A very traditional piece of gear Wanigan is apparently a borrowing of Ojibwa waanikaan, "storage pit," a word derived from the verb waanikkee-, "to dig a hole in the ground." Citations from the 1800s in the Oxford English Dictionary indicate that the word was then associated chiefly with the speech of Maine. It denoted a storage chest containing small supplies for a lumber camp, a boat outfitted to carry such supplies, or the camp provisions in general. In Alaska, on the western edge of the vast territory inhabited by Algonquian-speaking peoples, the same word was borrowed into English to indicate a little temporary hut, usually built on a log raft to be towed to wherever work was being done.