.5" which seems silly), they would be appreciated. If there's a best guess, I think that should be used, perhaps with a "(?)" or "c. ". --Storkk 00:51, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Pelka'mulox bio
Didn't want to waste the following so am posting it here; it was my next round of cribbing from Teit, who I promise I'll reference down to the pages and section numbers once I'm done, but I got distracted and began to tell the story of Palka'mulox instead of his son, whom the article is about. So, to be moved to an eventual Pelku'mulox article covering all three historical chiefs by that name (and any since), here's what I did so far:


 * ''When his father died, Pelka'mulox inherited power during a time of ongoing warfare. The place he made his headquarters at a place called Sa'lixu, "built-up stone house" , as he had built a fortification of stone at that place.  His fortress was impregnable and withstood attacks from Shuswap, Thompson, Kutenai and others.  Kwali'la heard of the many attacks on his nephew and came alone to meet with him, even though Pelka'mulox and his people had been attacked so often that they might kill him before they knew who he was, or in spite of who he was.  But Pelka'mulox recognized his uncle and foster-father welcomed him inside Sa'lixu.


 * Kwali'la persuaded Pelka'mulox to relocate his headquarters and his people to the one of the lakes in the upper Nicola River valley, Komken'atko'' ("headwaters", Fish Lake today), including Douglas, Stump and Chaperon Lakes. Areas west and south, including Nicola Lake, were held by the Stuwi'x and Thompsons, but Kwali'la's status as a chief of the Shuswap as well as of the Okanagan empowered him to give the land around Fish Lake to Nicola, and that he would come live at Chaperon Lake and hold the country northwards to Kamloops, so that they could be neighbours and Pelka'mulox would not be alone in his defense as he had been at Sa'lixu.  Another condition of the agreement that Pelka'mulox's daughter would go to live with her uncle as his foster-daughter, but Pelka'mulox was to raise his own son - who would grow up to be Nicola.  These were Pelka'mulox's only children at the time, and both very young.


 * Sa'lixu was abandoned and those people who did not follow Pelka'mulox to the Nicola Valley either moved northward or to a place at the north end of Okanagan Lake called Nkama'peleks. These people and other former residents of Salixu after a time migrated also to the Douglas and Fish Lakes area and formed a new band.  Pekla'mulox was still high chief of the Okanagan and visited throughout the villages of his people, and would winter at Nkama'peleks'' while Kwali'la would winter at Kamloops, as the Nicola Valley is much higher and colder than either.  He visited widely among neighbouring tribes - the Upper Thompson, the Stu'wix, the Kamloops Shuswap and also is said to have visited the Wenatchee, Columbia, Sanpoil, Spokane, and Kalispel.  He made a number of buffalo hunts to the Prairies and Great Plains via the Flathead Country  and in his travels also visited the Walla Walla, Nez Perce, Kutenai, Shoshone and Blackfoot.  On his last trip he met two Northwest Company traders, Lagace and MacDonald, at what is now Helena, Montana, and accompanied them over the mountains to be hosted by the Colville chief.


 * ''Upon his return to his own country he travelled around telling people of the new kind of men he had met and was invited by Kwali'la to come to Kamloops to tell his story there. They travelled west to the great fishing grounds on the Fraser around Fountain and were asked to tell the tale again, was branded a liar by the chief of the Lakes Lillooet, who shot him with an arrow.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Skookum1 (talk • contribs)

dates of war
Looks like I'll have to revise the text a bit, and my bad for speculating when I should have avoided same; reason is I came across a passage from the HBC journals by Chief Trader Donald McLean of Fort Kamloops, who in 1823 spent a great deal of energy trying to dissuade the "Thompson's River Indians" from waging war against the "Fraser River Indians" because the latter had killed an important chief of the former "the preceding November", i.e. November 1822 would appear to be the time of Pelka'mulox's death, and the war in 1823. The challenge by the Lakes Lillooet chief that white men did not exist must mean that particular chief hadn't been around the Fraser when Simon F. came through (the Lakes Lillooet live off-the-river, just west of it). So this leaves me wondering who it was that the Lillooets/Askettih were prepared for war with when Simon came through....musta been the Chilcotin, or a different war with the Shuswap or Thompson; makes me wonder if I'll get any straight answers on this next time I'm in Lillooet or Merritt. Anyway, I'll post the quotes from Akrigg which helped establish the dates, which I was wrong/too speculative about before; I hesitate to make the changes as I'd like to see a corroboration that what I'm reading from McLean's letters is what I think it is, so any opinions (after I post the text) welcome.Skookum1 20:50, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Donald McLean's letter re Nicola's War - ?

 * Since my arrival at Thompson's River [Fort Kamloops] the natives have hitherto introduced themselves very peaceably and would very likely continue so, if it had not been for the death of one of their principal Chiefs who was killed last November by the Fraser River Indians, which circumstance subsequently created great commotions amongst the Indians throughout the whole Department. There are now four different nations [Nicola, southern Secepemc, Okanagan, Nlaka'pamux; Teit counts also the Stu'wix and one other]'' in confederacy against the murderers to revengue this Chief's death fo which purpose no less than six hundred fighting men were expeted to asssemble at Kamlops this spring &mdash; I tried as much as I possibly could to disaud[e] them from going to war; but finding all my rhteotric only exciting their derision against myself I was obliged to desist.


 * Public Archives of Canada, McLeod papers, pp. 7-8, quote in British Columbia Chronicle 1787-1846: Adventures by Sea and Land, G.P.V. and Helen Akrigg, Discovery Press, Vancouver (1975), p. 214

Name section
Quoting its lead paragraph here for reference:
 * The name Nicolas (, as in French) was conferred on him by French-Canadians in the employ of the Hudson's Bay and Northwest Companies who worked at a temporary un-named trading post at the head of Okanagan Lake, and its modern pronunciation echoes the accent of the French name. The Scots and English in the employ of the companies adapted this to Nicholas and Old Nicholas, while First Nations people adapted it to  Nkwala' ''.

That's not quite right, or gives a wrong impression anyway; the modern English pronunciation echoes the French pronunciation, but it is not the same - / 'nikEla /, with the accent on the first syllable and a schwa for the second vowel; I'm not sure what the IPA character for "ih" is, but I doubt it's the pure "ee" of the French-pronunciation IPA/s /ɪ/; closest rhyme I can think of at the moment, for comparison, is "trickle of". Nk'wala/N'kwala I've seen various spellings of but so far no IPAs.....maybe someone at Talk:Thompson language would know.Skookum1 (talk) 04:24, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

The point about the English pronunciation echoing, rather than representing, the French pronunciation, is a very good one. Also I disagree with the given pronunciation of the name in French. Pronouncing o as is one of the typical English pronunciations of o, definitely not French. The standard French pronunciation is ; Canadian French (citation form) is. Significantly, what is given as the First Nations adaptation of this word, Nkwala', would agree with the Michif form. The Michif form ought to be Nikwalaw, with the regular change of French to Michif  after , as in French chocolat, Michif shakwalaw. Unfortunately, this last statement is from my own analysis of data in The Michif Dictionary, Turtle Mountain Chippewa Cree, by Patline Laverdure and Ida Rose Allard (Pemmican Publications, Winnipeg.  1983). It therefore needs a reference, which I don’t have right now. Perhaps Peter Bakker’s work on Michif contains a similar analysis and could be used as a reference – something to check on.Óghog (talk) 15:42, 2 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Fixed IPA to rhyme with trickle of, and added US dictionary transcription. kwami (talk) 01:11, 31 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Just to note that Nkwala (which has an apostrophe in it somewhere, not sure where exactly) is a "Thopmsonized" form SFAIK, i.e. using the Thompson romanization, and the 'k' in it may not be simply /k/ but may be more like a /q/ or, with that following 'w', /qw/ or /qw/. Salishan languages tend to have variable applications of the Roman alphabet for their "official orthographies" - Thompson's being very distinct from that used by Lillooet/St'at'imcets.  It may be that Thompson and Okanagan use the same romanization, such that whatever their preferred spelling of Nkwala is matches betweeen those two languages (the Nicola people, as you'll read inthe article, are a joint community of the two...on the other hand the Scw'exmx, who are the local variant of the Nlaka'pamux, may use a different romanization than the Nlaka'pamux in the Fraser Canyon, who do speak a diferrent dialect, or so I'm given to understand.....I think the BCGNIS for Nicola Country/Nicola River has the "proper" nativized adaptation, I'll be back with it; but it shouldn't be assumed that it's the same as it might be in Michif; Salishan languages are full of complex gutturals and this may be one of those (in fact, it likely is).Skookum1 (talk) 01:28, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Both those BCGNIS refs have this line: The Indians pronounced the nickname N'kuala or Nkwala, and those spellings made their way into the records, eventually simplified to Nicola. and that's not necessarily how it's "official" in Thompson; I'll look on their government/culture pages to see what they might have it written as....Skookum1 (talk) 01:37, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Also btw, the local "white" pronunciation of Nicola has a bit of a distinction between the two otherwise-schwas/neutrals; the first has more of an 'ooh', like in "book", the latter has a bit of an "a" flavour to it; this maybe is only something I picked up, or developed along the way, partly from being influenced by the local dialect in the Lillooet area where I'm from; it may be different again in the Merritt area. Next time I have a microphone handy I'll record a few examples of it and see what you think; it may only be an "apparent" difference because of rhythm.....Skookum1 (talk) 01:31, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
 * And, as a side note in general, please use caution in applying the American o-diphthong /oʊ/ to instances of "long o" in Canada; our usages can be quite a short, often not diphthongized; the American long-o is very "drawl-ish" to our ears.Skookum1 (talk) 01:37, 31 March 2009 (UTC)


 * "" is used for Canadian, English, Australian, and Kiwi long o, as well as Usonian. If you want to be more precise, it's best to use phonetic notation. kwami (talk) 20:08, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 01:08, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

Date of Death and General Sourcing
I've seen many sources say that he passed around in 1858-58. Generally I think this article, for how lengthy it is, requires a lot of sourcing. Remikipedia (talk) 06:43, 24 March 2024 (UTC)