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The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America
The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America
Edwin Tappan Adney and Howard I. Chapelle Curator of Transportation B031222CA SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, WASHINGTON, D. C. 1964 Publications of the United States National Museum The scholarly and scientific publications of the United States National Museum include two series, Proceedings of the United States National Museum and United States National Museum Bulletin . In these series the Museum publishes original articles and monographs dealing with the collections and work of its constituent muse
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Special acknowledgment
Special acknowledgment
Is here gratefully made to The Mariners' Museum, Newport News, Virginia, under whose auspices was prepared and with whose cooperation is here published the part of this work based on the Adney papers; also to the late Vilhjalmur Stefansson, for whose Encyclopedia Arctica was written the chapter on Arctic skin boats. [Pg vi] [Pg vii]...
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INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
Figure 1 Fur-Trade Canoe on the Missinaibi River , 1901. ( Canadian Geological Survey photo. ) The bark canoes of the North American Indians, particularly those of birch bark, were among the most highly developed of manually propelled primitive watercraft. Built with Stone Age tools from materials available in the areas of their use, their design, size, and appearance were varied so as to create boats suitable to the many and different requirements of their users. The great skill exhibited in th
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Summary
Summary
It will be seen that the early descriptions of the North American bark canoes are generally lacking in exact detail. Yet this scanty information strongly supports the claim that bark canoes were highly developed and that the only influence white men exercised upon their design was related to an increase in size of the large canoes that may have taken place in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The very early recognition of the speed, fine construction, and general adaptability
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Summary
Summary
It will be seen that the Indian gathered all materials and prepared them for use with only a few simple tools, most of which could be manufactured at the building site and discarded after the work was completed. The only other tools he usually brought to the scene were those he normally required in his everyday existence in the forest. Some instruments used in canoe building, however, might be preserved; these were the measuring sticks on which were marked, by notches, certain measurements to be
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Form
Form
The canoes of some tribal groups appear to be hybrids, representing an intermingling of types as a result of some past contact between tribes. Those of other groups are of like model, form, and even appearance, possibly owing to like conditions of employment. The effects of a similarity in use requirements upon inventiveness is seen in the applications for modern patent rights, where two or more applications can cover almost exactly the same device without the slightest evidence of contact betwe
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Construction
Construction
One aspect of canoe construction, the Indian method of making measurements, was briefly mentioned (p. 8 ) under a discussion of the origin of the measurement known in French Canada as the brasse . This was the distance from finger-tip to finger-tip of the arms outstretched; in the fur trade in English times it was known as the fathom and it appears to have been about 64 inches, or less than the nautical fathom of 6 feet. Other measurements used were the greatest width of the ball of the thumb, w
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Micmac
Micmac
The Micmac Indians appear to have occupied the Gaspé Peninsula, most of the north shore of New Brunswick and nearly all the shores of the Bay of Fundy as well as all of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Cape Breton. They may have also occupied much of southern and central New Brunswick as well, but if so they had been driven from these sections by the Malecites before the white men came. The Micmacs were known to the early French invaders under a variety of names; "Gaspesians," "Canadiens,"
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Malecite
Malecite
Another tribe expert in canoe building and use was the Malecite. These Indians were known to the early French explorers as the "Etchimins" or "Tarratines" (or Tarytines). Many explanations have been given for the name Malecite. One is that it was applied to these people by the Micmac and is from their word meaning "broken talkers," since the Micmac had difficulty in understanding them. When the Europeans came, these people inhabited central and southern New Brunswick and the shore of Passamaquod
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St. Francis
St. Francis
The tribal composition of the Abnaki Indians is somewhat uncertain. The group was certainly made up of a portion of the old Malecite group, the Kennebec and Penobscot, but later also included the whole or parts of the refugee Indians of other New England tribes who were forced to flee before the advancing white settlers. It is probable that among the refugees were the Cowassek (Coosuc), Pennacook, and the Ossipee. There were also some Maine tribes among these—the Sokoki, Androscoggin, (Arosagunt
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Beothuk
Beothuk
The fourth group of Indians, classed here as belonging to the eastern maritime area, are the Beothuk of Newfoundland. Historically, perhaps, these Indians should have been discussed first, as they were probably the first of all North American Indians to come into contact with the white man. However, so little is known about their canoes that it has seemed better to place them last, since practically all that can be said is the result of reconstruction, speculation, and logic founded upon rather
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Eastern Cree
Eastern Cree
The construction of canoes of the eastern Cree and related tribes seems generally like that of the Micmac craft. Instead of the gunwale method employed in the Maritime area, a building frame was used, and as a result the gunwales were longer than the bottom. In constructing the crooked canoe, the building frame must be heavily sheered, and there is evidence that the building bed was depressed amidships, rather than raised as was usual in the east. The great amount of rocker in the bottom in this
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Têtes de Boule
Têtes de Boule
The Têtes de Boule, particularly the western bands, were skilled canoe builders and had long been employed by the Hudson's Bay Company in the construction of large fur-trade canoes. Apparently made up of bands of Indians inhabiting lower Quebec, in the basin of the St. Maurice River and on the Height of Land, these bands had come down to the lower Ottawa River to trade with the local Algonkin tribe there in early times. They were known to the Algonkins, who had had some contact with civilization
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Algonkin
Algonkin
The Algonkins were a tribe residing on the Ottawa River and its tributaries, in what are now the provinces of Quebec and Ontario, when the French first met them. They appear to have been a large and powerful tribe and were apparently competent builders and users of birch-bark canoes. They were not the same tribe as the Ottawa, who controlled the Lake Huron end of the canoe route between Montreal and Lake Superior, by way of the Ottawa River. These Ottawa were related to the Ojibway tribe and rec
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Ojibway
Ojibway
The Indian bands that were called " Outaouais " by the early French do not appear to have been an independent tribe, as has been mentioned, but were largely made up of Ojibway from the Great Lakes region. Perhaps some Têtes de Boule were among these bands before these people were given their nickname. The Ojibway were a powerful tribal group, made up of far-ranging bands, located all around Lake Superior and to the northwest as far as Lake Winnipeg. They had been in the process of taking over th
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Western Cree
Western Cree
The western portion of the great Cree tribe appear to have occupied the western shore of James Bay and to have moved gradually northwestward in historical times. Their territory included the northern portion of Ontario and northern Manitoba north of Lake Winnipeg, and as early as 1800 they had entered northwestern Alberta. The line of division between the canoes of the eastern and western Cree cannot be strictly determined, but it is roughly the Missinaibi River, which, with the Abitibi River, e
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Fur-Trade Canoes
Fur-Trade Canoes
Of all birch-bark canoe forms, the most famous were the canots du maître , or maître canots (also called north canoes, great canoes, or rabeskas ), of the great fur companies of Canada. These large canoes were developed early, as we have seen in the French colonial records, and remained a vital part of the fur trade until well toward the very end of the 19th century—two hundred years of use and development at the very least. A comprehensive history of the Canadian and American fur trade is yet t
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Narrow-Bottom Canoe
Narrow-Bottom Canoe
Because the variations in the second model, the Algonkin-Ojibway type, are relatively slight, it will be easiest to describe this first. The canoe is known to have been built extensively by the Chipewyan, Dogrib, and Slave. The sizes most common were 16 to 22 feet over the gunwales, with a beam of between 36 and 48 inches. The sheer was usually rather straight, the sharp upward turn to the end taking place very close to the gunwale ends. Most of the bottom was straight; the rocker, if existing,
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Kayak-Form Canoe
Kayak-Form Canoe
The kayak-form canoe was widely employed in the Northwest and was highly developed in both model and construction. It was essentially a portage and hunting craft, ranging in length from 12 to 18 feet and in beam from about 24 to 27 inches, with a depth between 9 and 12 inches. In areas where the kayak form was used as a family and cargo canoe, the length would be as great as 20 or 25 feet and the beam might reach 30 inches. Except in the family or cargo canoe, which had none, there was usually s
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Sturgeon-Nose Canoe
Sturgeon-Nose Canoe
In southern British Columbia and in northern Washington, the ram-ended or sturgeon-nose canoes were built. These were the canoes of the Kutenai, also spelled "Kootenay," and of the Salish tribal groups. Used on rivers and lakes, they were constructed of the bark of birch, spruce, fir, white pine, or balsam, whichever was available at the building site. Wherever possible a panel of birch bark was worked in along the whole length of the gunwales. The hull form of these canoes varied somewhat, perh
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The Umiak
The Umiak
The umiak was undoubtedly more widely employed by the Eskimo before the coming of the white man than existing records indicate. It was a type of boat most necessary for family migration by sea, and with it the early Eskimos could establish themselves on islands far from the mainland and could cross large bodies of water. From some areas where early explorers mention having seen the type, the umiak has disappeared; this suggests the possibility that tribes now unacquainted with the umiak had at s
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The Kayak
The Kayak
The Eskimo hunting boat, the kayak, is more widely employed in the Arctic than the umiak, and its variations in model, construction, and appearance are more distinct and numerous. The kayak is a long, usually narrow, decked canoe and is commonly very well finished. In Alaska a few undecked skin-covered canoes, used in rivers, are built on kayak proportions, but the model of these is quite different from that of the Alaskan sea-kayaks; the river canoes are V or flat bottomed, much like the Greenl
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Bark Canoes
Bark Canoes
There is ample evidence to support the belief that a great many of the tribes building birch-bark canoes also used temporary canoes of other barks such as spruce and elm, as has been mentioned in earlier chapters. Invariably, the qualities of these other barks, particularly spruce, were such that their use was often somewhat more laborious and the results less satisfactory than with birch; but the necessities of travel and the availability of materials were controlling factors, and with care spr
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Skin Boats
Skin Boats
Among the other forms of temporary or emergency canoes used by North American Indians, the most widespread was some form of skin boat. These would not require description here were it not for the fact that the Indian skin boats were usually built by bark-canoe methods of construction rather than by methods such as used by the Eskimo. To build their skin boats—kayaks and umiaks—the Eskimo first constructed a complete framework, and this was then covered with skins sewn to fit. This process of bui
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Retrospect
Retrospect
In view of the inclusion of skin boats in this discussion of bark canoes, it may be well to emphasize again the fact that the North American Indian's method of constructing bark canoes and of temporary skin canoes was on an entirely different principle than that used by the Eskimo in building their skin boats. This is even true of the kayak-form bark canoes of the Northwest, despite their superficial similarity in design and proportions to the Eskimo skin kayak. As has been stated, the Eskimo co
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Appendix The Kayak Roll John D. Heath
Appendix The Kayak Roll John D. Heath
The most extraordinary feat of kayak handling is the ability to right the craft after a capsize. This maneuver, called "rolling," is usually practiced by capsizing on one side and recovering on the other. Under emergency conditions, a kayaker will recover on whichever side is more convenient. When rolling, a kayaker wears a waterproof jacket having long sleeves and a hood. The waist, face, and wrist openings are fitted with drawstrings, so that when the waist opening is fitted over the cockpit r
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Bibliography
Bibliography
Adney, Edwin Tappan. Klondike stampede. New York: Harper & Bros., 1900. ----. How an Indian birch-bark canoe is made. Harper's Young People (July 29, 1890). Supplement. Beard, Daniel Carter. Boatbuilding and boating. New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1911. (Chapter 6, pages 48-61, is a revision of Adney's articles on canoe building.) Beauchamp, William M. Aboriginal use of wood in New York. (New York State Museum Bulletin 89.) Albany, 1905, pp. 139-149. Birket-Smith, Kai. Ethnography of the
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