or larch. Two forms of blade were used by the Malecite. The older form
is long and narrow, with the blade wide near the top and the taper
straight along each edge to a narrow, rounded point. Above the greatest
width, the blade tapers almost straight along the edge, coming into
an oval handle very quickly. At the head, the handle is widened and
it ends squared off, but the taper toward the handle is straight, not
flared as in modern canoe paddles; there is no swelling. Paddles of a
shape similar to this, some without a wide handle, were used by other
eastern Indians. The more recent form of Malecite paddle has a long
leaf-shaped, or beaver-tail, blade, much like that of the modern canoe
paddle, except that it ends in a dull point; the handle is as in the
old form but the head is swelled to form the upper grip. The face of
the blade, in both old and new form, has a noticeable ridge down the
centerline.
[Illustration: Figure 46
GENERAL DETAILS OF BIRCH-BARK CANOE CONSTRUCTION, in a drawing by
Adney. (From _Harper's Young People_, supplement, July 29, 1890.)]
The eastern style of construction described here produced what might
be called a wide-bottom canoe with some tumble-home above the turn of
the bilge, but a different method of construction was used to produce
canoes having a narrow bottom and flaring sides. These canoes were not
set up on the building bed, in the first steps of shaping the hull,
with the gunwale frame on the cover bark. Instead, a special building
frame, mentioned earlier, was used. Each tribe using the building frame
had its own style, but the variations were confined to minor matters or
to proportion of width to length.
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.
_Micmac_
The Micmac Indians appear to have occupied the Gaspé Peninsula, most of
the north shore of New Brunswick and nearly all the shores of the Bay
of Fundy as well as all of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Cape
Breton. They may have also occupied much of southern and central New
Brunswick as well, but if so they had been driven from these sections
by the Malecites before the white men came. The Micmacs were known
to the early French invaders under a variety of names; "Gaspesians,"
"Canadiens," "Sourikois," or "Souriquois," while the English colonists
of New England called them merely "Eastern Indians." The name Micmac is
said to mean "allies" and not known, but this name was in use early in
the 18th century, if not before 1700.
The Micmac were a hunting people with warlike characteristics; they
aided the Malecite and other New England Indians in warfare against the
early New England colonists and in later times aided the French against
the English in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. These Indians lived in an
area where water transport represented the easiest method of travel and
so they became expert builders and users of birch-bark canoes, which
they employed in hunting, fishing, general travel, and warfare.
The area in which they lived produced fine birch bark and suitable wood
for the framework. Through experience, they had become able to design
canoes for specific purposes and had produced a variety of models and
sizes. The hunting canoe was the smallest, being usually somewhere
between 9 and 14 feet long, with an occasional canoe as long as 15
feet. This light craft, known as a "woods canoe" and sometimes as a
"portage canoe," was intended for navigating very small streams and
for portaging. Another model, the "big-river canoe," somewhat longer
than the woods canoe, was usually between 15 and 20 feet long. A third
model, the "open water canoe," was for hunting seal and porpoise in
salt water and ranged from about 18 feet to a little over 24 feet in
length. The fourth model, the "war canoe," about which little is known,
appears to have been built in either the "big-river" or "open-water"
form, and to the same length, but sharper and with less beam so as to
be faster.
The tribal characteristics of the Micmac birch-bark canoes were to be
seen in the form of the midsection, in certain structural details, and
in their generally sharp, torpedo-shaped lines. The construction was
very light and marked by good workmanship. The distinctive profiles of
bow and stern, which do not appear in the canoes of other tribes in so
radical a form, were almost circular, fairing from the bottom around
into the sheer in a series of curves. The break in the profile of the
ends at the sheer, a break that marks in more or less degree, the end
profile of other tribal forms, never occurs in the Micmac canoe. At
most, a slight break in the "streamlined" curve might occur at the
point where the profile was started in the bottom, at which point there
might be a short, hard curve.
[Illustration: Figure 49
MICMAC 2-FATHOM PACK, OR WOODS, CANOE for woods travel with light
loads, used by the Nova Scotia Micmacs.]
The form of the sheer line of the Micmac canoes apparently varied with
the model: the woods canoe had the usual curved sheer with the point
of lowest freeboard about amidships, the big river canoe had either a
nearly straight sheer or one very slightly hogged, while the open-water
canoe had a strongly hogged sheer in which the midship portion was
often as much as 3 or 4 inches above that just inboard of the ends.
However, there is a possibility that, at one time, the sheer of all
Micmac canoes was more or less hogged. The little that is known of the
war canoes of colonial times indicate that they had the strongly hogged
sheer that now marks the open-water model, through it is also known
that some of these were really of the big-river model, which in later
times had usually no more than a vestige of the hogged sheer.
The hull-forms of the Micmac canoes were marked in the topsides by a
strong tumble-home, carried the full length of the hull, that gave
these canoes more beam below than at the gunwale. The form of the
midsection varied with the model; the woods canoe usually had a rather
flat bottom athwartships, the big river canoe a slightly rounded
bottom, and the open water canoe either a well-rounded bottom or one
in the form of a slightly rounded ~V~. The fore-and-aft rocker in the
bottom was always moderate, usually occurring in the last few feet near
the ends; however, many of the canoes were straight along the bottom.
This condition will be again referred to in discussing the building
beds used in this type. The ends were usually fine-lined; in plan view
the gunwales came into the ends in straight or slightly hollow lines.
The level lines below the gunwales might also be straight as they came
into the ends, but were commonly somewhat hollow; a few examples show
marked hollowness there. Predominantly, the Micmac canoes were very
sharp in the ends and paddled swiftly. Early Micmac canoes seem to have
been narrower than more recent examples, which are usually rather broad
as compared to the types used by some other tribes.
Structurally, the Micmac canoes were distinguished by the construction
of the ends and by their light build throughout. The canoes had no
inner framework to shape the ends; stiffness there was obtained by
placing battens outside the bark, one on each side of the hull, that
ran from the bottom of the cut in the bark required to shape the ends
to somewhat inboard of the ends of the gunwales at the sheer. These two
battens, as well as a split-root stem-band covering the raw ends of the
cut bark, were held in place by passing a spiral over-and-over lashing
around all three. Sometimes thicker battens reaching from the high
point of the ends inboard to the end thwarts were added, in which case
the side battens were stopped at the high point of the ends and there
faired into the thick battens.
[Illustration: Figure 50
MICMAC 2-FATHOM PACK, OR WOODS, CANOE with Northern Lights decoration
on bow, and seven thwarts.]
The gunwale structure was rather light, the maximum cross section of
the main gunwale in large canoes being rarely in excess of 1¼ inches
square. These members usually tapered slightly toward the ends of the
canoe and had a half-arrowhead form where they were joined. Old canoes
had no guard or outwale, but some more recent Micmac canoes have had a
short guard along the middle third of the length. Often there was no
bevel to take the rib ends on the lower outboard corner of the main
gunwales, and the gunwales were not fitted so that their outboard faces
stood vertically. Instead, the tenons in the gunwales were cut to slant
upward from the inside, so that installation of the thwarts would cause
the outboard face to flare outward at the top. Between this face and
the inside of the bark cover were forced the beveled ends of the ribs,
which were cut chisel-shape. However, some builders beveled or rounded
the lower outboard corner of the main gunwale, as described under
Malecite canoe building (p. 38). The bark cover in the Micmac canoe was
always brought up over the gunwales, gored to prevent unevenness, and
folded down on top of them before being lashed. The gunwale lashing was
a continuous one in which the turns practically touched one another
outboard, though they were sometimes separated under the gunwale to
clear the ribs, which widened near their ends, so the intervals between
them were very small.
The other member of the gunwale structure was the cap; its thickness
was usually ¼ to ⅜ inch, reduced slightly toward the ends. Its inboard
face and the bottom were flat, but the top was somewhat rounded, with
the thickness reduced toward the outboard edge. The cap was fastened
to the main gunwales with pegs and with short lashing groups near the
ends, but in late examples nails were used. The ends of the caps were
bevelled off on the inboard side, so that they came together in pointed
form. The cap usually ended near the end of the gunwale but in some
canoes, particularly those that were nail-fastened, the cap was let
into the gunwale (see p. 50) so that the top was flush with end of the
gunwale.
[Illustration: Figure 51
MICMAC 2-FATHOM PACK, OR WOODS, CANOE with normal sheer and flat
bottom.]
The ends of the gunwales were supported by headboards that were bellied
outboard to bring tension vertically on the bark cover. The heel of the
board stood on a short frog, laid on the bottom with the inboard end
touching or slightly lapping over the endmost rib. The frog supported
the heels of the headboard and also the forefoot of the stem-piece,
which otherwise would have but partial support from the sewing battens
outside the ends at these points. The headboard was rather oval-shaped
and the top was notched on each side to fit under the gunwale; the
narrow central tenon stood slightly above the top of the main gunwales
when the headboard was sprung into place and was held in position by a
lashing across the gunwales inboard of the top of the headboard. The
heel was held by the notch in the frog. Cedar shavings were stuffed
into the ends of the canoe between the stem-piece and the headboard
to mold the ends properly, as no ribs could be inserted there. All
woodwork in these canoes was white cedar, except the headboards and
thwarts, which were maple, and the stem battens, which were usually
basket ash but sometimes were split spruce roots.