Glynn-Ward on BC Indian English & CJ

[Mike Cleven]

At 02:22 PM 1/30/99 -0800, David Lewis wrote:
>Rancharias were the Spanish Indian Workcamps which gathered local Indians
>into artificial villages about the rancheria to work in Agriculture and in
>California mostly Ranching with millions of head of cattle. This
>arrangement was throughout 'Latin America' or the Spanish held areas of
>Indian lands. For more info research Mission Tribes of California. The
>furthest northern rancharia that I know of are Smith River and Elk Valley
>rancherias of California. The designation may have been adopted by many
>Western Indians to  mean Indian Village. I personally am not aware of any
>rancherias north of California or Colorado but this word is the beginning
>of our English word Ranch.

Actually, most of the rancheries in BC are re-settlements away from the
original village sites.  In Lillooet's case, the original village had been
where today's Main Street is, the Squamish one (at Mosquito Creek) being a
mile or so away from the original main village at Homulchesan (both are
communities of the Squamish Nation today).  I'm not sure about Lillooet's,
but the Squamish case was at the instigation of the Catholic Church, whose
mission was built at the mouth of Mosquito Creek.  The idea in those days
was to get the natives into "civilized" dwellings (square-cornered log
cabins, or clapboard at least) and out of the old longhouses and
pitdwellings (keekwulee houses); the communities that remained in
traditional housing were _not_, to my knowledge, named as rancheries.  Only
the resettlement villages were; the policy of the government was
(ostensibly) to turn them into agrarianists, hence the ranching association
and the not-accidental relation to the Spanish Empire's labour camps.  Of
cousre, they never gave them enough arable land or water supply to make any
agrarian activity worthwhile.

The Kanaka Rancherie, on the other hand, seems to have been named as a
somewhat slangy application of the term for the Hawaiian community on Lost
Lagoon.  Also known as "the Cherry Orchard", for reasons obvious even today
(even though the houses are long gone), it was downright genteel, almost
English in its quality of quaint gardens and well-kept cottages.  The
Hawaiians moved there voluntarily after a bout of anti-Chinese riots in
Gastown (about a mile away) in the winter of 1885-6, which broke up the old
multiracial, multiethnic quality of pre-railway "Vancouver"; it was better
to "live apart" as non-whites, even though Hawaiians were pretty much
accepted as equals (at least by long-term resident whites, if not by
eastern newcomers brought in by the railway boom) and highly respected for
their work ethic and skills.