The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America 29

The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America 29

The Beothuk keel piece may have sometimes been nearly round in section

like the keel of the Malecite moosehide canoe (p. 214). The two

garboard strakes of the sheathing may have been shaped in cross section

to fair the bark cover from the thin sheathing above to the thick keel

and at the same time allow the ribs to hold the garboards in place.

They could, in fact, be easily made, since a radial split of a small

tree would produce clapboard-like cross sections. This construction

would perhaps comply better with Cartwright's description of the keel

than that shown in the plan on page 97.

 

The sheer of the Beothuk canoe is an exaggerated form of the gunwale

shape of the Micmac rough-water canoe but this, of course, is no real

indication of any relationship between the two. Indeed, the probable

scarfing of the gunwales of the Beothuk canoe might be taken as

evidence against such a theory. On the other hand, the elm-bark and

other temporary canoes of the Malecite and Iroquois had crudely scarfed

gunwale members, as did some northwestern bark canoes.

 

Most of the building techniques employed by Indians throughout North

America are illustrated by these eastern bark canoes, yet marked

variation in construction details existed to the westward, as will be

seen.

 

 

 

 

_Chapter Five_

 

CENTRAL CANADA

 

 

The Indians inhabiting central Canada were expert builders of

birch-bark canoes and produced many distinctive types. The area

includes not only what are now the Provinces of Quebec (including

Labrador), Ontario, Manitoba, and the eastern part of Saskatchewan,

but also the neighboring northern portions of Michigan, Wisconsin and

Minnesota in the United States. The migrations of tribal groups within

this large area in historical times, as well as the influence of a

long-established fur trade, have produced many hybrid forms of bark

canoes and, in at least a few instances, the transfer of a canoe model

from one tribal group to another. It is this that makes it necessary

to examine this area as a single geographic unit, although a wide

variation of tribal forms of bark canoes existed within its confines.

 

The larger portion of the Indians inhabiting this area were of the

great Algonkian family. In the east during the 18th and 19th centuries,

however, some members of the Iroquois Confederacy were also found, and

in the west, from at least as early as the beginning of the French

fur trade, groups of Sioux, Dakota, Teton, and Assiniboin. From the

fur trade as well as from normal migratory movements there was much

intermingling of the various tribes, and it was long the practice in

the fur trade, particularly in the days of the Hudson's Bay Company, to

employ eastern Indians as canoemen and as canoe builders in the western

areas. These apparently introduced canoe models into sections where

they were formerly unknown; as a result, the tribal classification of

bark canoes within the area under examination cannot be very precise

and the range of each form cannot be stated accurately. It was in this

area, too, that the historical _canot du maître_ (also written _maître

canot_), or great canoe, of the fur trade was developed.

 

Most of central Canada, except toward the extreme north in Quebec

and toward the south below the Great Lakes, is in the area where the

canoe birch was plentiful and of large size. There the numerous inland

waterways, the Great Lakes, and the coastal waters of James and Hudson

Bays make water travel convenient, and natural conditions require a

variety of canoe models. Hence, when Europeans first appeared in this

area they found already in existence a highly developed method of

canoe transportation. This they immediately adopted as their own, and

in the long period lasting until very recent times, during which the

development of the northern portion of this area was slow, the canoe

remained the most important means of forest travel.

 

In the northeastern portion of the area, including the Province of

Quebec (with Labrador) from a line drawn from the head of James Bay

eastwardly through Lake St. John and the Saguenay River Valley to the

St. Lawrence and thence northward to the treeline in the sub-Arctic,

dwelt the eastern branch of the far-ranging Cree tribe. Those living

on the shores of Hudson and James Bays, along the west side of the

Labrador Peninsula, were known as the Eastern, Swamp, or Muskeg Cree.

To the north, at the Head of Ungava Bay, around Fort Chimo, and to the

immediate southward, were the Nascapee, or Nascopie, supposedly related

to the Eastern Cree. In southern Labrador and in Quebec along the north

shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and for some distance inland, dwelt

another related tribal group now known as the Montagnais.

 

Although the most recent canoe forms employed by these three Indian

groups were very much the same, this may not have been the case

earlier. A common canoe model in this area was the so-called "crooked

canoe," in which there was a very marked fore-and-aft rocker to the

bottom without a corresponding amount of sheer; as a result the canoe

was much deeper amidships than near the ends. Another common model

had a rather straight bottom fore and aft, with some lift near the

ends and a corresponding amount of sheer. Between these was a hybrid

which had some fore-and-aft rocker in the bottom and a very moderate

sheer. Not until the 1870's was any detailed examination made of the

canoes in this area; then it appeared that the crooked canoe might be

the tribal model of the eastern Cree only, while the Nascapee employed

a straight-bottom model, but it is possible that the examination was

limited and that Nascapee use of the crooked canoe was simply not

observed. By 1900, however, the crooked model was in use not only by

the eastern Cree and the Nascapee but also by the Montagnais.

 

[Illustration: Figure 88

 

MONTAGNAIS CROOKED CANOE. (_Canadian Geological Survey photo._)]

 

In the area around Fort Chimo and at the northern ranges of the

eastern Cree and of the Montagnais the lack of good birch bark made it

necessary to make up the bark cover out of many small pieces. This not

only was laborious but made a rough and rather unsightly cover. Hence,

some of the northern builders, particularly the Nascapee, substituted

spruce bark, which was available in quite large sheets. The use of

the spruce bark, however, did not cause any of these people to depart

markedly from the model or the method of constructing birch-bark

canoes, as it did for the Indians in the maritime area.

 

At the time (1908) when Adney was carefully observing the canoes

in this area he found that both crooked and straight-bottom canoes

were being used by all three tribal groups, but with a variation in

midsection form among individual builders. Both types were built with

a midsection that had a wide bottom and vertical sides, or, as an

alternative, a narrow bottom and flaring sides. The end profile of

all these canoes showed chin. In some crooked canoes the profile was

apparently an arc of a circle, but in most canoes the form was an

irregular curve. The stem met the gunwale in a marked peak rounded very

slightly at the head, as the result of the method by which the stem

was constructed, but in the hybrid model used by the Nascapee the ends

were low and not much peaked and the quick upward rise of the sheer

near the ends was lacking. In cross section all these canoes became

~V~-shaped close to the ends, regardless of the midsection form. For

the straight-bottom canoe and in the hybrid form this resulted in very

sharp level lines, but the very great rocker of the crooked canoe

brought the ends well above the normal line of flotation, so that this

type was quite full-ended at the level line in spite of the ~V~-section.

 

It is apparent upon examining the crooked canoe that there was actually

less variation in its form, in spite of differences in midsection

shape, than in that of the straight-bottom canoe, owing to its very

great depth amidships in proportion to its width. This proportion

made necessary a very moderate flare in the narrow-bottom midsection

and resulted in a rather wall-sided appearance, even in this model.

The hybrid form, which fell between the extremes of the crooked canoe

and the straight-bottom canoe, had a narrow-bottomed flaring-sided

midsection, and its relatively moderate depth made obvious the flare in

the topsides and thus created a distinctive model.

 

[Illustration: Figure 89

 

BIRCH-BARK CROOKED CANOE, UNGAVA CREE. (_Smithsonian Institution

photo._)]

 

 

_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 form of Cree canoe made it necessary to block up

the ends of the building frame to a very great height, and there was

no need to raise the building bed at midlength, since the rocker

extended the full length of the bottom. The bark cover had to be gored

at closely spaced intervals to allow the rocker to be formed, and

even in the straight-bottom model, the quick rise of the bottom near

the ends required closely spaced gores there. In the straight-bottom

model, however, the building bed was raised at midlength, as in eastern

canoe-building, and the building frame was ballasted to a cupid's-bow

profile, when on the bed, so as to achieve the combination of straight

bottom amidships with sharply rising ends.

 

The gunwales were formed of the main gunwale member and a light gunwale

cap, no outwale being employed. They were joined at the ends and,

after hot water had been applied, were staked out with posts under

the ends to obtain the required sheer. The thwarts were then tenoned

into the main gunwales, though occasionally a canoe was built with

"broken" gunwales, that is, the thwart-ends were let flush into the

top and covered by the caps. Some builders did not spread the gunwales

and place the thwarts until after the bark cover was lashed at the

sheer; others used the eastern methods of assembling the gunwale

structure prior to securing the bark cover at sheer. The bark cover

was attached to the main gunwales with a continuous lashing, as in

the Micmac canoes, but the bark was not always brought over the top

of the gunwales. As a result, some canoes had a batten placed under

the lashing, near the edge of the cover, to prevent the lashing from

tearing away. Due to the lack of good root material, the lashing was

often of rawhide. For all horizontal seams in the side panels of the

bark cover, rawhide sewing over a root batten was used. The ends of the

gunwales were supported by sprung headboards; in some canoes these were

bellied toward the ends to such a degree that they almost paralleled

the end profiles.

 

[Illustration: Figure 90

 

NASCAPEE 3-FATHOM CANOE, EASTERN LABRADOR. Similar canoes, with slight

variations in model and dimensions, were used by all Ungava Indians:

the Montagnais and the Eastern, or Swamp, Crees.]

 

[Illustration: Figure 91

 

MONTAGNAIS 2-FATHOM CANOE OF SOUTHERN LABRADOR AND QUEBEC, showing old

decoration forms. Drawing based on small model of a narrow-bottom canoe

built for fast paddling.]

 

[Illustration: Figure 92

 

CROOKED CANOE, 2½-FATHOM, OF THE UNGAVA PENINSULA, used by the

Ungava-Cree, Montagnais, and Nascapee. Also built with a wide bottom and a slight tumble-home in the topsides.]