The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America 19

The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America 19

In general, the building frame is made of two squared battens, about

1¼ inch square for an 18-foot canoe. These, sometimes tapered slightly

toward each end, are fitted with crosspieces with halved notches in

each end to fit over the top of the battens. There may be as many as

nine or as few as three of these crosspieces, with seven apparently a

common number. Where ends of the long battens join they are beveled

slightly on the inside face and notches are cut on the outside face

to take the end lashings. Each crosspiece end is lashed around the

long battens, a hole being made in each end of the crosspiece for

this purpose. The lashings, commonly bark or rawhide thongs, are all

temporary, as the building frame has to be dismantled to remove it from

the canoe. Sometimes holes are drilled in the ends of the crosspieces,

or in the long battens, and in them are stepped the posts used to fix

the sheer of the gunwales.

 

The methods of construction, using the building frame, varied somewhat

among the tribes. Since the gunwale was both longer and wider across

than the building frame, the posts for sheering were set with outboard

flare. However, some builders made the gunwales hogged by staking

them out when green, and then set them above the building frame with

vertical posts. These gunwales would not be fitted with thwarts nor

would the thwart tenons always be cut at this stage. The bark was

lashed to the gunwales while they were in the hogged position with the

ends secured; the gunwales were then spread by inserting spreaders,

or stays, between them, after which the thwarts were fitted. This

method required knowledge of just how much hog should be given to the

gunwales, and it must be stated that not all builders guessed right

enough to produce a good-looking sheer. Judging the hogging required

in the gunwales was complicated by the fact that most of these canoes

had laminated ends in the gunwales at bow and stern, and a quick upturn

there as well. This method of construction persisted, however, because

the straight sides made easy the sewing of gores and side panels. In

some Alaskan birch-bark canoes the building frame was, in fact, part of

the hull structure and remained in the canoe. In these, the building

frame was hogged and then flattened by the ribs in construction so as

to smooth the bottom bark by placing it under tension. In some canoes

the posts for sheering the canoe rested under the thwarts rather than

under the gunwales. In most canoes the building frame was taken apart

and removed from the canoe when the gunwale structure was complete and

in place, sheered.

 

Where large sheets of bark were available, the setting up with the

building frame or gunwale was made easier than where the bark had to be

pieced out for both length and width. If large pieces of bark could be

obtained there was little or no sewing on the bottom; only the gores

or laps, and the panels, in the side required attention after the bark

had been lashed to the gunwales. In such instances, the set-up did not

require perpendicular sides, as the sides could be completed after the

canoe was removed from the building bed and the building frame had been

removed from the hull. There were many minor variations in the set-up

and in the sequence of the sewing. In view of the slight opportunities

that now exist for examining the old building methods and construction

sequences, it is impossible to be certain that the one used by a

tribe in recent times was that employed in prehistoric times by their

ancestors.

 

Instead of a laminated stem-piece, a large root whittled to the desired

cross section was sometimes used by builders among the Malecites and

other eastern tribes. This was bent into the ends while green and to

it was lashed the bark, so that the stem dried in place to the desired

profile curve. No inner stem-piece was used by the Micmacs, who formed

the end structure by placing a split-root batten on each outside face

of the bark and passing the lashing around both. When a plank-on-edge

was used to form the stem-piece, as mentioned earlier, no headboard was

required, as the gunwales ends could be brought to the plank structure.

In canoes having the complicated stem structure seen in the large

fur-trade canoes and some others, the headboard became an integral part

of the stem structure, rather than an independent unit, and was placed

in the canoe during building with the stem-pieces.

 

There was much variation in the form of gunwale structure employed in

bark canoes. A strip of bark was added all along the outwale by some

tribes, so that between the gunwale members and for a short distance

below the sewing the bark was doubled; the bottom of this strip was,

in fact, a flap not secured and thus was much like the flaps at the

ends of the Malecite canoe, but without covering the top of the main

gunwales. The outwale and inwale cross sections of some canoes were

almost round. The use of a single gunwale member is commonly followed

by continuous lashing of the bark along it. On some northwestern canoes

having continuous lashing, the ends of the ribs were made in sharp

points that could penetrate between the turns of root sewing, under

the gunwales. The ends of the ribs in some of these were secured more

firmly by tying them to long battens placed between the ribs and the

bark cover just below the gunwales. The northwestern canoes built in

this manner had double gunwales, an outwale and an inwale, but no bevel

or notch for the rib heads. The ends of the gunwales, inner and outer,

were secured in many ways. Some, instead of being pegged and lashed,

were simply tied together; others were fastened by a rather elaborate

lashing through the bark and around the gunwales. Caps were sometimes

allowed to overlap at the ends and were pinned together with pegs or

lashed. In some canoes the outwales were lashed, rather than pegged, to

the inwales, and for this and for the caps rawhide appears to have once

been widely used. In some canoes the head of the stem-piece was bent

inboard sharply and lashed to the ends of the inwales or outwales. In

many canoes the gunwales, instead of stopping short of the stem-piece,

ran to it and were lashed there.

 

[Illustration: Figure 47

 

GUNWALE CONSTRUCTION and thwart or crossbar fastenings, as shown in a

sketch by Adney. (From _Harper's Young People_, supplement, July 29,

1890.)]

 

At the start of ribbing out a canoe, the first two or three ribs might

not be put at each end until after the headboards had been fitted,

and sometimes a rib was placed on each side of the middle thwart,

apparently to hold securely the sheathing butted amidships while the

ribbing progressed toward them from the ends. When a canoe was short

and rather wide, the ribs usually were bent by placing them inside

the faired bark cover before the sheathing was installed, there to

dry and set or to season, depending on whether they were steamed or

green. Prebending the ribs, as described in the building of a Malecite

canoe, worked well only when the canoe was long, narrow, and sharp. The

spacing of the ribs was done by eye, not by precise measurement, and

was never exactly the same over the length of the canoe. Ribs near the

ends were usually spaced at greater intervals than those in the middle

third of the length.

 

The extension of the bark beyond the ends of the inner gunwale in an

eastern canoe was often about one foot on each end, but this distance

was actually determined by the length of the bark available and by the

usual reluctance of the builder to add a panel at the end.

 

For the height of the end posts, in sheering the gunwales, a common

Malecite measurement was the length of the forearm from knuckles of

clenched fist to back of elbow. These posts were often left in place

until the stems were fitted.

 

The use of a building frame is known to have been common in areas

where, normally, the gunwale frame would be employed in the initial

steps in building. In a few instances this occurred when a builder

had a number of canoes of the same size to construct. It seems

probable that the use of the building frame spread into Eastern areas

comparatively recently as a result of the influence of the fur-trade

canoes on construction methods. The employment of the plank building

bed in the East is known to have occurred among individual canoe

builders late in the nineteenth century as a result of this influence.

 

The use of nails and tacks instead of pegs and root lashing or sewing

in bark canoe construction became quite widespread early in the

nineteenth century; it is to be seen in many old canoes preserved in

museums. The bark in these is often secured to the gunwales with carpet

or flat-headed tacks, and both the outwale and the cap are nailed

to the inner gunwales with cut or wire nails. Various combinations

of lashings and nailing can be seen in these canoes, although such

combinations are sometimes the result of comparatively recent repairs

or restorations rather than evidence of the original construction.

No date can be placed on the introduction of nails into Indian canoe

building, although it may be said that nailing was used in many eastern

areas before 1850.

 

Among the many published descriptions of the method of building bark

canoes the earliest give very incomplete information on the building

sequence and usually contain obvious errors as to proportions and

materials. (An example is that of Nicolas Denys, who, sometime between

1632 and 1650, saw bark canoes being built in what is now New Brunswick

and Cape Breton.) The best descriptions are relatively recent and, as a

result, may describe methods of construction that are not aboriginal.

 

The description given here is based upon notes made by Adney in 1889-90

and upon inspection of old canoes from the various tribal areas. It

was noted that, although among canoes of the same approximate length

there was some variation in dimensions and some variety in end form,

the construction appeared to vary remarkably little, and it is apparent

that the Malecites held very closely to a fixed sequence in the

building process. There was, however, great variation in detail. The

number of gore slashes in canoes 18 to 19 feet long varied from 10 to

23 on a side. The number was not always the same on both sides of a

canoe nor were the gores always opposite one another. Canoes with long,

sharp ends often had a large number of closely spaced gores in the

middle third of the length, with widely spaced gores toward the ends.

Full-ended canoes, on the other hand, had rather equally spaced gores

their full length. The amount and form of rocker was also a factor in

spacing the gores, and when the rocker was confined to short distances

close to the ends there would naturally be rather closely spaced gores

in these portions of the sides.

 

A number of the building practices remain to be described, but these

will be best understood when the individual tribal canoe forms are

examined. No written description of building canoes can be understood

without reference to drawings, and to promote this understanding

construction details have been shown on many of those of individual

canoes of each tribal type.

 

[Illustration: Figure 48

 

"PETER JOE AT WORK." Drawing by Adney for his article "How an Indian

Birch-Bark Canoe is Made" (_Harper's Young People_, supplement, July

29, 1890).]

 

 

 

 

_Chapter Four_

 

EASTERN MARITIME REGION

 

 

Study of the tribal forms of bark canoes might well be started with

the canoes of the eastern coastal Indians, whose craft were the first

seen by white men. These were the canoes of the Indians inhabiting

what are now the Maritime Provinces and part of Quebec, on the shores

of the St. Lawrence River and in Newfoundland, in Canada, and of the

Indians of Maine and New Hampshire, in New England. Within this area

were the Micmac, the Malecite, and the mixture of tribal groups known

as the Abnaki in modern times, as well as the Beothuk of Newfoundland.

All these groups were expert canoe builders and it was their work that

first impressed the white men with the virtues of the birch-bark canoe in forest travel