Okwanuchu is an extinct Shastan language formerly spoken in northern California. It is unusual in that much of its vocabulary is not derived from a Shastan language, but from some unknown substrate.
Classification
Kroeber described the language as "peculiar. Many words are practically pure Shasta; others are distorted to the very verge of recognizability, or utterly different." Golla[1] speculates at length that the language may have mixed in another, non-Shasta language. Du Bois,[2] interviewing a survivor of a group that the Wintu called Waymaq ("north people"), who she believed were probably identical to the Okwanuchu, recorded some words, including atsa ("water").[1] Golla writes that eighteen more words are found, under the name "Wailaki [also meaning 'North People'] on McCloud", in an 1884 work by Jeremiah Curtin; he too recorded atsa ("water"), and five words not found elsewhere in Shastan.[1]
