It was [James Cook's] misunderstanding of the word nuutkah ('to turn around') that resulted in the name "Nootka" for the inlet that they entered and the people they encountered.
...
Cook developed a short vocabulary of Native words and mistakenly assumed that they would be understood by people in the entire region. He was wrong about the uniformity of language in the region, but his presence nevertheless led to the creation of a trade language-Nootka Jargon-that later contributed to the pidgin used in the Lower Columbia. Examples of words from the west coast of Vancouver Island that wound up in Chinook Jargon are wik 'no, not', and wawa 'to speak, talk'.
"Linguistic Diversity in Oregon and Washington" by Edwin Battistella and David Pippin, in Northwest Voices: Language and Culture in the Pacific Northwest
















