Nicola (people)

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The Nicola people are a historic First Nations political and cultural area in the Southern Interior of the Canadian province of British Columbia. They are mostly located in the Nicola River valley around the area of Merritt and are an alliance of Scw'exmx, the local branch of the Nlaka'pamux (Thompson) people, and the Spaxomin, the local branch of the Syilx or Okanagan people.

The name Nicola is not a derivation of Nlaka'pamux or its variants, but is taken from the name of the chief who forged the alliance, which then included the native communities surrounding Fort Kamloops, who had been dubbed "Nicholas" by the Metis voyageurs of the fur companies (pron. French way as Nico-LA, but in general BC usage as NICK-ola, also known in English as Nicholas or Old Nicholas). A "nativized" adaptation of Nicola in common use today is N'kwala.

[edit] The Nicola Athapaskans or "Stuwix"

Also at one time included within the community were the vanished Stuwix, also known as the Nicola Athapaskans, who migrated into the area from the north a few centuries ago but were slowly reduced in number by constant raiding from peoples from outside the valley (mostly Secwepemc), with the survivors, the last of whom lived near Nicola Lake, assimilated to the Scw'exmx-Syilx Nicola people by the end of the 19th C.

Very little is known of them as by the mid-19th Century they were nearly extinct due to constant raiding by Thompson and Shuswap from outside the valley, and their surviving members were largely absorbed by the surrounding Scw'exmx, a branch of the Thompson people by the time of European contact, and also partly by the Spaxomin, a branch of the Okanagan people also in the valley who are also known as the Spahomin Band. The term Nicola for them is a misnomer, though a common one used by ethnologists and linguists - it commemorates a famous Okanagan chief who once held sway over the valley and its peoples as well as over the Kamloops Shuswap).

Their name for themselves is unknown, as only a very little of the Nicola language was recorded before it became extinct. To the Scw'exmx they were known as the Stuwix, "the strangers". A few placenames in the Merritt-Princeton area are said to be Stuwix in origin, their meaning unknown. At one time the Stuwix had also lived in the upper Similkameen, until driven out by the group today constituted as the Upper Similkameen Indian Band and retreating to the area of Douglas, Stump and Nicola Lakes, where they were sheltered by Chief Nicola and the Scw'exmx and Spaxomin who lived under his rule.

Although the anthropological and linguistic consensus is that the Nicola people were Athapaskan, an account in Okanagan Mourning Dove's writings says that they were a Chinookan group who had travelled up the Columbia River to escape bad neighbours there, finally finding refuge up the Okanagan River and beyond the upper Similkameen around Nicola Lake.