The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America 7

The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America 7

His illustrations show that his low-ended canoes were of Micmac type

but that his high-ended canoes were not of the Ottawa River or Great

Lakes types but rather of the eastern Malecite of the lower St.

Lawrence valley. This Jesuit missionary also noted that the canoes were

alike at the ends and that the paddles were of maple and about 5 feet

long, with blades 18 inches long and 6 wide. He observed that bark

canoes were unfitted for sailing.

 

[Illustration: Figure 4

 

LINES OF AN OLD BIRCH-BARK CANOE, probably Micmac, brought to England

in 1749 from New England. This canoe was not alike at both ends,

although apparently intended to be so by the builder. (_From Admiralty

Collection of Draughts, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich._)]

 

The early English settlers of New England and New York were acquainted

with the canoe forms of eastern Indians such as the Micmac, Malecite,

Abnaki, and the Iroquois. Surviving records, however, show no detailed

description of these canoes by an English writer and no illustration

until about 1750. At this time a bark canoe, apparently Micmac, was

brought from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to England and delivered to

Lord Anson who had it placed in the Boat House of the Chatham Dockyard.

There it was measured and a scale drawing was made by Admiralty

draftsmen; the drawing is now in the Admiralty Collection of Draughts,

in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich. A redrawing of this plan

appears opposite. It probably represents a war canoe, since a narrow,

sharp-ended canoe is shown. The bottom, neither flat nor fully round,

is a rounded ~V~-shape; this may indicate a canoe intended for coastal

waters. Other drawings, of a later date, showing crude plans of canoes,

exist in Europe but none yet found appear as carefully drawn as the

Admiralty plan, a scale drawing, which seems to be both the earliest

and the most accurate 18th-century representation of a tribal type of

American Indian bark canoe.

 

Due to the rapid development of the French fur trade, and the attendant

exploration, a great variety of canoe types must have become known to

the French by 1750, yet little in the way of drawings and no early

scale plans have been found. This is rather surprising, not only

because the opportunity for observation existed but also because a

canoe factory was actually operated by the French. The memoirs of

Colonel Franquet, Military Engineer-in-Chief for New France, contain

extensive references to this factory as it existed in 1751.

 

The canoe factory was located at Trois Rivières, just below Montreal,

on the St. Lawrence. A standard large canoe was built, and the rate

of production was then 20 a year. Franquet gives as the dimensions of

the canoes the following (converted to English measurement): length

36 feet, beam about 5½ feet, and depth about 33 inches. Much of his

description is not clear, but it seems evident that the canoe described

was very much like the later _grand canot_, or large canoe, of the

fur trade. The date at which this factory was established is unknown;

it may have existed as early as 1700, as might have been required by

the rapid expansion of the French trade and other activities in the

last half of the previous century. It is apparent from early comments

that the French found the Indian canoe-builders unreliable, not to say

most uncertain, as a source of supply. The need for large canoes for

military and trade operations had forced the establishment of such a

factory as soon as Europeans could learn how to build the canoes. This

would, in fact, have been the only possible solution.

 

Of course, it must not be assumed that the bark canoes were the only

watercraft used by the early French traders. They used plank boats as

well, ranging from scows to flat-bottomed bateaux and ship's boats, and

they also had some early sailing craft built on the Great Lakes and on

the lower St. Lawrence. The bateau, shaped much like a modern dory but

with a sharp stern, was adopted by the English settlers as well as the

French. In early colonial times this form of boat was called by the

English a "battoe," or "Schenectady Boat," and later, an "Albany Boat."

It was sharp at both ends, it usually had straight flaring sides with a

flat bottom, and was commonly built of white pine plank. Some, however,

had rounded sides and lapstrake planking, as shown by a plan of a

bateau of 1776 in the Admiralty Collection of Draughts. Early bateaux

had about the same range of size as the bark canoes but later ones were

larger.

 

After the English gained control of Canada, the records of the Hudson's

Bay Company, and of individual traders and travellers such as Alexander

Henry, Jr., and Alexander MacKenzie, at the end of the eighteenth

century, give much material on the fur-trade canoes but little on the

small Indian canoes. In general, these records show that the fur-trade

canoe of the West was commonly 24 feet long inside the gunwales,

exclusive of the curves of bow and stern; 4 feet 9 inches beam; 26

inches deep; and light enough to be carried by two men, as MacKenzie

recorded, "three or four miles without resting on a good road." But the

development of the fur-trade canoes is best left for a later chapter.

 

The use of the name "canoe" for bark watercraft does not appear to

been taken from a North American Indian usage. The early French

explorers and travellers called these craft _canau_ (pl. _canaux_).

As this also meant "canal," the name _canot_ (pl. _canots_) was soon

substituted. But some early writers preferred to call the canoe _ecorse

de bouleau_, or birch-bark, and sometimes the name used was merely the

generic _petit embarcation_, or small boat. The early English term was

"canoa," later "canoe." The popular uses of canoe, canoa, _canau_, and

_canot_ are thought to have begun early in the sixteenth century as the

adaptation of a Carib Indian word for a dugout canoe.

 

 

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 of the bark canoes to wilderness travel

sustain this view. The two known instances mentioned of early accurate

illustration emphasize that distinct variations in tribal forms of

canoes existed, and that these were little changed between early

colonial times and a relatively recent period, despite steadily

increasing influence of the European.

 

 

 

 

_Chapter Two_

 

MATERIALS and TOOLS

 

 

Bark of the paper birch was the material preferred by the North

American Indians for the construction of their canoes, although other

barks were used where birch was not available. This tree (_Betula

papyrifera_ Marsh.), also known as the canoe birch, is found in good

soil, often near streams, and where growing conditions are favorable

it becomes large, reaching a height of a hundred feet, with a butt

diameter of thirty inches or more. Its range forms a wide belt

across the continent, with the northern limits in Canada along a

line extending westward from Newfoundland to the southern shores of

Hudson Bay and thence generally northwestward to Great Bear Lake,

the Yukon River, and the Alaskan coast. The southern limits extend

roughly westward from Long Island to the southern shores of Lake

Erie and through central Michigan to Lake Superior, thence through

Wisconsin, northern Nebraska, and northwesterly through the Dakotas,

northern Montana, and northern Washington to the Pacific Coast. The

trees are both abundant and large in the eastern portion of the belt,

particularly in Newfoundland, Quebec, the Maritime Provinces, Ontario,

Maine, and New Hampshire, in contrast to the western areas. Near the

limits of growth to the north and south the trees are usually small and

scattered.

 

The leaves are rather small, deep green, and pointed-oval, and are

often heart-shaped at the base. The edges of the leaves are rather

coarsely toothed along the margin, which is slightly six-notched. The

small limbs are black, sometimes spotted with white, and the large are

white.

 

The bark of the tree has an aromatic odor when freshly peeled, and is

chalky white marked with black splotches on either side of limbs or

where branches have grown at one time. Elsewhere on the bark, dark,

or black, horizontal lines of varying lengths also appear. The lower

part of the tree, to about the height of winter snows, has bark that

is usually rough, blemished and thin; above this level, to the height

of the lowest large limbs, the bark is often only slightly blemished

and is thick and well formed. The bark is made up of paper-like

layers, their color deepens with each layer from the chalky white of

the exterior through creamy buff to a light tan on the inner layer. A

gelatinous greenish to yellow rind, or cambium layer, lies between the

bark and the wood of the trunk; its characteristics are different from

those of the rest of the bark. The horizontal lines that appear on each

successive paper-like layer do not appear on the rind.

 

The thickness of the bark cannot be judged from the size of a tree

and may vary markedly among trees of the same approximate size in a

single grove. The thickness varies from a little less than one-eighth

to over three-sixteenths inch; bark with a thickness of one-quarter

inch or more is rarely found. For canoe construction, bark must be over

one-eighth inch thick, tough, and from a naturally straight trunk of

sufficient diameter and length to give reasonably large pieces. The

"eyes" must be small and not so closely spaced as to allow the bark to

split easily in their vicinity.

 

The bark can be peeled readily when the sap is flowing. In winter,

when the exterior of the tree is frozen, the bark can be removed only

when heat is applied. During a prolonged thaw, however, this may be

accomplished without the application of heat. Bark peeled from the tree

during a winter thaw, and early in the spring or late in the fall,

usually adheres strongly to the inner rind, which comes away from the

tree with the bark. The act of peeling, however, puts a strain on the

bark, so that only tough, well-made bark can be removed under these

conditions. This particular characteristic caused Indians in the east

to call bark with the rind adhering "winter bark," even though it might

have been peeled from a tree during the warm weather of early summer.

Since in large trees the flow of sap usually starts later than in small

ones, the period in which good bark is obtainable may extend into late

June in some localities. Upon exposure to air and moisture, the inner

rind first turns orange-red and gradually darkens with age until in a

few years it becomes dark brown, or sepia. If it is first moistened,

the rind can be scraped off, and this allowed it to be employed in

decoration, enough being left to form designs. Hence winter bark was

prized.

 

To the eastern Indians "summer bark" was a poor grade that readily

separated into its paper-like layers, a characteristic of bark peeled

in hot weather, or of poorly made bark in any season. In the west,

however, high-quality bark was often scarce and, therefore, the

distinction between winter and summer bark does not seem to have been

made. Newfoundland once had excellent canoe bark, as did the Maritime

Provinces, Maine, New Hampshire, and Quebec, but the best bark was

found back from the seacoast. Ontario and the country to the immediate

north of Lake Superior are also said to have produced bark of high quality for canoe building.