CANOES
What the camel is to desert tribes, what the horse is to the Arab, what
the ship is to the colonizing Briton, what all modern means of
locomotion are to the civilized world to-day, that, and more than that,
the canoe was to the Indian who lived beside the innumerable waterways
of Canada. The Indian went fishing, hunting, campaigning, and
sometimes even whaling, in his bark canoe. Jacques Cartier found
Indians fishing in the Gulf of St Lawrence and sleeping under their
upturned canoes, as many a white and Indian has slept since that
long-past summer of 1534. Every succeeding explorer made use of the
Indian canoe, up to the time of Mackenzie,[1] who paddled north to the
Arctic in 1789, along the mighty river which bears his name; and who,
four years {17} later, closed the age of great discoveries by crossing
the Great Divide to the westward-flowing Fraser and reaching the
Pacific by way of its tributary, the Blackwater, an Indian trail
overland, and the Bella Coola. Mackenzie had found the canoe route;
and when he painted the following record on a fiord rock he was
bringing centuries of arduous endeavour to a befitting close:
'Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by land, the 22nd of July, 1793.'
This crowning achievement with paddle and canoe seems very far away
from the reader of the twentieth century. Yet François Beaulieu, one
of Mackenzie's voyageurs, only died in 1872, and was well known to many
old North-Westers who are still alive.
The Indian birch-bark canoe is pre-eminently characteristic of Canada.
But it is not the most primitive type of small craft; and it was often
superseded for various purposes by the more advanced types introduced
by the whites. There are three distinct types of small craft all the
world over. Like everything else, they have followed the invariable
order of evolution, from the simple to the complex. First came the
simple log, which served the earliest man to cross some little stretch
of water by the aid of pole or paddle. Next came {18} the union of
several logs, which formed the clumsy but more stable raft. Then some
prehistoric genius found that the more a log was hollowed out the
better it would float; and so the dug-out was invented. Log, raft, and
dug-out all belong to the first and simplest type, in which there are
no artificial parts to fit together. The second type is exemplified by
the birch-bark canoe, which has three parts in its frame--gunwale,
cross-bars, and ribs--and a fourth part, the skin, to complete it. The
third type is distinguished from the second by its keel, as clearly as
vertebrate animals are distinguished from invertebrates by their
backbone. The common keeled boat, with all its variations, represents
this third and, so far, final type. All three types have played their
parts in Canada, both jointly and separately, and all three play their
parts to-day. But they are best understood if taken one by one.
First, then, the log, the raft, and the dugout canoe. Any one watching
a 'log drive' to-day can see the shantymen afloat in much the same way,
though for a very different purpose, as their remotest human ancestors
hundreds of thousands of years ago. The raft, like the log, is now a
self-carrying cargo, not a passenger craft. But there it is, much as
it {19} always was. Indeed, it is simpler now than it used to be some
years ago, before the days of tugs and railways. Then it was craft and
cargo in one. It was steered by immense oars, as sailing vessels were
before the days of rudders; other gigantic oars were occasionally used
to propel it, like an ancient galley; it carried loose-footed square
sails, like the ships of Tarshish; and its crew lived aboard in shacks
and other simple kinds of shelter, like the earliest Egyptian cabins
ages before the captivity of Israel.
The dug-out has the humblest, though the longest, history of any craft
the hand of man has ever shaped. At one time it rose to the dignity of
being the liner and the man-of-war of the Pacific coast; for the giant
trees there favoured a kind of dug-out that the savage world has never
seen elsewhere, except in certain parts of equatorial Africa. At
another time, only a century or two ago, dug-outs of twenty feet or so
were used in trade between the St Lawrence and the Hudson. They were
of white pine, red or white cedar, or of tulip tree; and their crews
poled standing or paddled kneeling, for they had no thwarts. They
carried good loads, went well, with their canoe-shaped ends, and lasted
ten or twelve {20} years if tarred or painted. They were, indeed,
one-piece canoes, which they had a perfect right to be, as the word
canoe comes from the name the West Indian natives gave their dug-outs
when questioned by Columbus. Nowadays the dug-out is generally used
for the dirtier work of 'longshore fisheries. It has lost its elegance
of form, and may be said to have reverted to a lower type. But this
reversion only serves the better to remind the twentieth century of
what all sorts of craft were like, not twenty, but two hundred,
centuries ago.
Secondly comes the Indian bark canoe, so justly famous in the history,
romance, and poetry of Canada. As in the case of other craft, its
form, size, and material have never been what we call 'standardized.'
Indians living outside the birch belt had to use inferior kinds of
bark. But the finest type was always made, and is still made, with
birch-bark. At least three kinds of tree are necessary for the best
results: the birch for the skin, the fir to caulk it with, and the
cedar for the sewing fibres and the frame. Only a single tool is
needed--a knife; and many a good canoe was built before the whites
brought metal knives from Europe. The Indian looks out for the {21}
biggest, soundest, and smoothest birch tree in his neighbourhood. He
prefers to strip it in the early summer, when the bark is supple with
the sap. Sap is as good for the bark as it is bad for the woodwork of
canoes and every other kind of craft. The soft inside of the bark is
always scraped as clean as a tanner scrapes a hide. If the Indian has
to build with dry or frozen bark he is careful to use hot water in
stripping the trunk, and he warms the bark again for working. Of
course, it is a great advantage to have as few strips as possible,
since every seam must first be sewn together by the squaws and then
gummed over. Occasionally a tree will be found big and suitable enough
to yield a single strip from which a seamless twenty-footer can be
built. But this is very rare.
The next thing is the frame--the gunwale, ribs, and cross-bars. Where
many canoes are building there is generally some sort of model round
which the ribs are bent. But a skilled Indian can dispense with any
model when making the ribs with every requisite degree of curve, from
the open ribs amidships, where the bottom is nearly flat, to the close
ribs at the ends, where the shape becomes halfway between the letter
'U' and {22} the letter 'V.' The gunwale is quite the most important
part of the canoe, as it holds all the other parts together and serves
some of the constructional purposes of a keel. The voyageurs,
recognizing this, call it _le maître_. It is laid on the ends of the
ribs, which are made fast to it. Then the frame is completed by the
three or more cross-bars, which keep the two sides of the gunwale from
spreading apart. After this the birch-bark skin is stretched on the
frame as tightly as possible, turned in over the gunwale, and clamped
on there by the _faux maître_ or super-gunwale. The two ends, both as
sharp as an ordinary bow, are then sewn together by a sort of
criss-cross fibre lacing, and every hole or seam in the bark is well
gummed with melted rosin. The finishing touches are equally important,
each in its own way. Thin boards are laid in lengthwise, either
between the ribs and the skin or over the ribs, so as to protect the
bark bottom from being injured by the cargo. The ends of the canoe are
reinforced inside by the Indian equivalent for a collision bulkhead.
This bulkhead sometimes rises well above the gunwale and is carved like
a figurehead, which accounts for its voyageur name of _le p'ti'
bonhomme_. A third finishing touch, {23} very common in earlier days,
is the decoration of the outsides of both ends, which used to rise with
a sharp sheer, and sometimes actually curved back. The usual
decorations here were totem signs, generally made of porcupine quills,
dyed in many colours, and serving the original purpose of a coat of
arms.
The familiar shape has never been greatly varied, though some canoes
are built on finer lines for speed, and others on fuller lines for
carrying cargo. But there has always been plenty of variety in size
and material. The smallest canoe would hardly hold two persons, and
could be carried in one hand. The big war canoes would hold more than
twenty well-armed paddlers and required four men to carry them. The
very biggest canoe probably did not exceed forty feet in length, six in
breadth, and two in depth amidships. Fifty men or five tons of cargo
could have been carried in it. But perhaps one quite so large was
never built. When white cedar and birch were not to be had, all sorts
of substitutes were used. Any roots with tough fibres would do for the
sewing, and any light and tough wood served its turn as a more or less
efficient substitute for the white cedar framing. But elm and other
alternative barks {24} were all bad. The elm bark was used inside out,
because the outside was too rough and brittle for the bottom of a
canoe. It made dull paddling and never lasted the whole of a hard
season, unlike the birch-bark, which sometimes had a life of six or
seven years. The most modern material is canvas, which is generally
painted red or green. It is light, easily repaired, and has much to
recommend it, though trappers think it gives a taint which scares their
game away. The paddles were and are of all shapes and sizes, long and
short, broad and narrow, spoon-blade and square; and they were and are
made of all kinds of wood, from the lightest spruce to the much heavier
but handsomer bird's-eye maple. Sails were and are only used with
light winds dead aft, and not often in birch-barks even then, because
there is no 'stiffness' without a keel.
There were skin as well as bark canoes among the Indians. But the
typical skin canoe is the Eskimo kayak. This is a shuttle-shaped
craft, about fifteen feet long and just wide enough to let its single
paddler sit flat on the bottom. It differs from the Indian canoe in
being entirely decked over. The skin of the grey seal, when that best
of canoe skins can be found, is carefully sewn, so as to be quite {25}
waterproof, and then stretched as tightly as a drumhead all over the
frame, except for the little 'well' where the Eskimo sits with his
double-bladed paddle. As he tucks himself in so closely that water
cannot enter he does not fear to be capsized, for he can right himself
with a sweep of his paddle. Kayaks are very light and handy, as the
frame is made either of whalebone or spruce. The oomiak is the
Eskimo's family boat and cargo carrier, flat-bottomed, not decked in,
and sometimes big enough for twenty people with their gear. It is made
of much the same materials.
The white man's canoes, so well known--outside of Canada--as 'Canadian
canoes,' are partly true canoes and partly a cross between canoes and
boats. The fact that the skin is not made of bark or hide, but of
canvas, wood, or metal, and the further innovation that machinery is
freely used, make no essential difference, provided always that there
is no semblance of a keel. But once the keel is introduced the whole
constructional idea is changed and the ways of savages are left behind.
A first-rate keeled canoe, built of white cedar, brass shod and copper
fastened, fitted with air tanks and life-line, a lateen sail and
portage handles, is the very perfection {26} of a handy little cruiser
for all sorts of inland waters. One like this, but built of basswood,
proved quite serviceable after more than ten years' work, in the course
of which it covered several thousand miles along the Lower St Lawrence,
where the seas are often rough and the low-tide landings always hard.
But all similar craft, though looking like canoes afloat, are no more
like the true canoes and kayaks in their constructional detail than a
bird is like a butterfly. The keel makes all the difference.
Everything in naval architecture springs from and is related to the
keel. 'Laying the keel' means beginning the ship in the only possible
way, and 'two keels to one' is an expression which every one
understands as meaning a naval preponderance in that proportion. The
keel is to the ribs of a ship exactly what the backbone is to the ribs
of a man, and any craft built up from a keel, no matter how small and
simple it may be, belongs to the third and apparently final type of
craft, which is as far ahead of the canoe type as that is ahead of the
dug-out, raft, and log.
An intermediate type that once did much service, and still does a
little, is the white man's flat-bottomed boat, which could be {27}
paddled, rowed, or sailed, according to build and circumstances. The
common punt is the best known form of it; the dory by far the handiest
all round; the cargo barge the biggest; and the old-fashioned 'bateau'
the most characteristically Canadian. The modern 'bateau' is to be
found only among keeled sailing craft. But the old 'bateau,' which
Wolfe's local transport officers spelt _battoe_, was more of a rowboat.
It was sharp at both ends, wall-sided, and fitted with oars, poles, and
a square sail. The bottom had some sheer--that is, it was curved up at
each end--but less than the top. Four men rowed, the fifth steered,
and three tons of miscellaneous goods or thirty-five barrels of flour
made a fair cargo. Bateaux like this were the craft in which the
United Empire Loyalists went up the St Lawrence to settle Upper Canada.
Afterwards the size and crew were increased till the average cargo
amounted to about four tons and a half. But the Durham boat,
introduced by American traders from the Mohawk valley, soon became a
successful rival, which was not itself supplanted till canals enabled
still larger craft to pass from one open water to another. The Durham
was larger than the bateau; long, light, and shallow. It had a not
quite flat {28} bottom and a moderate sheer in the sides. The best
bateaux and Durhams were made with strong white oak bottoms and light
fir sides.
The bark canoe gave place to the boat, step by step, as civilized
intercourse advanced. It disappeared first from the great national
highway of the St Lawrence and the Lakes, where the French began using
bateaux and sailing craft as early as the seventeenth century. During
the eighteenth the boat gained steadily on the canoe, which was more
and more confined to the Indians. The local craft in chief civilized
use on both sides during the fight for Canada was the bateau; and the
best crews then and afterwards were the French-Canadian voyageurs.
But everywhere beyond the immediate spheres of French and British
influence the canoe was universal. The Great West then began at the
Lakes and the Mississippi, and was a land of wild adventure, rumour,
and extravagant surmise. The map that formed the frontispiece to the
standard authority of the time--Jefferys' _French Dominions in
America_--is full of geographical romance. Once in the Kaministikwia,
the map has no territorial divisions other than those between the {29}
different tribal hunting grounds, each one of which was watered by a
hundred streams and marked by the 'carrying places' where the canoes
had to be 'portaged.' There lived the 'Nation of the Bear' and the
'Nation of the Snake,' whose special totems of course were worked in
coloured quills on every war canoe; and there flowed many a river 'the
course of which is uncertain.' Along the great Assiniboine lay the
'Warrior's track from the River of the West,' and just where the
prairies ran out into the complete unknown there was the vista of a
second Eldorado in the hopeful suggestion that 'Hereabouts are supposed
to be the Mountains of Bright Stones mentioned in the Map of ye Indian
Ochagach.'
After the Conquest the tide of trade and settlement flowed faster and
faster west; and with the white man's trade and settlement came the
white man's boats. At last, in 1823, Sir George Simpson, the resident
governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, finding that canoe transport was
half as dear again as that done with boats, ordered that boats should
supersede canoes all over the main trade routes of the Company's vast
domain. This was the death-blow to the canoe as a real factor in
Canadian life. From that time on it has been receding {30} farther and
farther, from waterway to waterway, at first before the white man's
boat with oars and sails, and now before his steamer. But in distant
or secluded wilds it lingers still--the same craft to-day that it was
when the Celtic coracles were paddled on the Thames before the Romans
ever heard of England--the horse, the ship, the moving home of those
few remaining nomads whose life is dying with its own.
The great historic age of inland small craft--the age of dug-out,
bateau, and canoe; the age of Indian, pioneer, and voyageur--was the
eighteenth century, when fresh-water sailing craft were few, when
steamers were unknown, and when savage and civilized men and methods
were mingled with each other in the fur trade over a larger area than
they used in common either before that time or since. The seventeenth
century saw the slow beginnings of this age after Champlain had founded
Quebec in 1608 and had taken the warpath with the Hurons against the
Iroquois. The nineteenth century saw its almost equally slow decline,
which began in 1815, at the close of the war with the United States,
and may be said to have been practically completed with the two
North-West Rebellions of 1870 and 1885. The latter year, indeed,
closed a real {31} epoch with three significant events: the end of the
last Indian and half-breed war in Canada, the completion of the first
trans-continental Canadian railway, and the return from Egypt of the
first and last Canadians to go on an oversea campaign as professed
voyageurs.
Under the French régime the fur trade reached well past Lake Superior.
Nepigon and the Kaministikwia were the two most important junctions of
routes at the western end of the lake. Under British rule the Montreal
'fur lords' used the 'Grand Portage,' which ends on a bay of Lake
Superior some way south of the modern Fort William. It was a regular
bush road, nearly ten miles long, made to avoid the falls of the
Pigeon. As early as 1783, the year in which King George III first
recognized the United States as an independent power, the fur lords
kept no less than five hundred men in constant work at the height of
the season, during the latter half of August. Horses and oxen were
used later on; but the voyageur himself was the chief beast of burden
here, as everywhere else. There were two kinds of voyageur. One was
the mere merchant carrier, who went from Montreal to the Grand Portage
in big boats of four tons burden having a crew of ten men. These were
the 'pork {32} eaters' or _mangeurs de lard_, who had nothing worse to
face than well-known rapids. The others were a finer breed, the true
and daring coureurs de bois, or pioneers of the bush, who went west in
comparatively light canoes, each carrying not more than a ton and a
half, who hunted their own game, risked a fight with the Indians, and
were to the duller 'pork eaters' what a charger is to a cart-horse or a
frigate to a barge. The regulation portage load was one hundred and
fifty pounds, and many a man was known to carry this weight the whole
ten miles and back within six hours.
There was need to hurry. Supplies were going west to Lake Winnipeg, up
the Saskatchewan, and even on to Athabaska; while furs were coming down
for the autumn trade to Europe. As a rule the traders were Scottish
and the voyageurs French Canadian. Indians and half-breeds were fairly
common; they manned the canoes in the farther wilds, guided the
pioneers, and did the actual trapping. To speak in terms of modern
transportation: the Indians and their bark canoes produced the raw
material and worked the branch lines; while the voyageurs met them at
the junctions and took the goods down to {33} the head of ocean
navigation, where everything was, of course, trans-shipped for Europe.
The same sort of trade was carried on, in a slightly different way, in
the Maritime Provinces. There are survivals of it still in Labrador.
At the end of July, Nascaupees, some of whom take months to reach their
hunting grounds by paddle and portage, may be seen at Seven Islands, on
the north shore of the Gulf of St Lawrence, where huge modern pulp
mills make paper for the New York press, and where the offing is alive
with transatlantic shipping all season through.
These inland voyages are as strange to the average Canadian of to-day
as to contemporary Englishmen and Frenchmen. So it is perhaps worth
while to record the ordinary features of what must soon become
altogether a thing of the past. The incidents would be much the same
with every kind of small craft that has served its turn along the
interlocking network of Canadian waterways, whether an old-fashioned
bateau or a Durham boat, a sharp-end dug-out, or a bark canoe. But the
immemorial birch-bark is the best to choose for example, as it preceded
and outlasted every other kind and is the most typically Canadian of
them all.
{34}
Before starting, every broken seam and hole must be gummed over. Water
is poured into the canoe and every point of exit marked for gumming.
Loading must be done with unusual care, as the slightest crankness of
such frail craft in such wild waters is likely to prove fatal. Crews
always were their own stevedores, and it was a poor crew that could not
load to perfection in a short five minutes, once the cargo had been
settled. The actual paddling is not difficult to learn, that is, the
paddling required from an ordinary member of the crew. But the man in
the bow and, still more, the man in the stern need the highest kind of
skilful daring to take them safely through. Paddling by oneself also
requires a special touch, only to be learnt by long practice. Even in
dead water it takes some time before a novice can send the canoe
straight ahead when paddling on one side only. As the paddle goes aft
the bow naturally tends to turn towards the other side. The trick of
it consists in counteracting this tendency by a twist of the blade
which brings the inner edge round, aftwise beside the canoe, till the
blade becomes a rectifying rudder as well as a thrusting propeller at
the end of every stroke. When a fall or impassable rapid is reached,
{35} the 'bowman' jumps out before the canoe touches bottom and draws
her safely ashore. He and the 'steersman' then carry her over the
portage, while the rest carry the cargo on their backs. A man's own
weight is a fair load; but with a sling across their foreheads, and
clasped hands behind their heads, strong men have carried twice as much
and more. When a rapid has to be ascended the canoe is lightened as
much as need be, the steel-shod poles are got out, and the bow and
stern paddlers stand up to their work, balancing themselves as easily
as other men would on dry land.
But it is when a rapid is to be 'run' that the finest skill is shown.
If there is any doubt the steersman walks down to take a good look
first. Then, if necessary, some or all of the cargo is taken out and
portaged to the next 'steady' in the river. Rapids are so common in
some journeys that canoemen think less of them than foxhunters think of
five-barred gates. In most cases a mistake means death; so every nerve
and muscle is kept tensely ready the whole run through. The current
should be 'humoured'; for it does a surprising amount of the work
itself. If rightly headed with the main throw of it the canoe will
{36} naturally tend to seek the deepest and safest channel just as the
body of the water does. Split channels must be met by instant
decision; and it is when picking out the proper one that steerage way
tells. As the pace of the rapid increases, so does the danger; for the
slightest false thrust of a blade is enough to make a canoe swerve or
upset. But, with the expert bowman on the keenest of look-outs and the
course under the knowing touch of the still more expert steersman, a
rapid may be run in perfect safety through racing waves which only just
fail to leap aboard, on roaring water which drowns the human voice so
completely that the bowman can only make use of signals, past rocks and
snags on which a single graze would mean a wreck, and, often the worst
of all, from one wild 'throw' to another with quite a different set and
a wrench of two fierce currents where they meet.
All the white man's boats used by the voyageurs approximated more or
less to the shape of the canoe: the various kinds of Hudson river
dug-out, the bateau, the 'Durham,' and the 'York,' which last became
the wooden successor of the birch-bark after Governor Simpson's general
inspection of the Hudson's Bay domain. Only the rather {37} barge-like
'Mackinaw' was completely outside this venturesome class. It was a
useful but humdrum cargo boat, laboriously poled along shallow, quiet
waters, or rowed with lumbering sweeps; or sometimes even sailed, when
it shovelled its way through the water with a very safe wind dead aft.
This completes the tale of Canadian inland small craft that depended on
pole and paddle, oar and towline, and only used a simple sail as an
exceptional thing. But the human interest would not be complete
without some reference to the tours of inspection made by the magnates
of the Hudson's Bay Company. The greatest tours of all were those of
Sir George Simpson, the governor who took charge after the Company
absorbed its warring rival in 1821. In modern business language he
would be called the executive head of the great Canadian fur-trade
'merger.' He was a young promoted clerk, a Scotsman born, with little
experience of the Canadian wilds, but with the natural faculty of rule
and a good deal of diplomacy--the gauntlet in the velvet glove.
Simpson soon grasped the salient features of the people he had to deal
with and very sensibly made his tours of inspection as much like a {38}
royal progress as he could. Time and money were never neglected: his
'record runs' across the wilderness and the dividends at headquarters
proved that to the full. He was determined to show every one concerned
that thenceforth there was only one governing company, and that he was
its proper representative. Then, as always, London was the general
headquarters. But the Canadian headquarters were at Montreal; and
Simpson fixed what might be called the field headquarters at Norway
House, near the north end of Lake Winnipeg, a commanding strategic
point in the heart of the great fur territories. Here he was always
busy introducing discipline, enforcing a much-needed reduction in the
ration of rum given to the Indians, and reporting home. As voyageurs,
he thought the French Canadians much better than the men of any other
race. 'Canadians preferable to Orkneymen. Orkneymen less expensive
but slow. Less physical strength and spirits. Obstinate if brought
young into the service. Scotch and Irish, when numerous, quarrelsome,
independent, and mutinous.' He introduced fines as a punishment. But
'this will only do for Europeans. A blow is better for Canadians.' On
July 12, 1828, Simpson left York Factory {39} on Hudson Bay for a state
and business progress across the continent to Fort Vancouver on the
Columbia. One of his staff, Archibald Macdonald, wrote an account of
it, called _Peace River: a Canoe Voyage from the Hudson Bay to the
Pacific_. The best of birch-barks were used to ensure speed; though
the birch-bark had already been superseded as a cargo craft. There was
a doctor in the party, which included nine voyageurs to each of the two
canoes. Simpson's departure was the signal for a salute of seven guns,
which was duly repeated at every subsequent fort. The whole population
lined the waterside as the voyageurs struck up one of their old French
folk-songs to beguile the way. The arrival at Norway House was still
more imposing. The Union Jack, with the magic letters 'H. B. C.' on
its fly, was hoisted, to the admiration of all the whites and Indians
from that most important neighbourhood. Simpson's party had landed out
of sight to put on their best clothes; after which they shot through
the gorge at full speed, to the strains of the bagpipes from Simpson's
canoe and bugles from the other. At Fort St James, the central point
of 'New Caledonia,' the approach was made by land. 'Unfurling the
British Ensign, it was given {40} to the guide, who marched first.
After him came the band, consisting of buglers and bagpipers. Next
came the governor, mounted, and behind him Hamlyn and Macdonald, also
on horses. Twenty men loaded like beasts of burden formed the line,
and finally M'Gillivray with his wife and family brought up the rear.'
On the nineteenth day out from York Factory Simpson reached Fort
Langley at the mouth of the Fraser.
How far away it all seems now in this new twentieth century! And yet,
as in the case of Alexander Mackenzie, there is a wonderfully intimate
human link connecting that time with our own; for Lord Strathcona was
born before the amalgamation of the rival companies in 1821; he became
the last resident-governor of the Hudson's Bay Company while François
Beaulieu, Mackenzie's centenarian voyageur, was still alive; and he
lived until 1914, the year of the Great World War.
[1] For the canoe voyages of Mackenzie, to the Arctic in 1789 and to
the Pacific in 1793, see _Adventurers of the Far North_ and _Pioneers
of the Pacific Coast_ in this Series.
{41}