The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America 5

The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America 5

Through the farsightedness of Frederick Hill, then director of The

Mariners' Museum, Newport News, Virginia, Adney had, ten years before

his death, deposited in the museum over a hundred of his models and a

portion of his papers. After his death his son Glenn Adney cooperated

in placing in The Mariners' Museum the remaining papers dealing with

bark canoes, thus completing the "Adney Collection."

 

Frederick Hill's appreciation of the scope and value of the collection

prompted him to seek my assistance in organizing this material with a

view to publication. Though the Adney papers were apparently complete

and were found, upon careful examination, to contain an immense amount

of valuable information, they were in a highly chaotic state. At the

request of The Mariners' Museum, I have assembled the pertinent papers

and have compiled from Adney's research notes as complete a description

as I could of bark canoes, their history, construction, decoration and

use. I had long been interested in the primitive watercraft of the

Americas, but I was one of those who had discontinued research on bark

canoes upon learning of Adney's work. The little I had accomplished

dealt almost entirely with the canoes of Alaska and British Columbia;

from these I had turned to dugouts and to the skin boats of the Eskimo.

Therefore I have faced with much diffidence the task of assembling and

preparing the Adney papers for publication, particularly since it was

not always clear what Adney had finally decided about certain matters

pertaining to canoes. His notes were seldom arranged in a sequence that

would enable the reader to decide which, of a number of solutions or

opinions given, were Adney's final ones.

 

Adney's interest in canoes, as canoes, was very great, but his interest

in anthropology led him to form many opinions about pre-Columbian

migrations of Indian tribes and about the significance of the

decorations used in some canoes. His papers contain considerable

discussion of these matters, but they are in such state that only an

ethnologist could edit and evaluate them. In addition, my own studies

lead me to conclude that the mere examination of watercraft alone is

insufficient evidence upon which to base opinions as far-reaching as

those of Adney. Therefore I have not attempted to present in this

work any of Adney's theories regarding the origin or ethnological

significance of the canoes discussed. I have followed the same practice

with those Adney papers which concern Indian language, some of which

relate to individual tribal canoe types and are contained in the canoe

material. (Most of his papers on linguistics are now in The Peabody

Museum, Salem, Massachusetts.)

 

The strength and weaknesses of Adney's work, as shown in his papers,

drawings, and models, seem to me to be fully apparent. That part

dealing with the eastern Indians, with whom he had long personal

contact, is by far the most voluminous and, perhaps, the most accurate.

The canoes used by Indians west of the St. Lawrence as far as the

western end of the Great Lakes and northward to the west side of

Hudsons Bay are, with a few exceptions, covered in somewhat less

detail, but the material nonetheless appears ample for our purpose. The

canoes used in the Canadian Northwest, except those from the vicinity

of Great Slave Lake, and in Alaska were less well described. It appears

that Adney had relatively little opportunity to examine closely the

canoes used in Alaska, during his visit there in 1900, and that he

later was unable to visit those American museums having collections

that would have helped him with regard to these areas. As a result, I

have found it desirable to add my own material on these areas, drawn

largely from the collections of American museums and from my notes on

construction details.

 

An important part of Adney's work deals with the large canoes used in

the fur trade. Very little beyond the barest of descriptions has been

published and, with but few exceptions, contemporary paintings and

drawings of these canoes are obviously faulty. Adney was fortunate

enough to have been able to begin his research on these canoes while

there were men alive who had built and used them. As a result he

obtained information that would have been lost within, at most, the

span of a decade. His interest was doubly keen, fortunately, for Adney

not only was interested in the canoes as such, he also valued the

information for its aid in painting historical scenes. As a result,

there is hardly a question concerning fur trade canoes, whether of

model, construction, decoration, or use, that is not answered in his

material.

 

I have made every effort to preserve the results of Adney's

investigations of the individual types in accurate drawings or in the

descriptions in the text. It was necessary to redraw and complete

most of Adney's scale drawings of canoes, for they were prepared for

model-building rather than for publication. Where his drawings were

incomplete, they could be filled in from his scale models and notes.

It must be kept in mind that in drawing plans of primitive craft the

draftsman must inevitably "idealize" the subject somewhat, since a

drawing shows fair curves and straight lines which the primitive

craft do not have in all cases. Also, the inboard profiles are

diagrammatic rather than precise, because, in the necessary reduction

of the full-size canoe to a drawing, this is the only way to show its

"form" in a manner that can be interpreted accurately and that can

be reproduced in a model or full size, as desired. It is necessary

to add that, though most of the Adney plans were measured from

full-size canoes, some were reconstructed from Indian models, builders'

information, or other sources. Thanks to Adney's thorough knowledge of

bark construction, the plans are highly accurate, but there are still

chances for error, and these are discussed where they occur.

 

Although reconstruction of extinct canoe types is difficult, for the

strange canoes of the Beothuk Indians of Newfoundland Adney appears to

have solved some of the riddles posed by contemporary descriptions and

the few grave models extant (the latter may have been children's toys).

Whether or not his reconstructed canoe is completely accurate cannot be

determined; at least it conforms reasonably well to the descriptions

and models, and Adney's thorough knowledge of Indian craftsmanship

gives weight to his opinions and conclusions. This much can be said:

the resulting canoe would be a practical one and it fulfills very

nearly all descriptions of the type known today.

 

Adney's papers and drawings dealing with the construction of bark

canoes are most complete and valuable. So complete as to be almost a

set of "how-to-do-it" instructions, they cover everything from the

selection of materials and use of tools to the art of shaping and

building the canoe. An understanding of these building instructions is

essential to any sound examination of the bark canoes of North America,

for they show the limitations of the medium and indicate what was and

what was not reasonable to expect from the finished product.

 

In working on Adney's papers, it became obvious that this publication

could not be limited to birch-bark canoes, since canoes built of other

barks and even some covered with skins appear in the birch bark areas.

Because of this, and to explain the technical differences between these

and the birch canoes, skin-covered canoes have been included. I have

also appended a chapter on Eskimo skin boats and kayaks. This material

I had originally prepared for inclusion in the _Encyclopedia Arctica_,

publication of which was cancelled after one volume had appeared. As

a result, the present work now covers the native craft, exclusive of

dugouts, of all North America north of Mexico.

 

In my opinion the value of the information gathered by Edwin Tappan

Adney is well worth the effort that has been expended to bring it to

its present form, and any merit that attaches to it belongs largely to

Adney himself, whose long and painstaking research, carried on under

severe personal difficulties, is the foundation of this study.

 

HOWARD IRVING CHAPELLE

_Curator of Transportation,

Museum of History and Technology_

 

 

 

 

_Chapter One_

 

EARLY HISTORY

 

 

The development of bark canoes in North America before the arrival of

the white men cannot satisfactorily be traced. Unlike the dugout, the

bark canoe is too perishable to survive in recognizable form buried in

a bog or submerged in water, so we have little or no visual evidence of

very great age upon which to base sound assumptions.

 

Records of bark canoes, contained in the reports of the early white

explorers of North America, are woefully lacking in detail, but they

at least give grounds for believing that the bark canoes even then

were highly developed, and were the product of a very long period of

existence and improvement prior to the first appearance of Europeans.

 

The Europeans were most impressed by the fact that the canoes were

built of bark reinforced by a light wooden frame. The speed with

which they could be propelled by the Indians also caused amazement,

as did their light weight and marked strength, combined with a great

load-carrying capacity in shallow water. It is remarkable, however,

that although bark canoes apparently aroused so much admiration among

Europeans, so little of accurate and complete information appears in

their writings.

 

With two notable exceptions, to be discussed later, early explorers,

churchmen, travellers, and writers were generally content merely to

mention the number of persons in a canoe. The first published account

of variations in existing forms of the American bark canoe does not

occur until 1724, and the first known illustration of a bark canoe

accurate enough to indicate its tribal designation appeared only two

years earlier. This fact makes any detailed examination of the early

books dealing with North America quite unprofitable as far as precise

information on bark canoes is concerned.

 

The first known reference by a Frenchman to the bark canoe is that of

Jacques Cartier, who reported that he saw two bark canoes in 1535; he

said the two carried a total of 17 men. Champlain was the first to

record any definite dimensions of the bark canoes; he wrote that in

1603 he saw, near what is now Quebec, bark canoes 8 to 9 paces long

and 1½ paces wide, and he added that they might transport as much as

a pipe of wine yet were light enough to be carried easily by one man.

If a pace is taken as about 30 inches, then the canoes would have

been between 20 and 23 feet long, between 40 and 50 inches beam and

capable of carrying about half a ton, English measurements. These were

apparently Algonkin canoes. Champlain was impressed by the speed of

the bark canoes; he reported that his fully manned longboat was passed

by two canoes, each with two paddlers. As will be seen, he was perhaps

primarily responsible for the rapid adoption of bark canoes by the

early French in Canada.

 

The first English reference that has been found is in the records of

Captain George Weymouth's voyage. He and his crew in 1603 saw bark

canoes to the westward of Penobscot Bay, on what is now the coast of

Maine. The English were impressed, just as Champlain had been, by

the speed with which canoes having but three or four paddlers could

pass his ship's boat manned with four oarsmen. Weymouth also speaks

admiringly of the fine workmanship shown in the structure of the canoes.