Potlatch dancers in Klinkwan, Alaska, c.1904
9 December 2022
A muckety-muck is an important person, and the term often appears as high muckety-muck. As it’s used in English, the term often carries a somewhat derogatory connotation; it’s not a word you apply to someone whom you wish to accord respect.
The word comes into English from Chinook Jargon, a language that originated as a pidgin or contact language of the Pacific Northwest in the nineteenth century, originally in what is now Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, but eventually spreading as far as Alaska, California, and Montana. Chinook Jargon is a blend of French, English, and Native-American languages. In places the pidgin developed into a fully-fledged creole language, and it has several hundred speakers today.
Muck-a-muck is recorded in a Chinook Jargon lexicon appearing in Joel Palmer’s 1847 Journal of Travels Over the Rocky Mountains:
Muck-a-muck
Provisions, eat
The language that Chinook Jargon acquired the term from is uncertain, but the term may come from the Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka) ma·ḥo·ma(q-), meaning choice whale meat. And the addition of high did not originally reflect the English word, but instead comes from the Chinook Jargon hiyu muckamuck (plenty of food), which probably comes from the Nuu-chah-nulth word hayu, literally meaning ten but figuratively meaning plenty or much. In English, the hiyu was remodeled via folk etymology into high.
Muck-a-muck, in the sense of food, makes its recorded appearance in English a few years later. The New York Herald of 9 December 1852 reported this from the Oregon Territory:
On Saturday last, the Rev. George Blanchet, presented us a head of cabbage, grown in the garden of Father Ricard, weighing twenty-five pounds, and measuring four feet seven inches in circumference, perfectly solid; and it makes a splendid muck-a-muck[.] Who says the soil of northern Oregon is unproductive?
And the Daily Alta California, a San Francisco newspaper, has this about the price of food in Oregon in its 12 January 1853 edition:
HIGH PRICES.—Flour is selling at 18 and 20 dollars per 100 lbs. here. Our millers are paying six and seven dollars per bushel for wheat, and there is very little to be obtained at that price. Potatoes command $2 50 per bushel; beef and pork is worth 18 and 25 cents per lb.; butter, $1 per lb.; eggs, $1 to $1 50 per dozen, and nearly everything else in the muck-a-muck line is in proportion.
Muck-a-muck was being used in English in reference to important people by 1856. Sacramento’s Daily Democratic State Journal of 1 November 1856 has this passage in a report on a proposed union of the American Party (a.k.a., the Know Nothings) and the Republican Party in California:
Finally, on Friday night last, a candidate of the Republican party for the State Senate, at one of their meetings, after Judge Tracy’s speech was over, stated that propositions for fusion had been made by the two dexterous professors of Dark Lanternism above named, who are high “Muck-a-Mucks” in the County Council.
[…]
Saturday brought the two distinguished professors, and all day long they labored and belabored each other, each trying to place the onus upon the other, the Democracy the while, with broad grins, enjoying the scene, unable to count the accessions to their party, which were hourly made. The professors—the high “Muck-a-Mucks”—tried fusion, and produced confusion. They put their feet in it.
This application to people probably originated in Chinook Jargon too, referring to a high-status host of a potlatch, a ceremonial feast and gift-giving ceremony, a tradition among Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest.
Over the next few decades, the terms muck-a-muck and high muck-a-muck spread beyond the territories where Chinook Jargon was spoken, and in so doing the pronunciation began to shift. For instance, we have this from the Evening News of Indianapolis on 7 December 1875:
When I was a Councilman from the Seventh Ward and was high muckey-muck in city politics I used to think I was a pretty big man, but when they came to spread me out over a whole Congressional District I found I was damn thin.
And we get the form muckety-muck by 1882. The Oxford English Dictionary has this citation from the Argonaut of January of that year:
Very soon it will be in as good form to be a little pill homoeopath, as it is now to be a H.M.M* in laparotomy.
The footnote reads:
High Muckety Muck.
Sources:
“The Journal’s Washington special…” Evening News (Indianapolis), 7 December 1875, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“Later from Oregon.” Daily Alta California (San Francisco), 12 January 1853, 1. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“More About the Bargain and Corruption” (31 October 1856). Daily Democratic State Journal (Sacramento, California), 1 November 1856, 3. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
“Northern Oregon—Progress of Settlement.” New York Herald, 9 December 1852, 15. NewspaperArchive.com.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2014, high muck-a-muck, n., high muckety-muck, n.; March 2003, s.v. muckamuck, n.1, muckamuck, n.2, muckety-muck, n.
Palmer, Joel. “Words Used in the Chinook Jargon.” Journal of Travels Over the Rocky Mountains (1847). Fairfield, Washington: Ye Galleon Press, 1983, 133. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Image credit: Underwood and Underwood, c.1904. Library of Congress. Public domain image.