thin board or laminated. In the straight-stem form, only the forefoot
part was laminated, and no headboard was used. Ordinarily, however,
the rigid headboard with a single strut was used. The head of the
stem-piece was carried through the rail caps and showed above them;
the ends of the caps and main gunwales were notched to permit this, but
neither these nor the cap extended outboard of the face of the stem.
[Illustration: Figure 112
ALGONKIN "WABINAKI CHIMAN."]
The bark cover was lashed to the gunwales with group lashings in which
the thong was carried from group to group by a long stitch outside the
cover, under the outwale. The turns in each group were passed through
five or six holes in the cover and reinforcing piece, two turns of the
thong going through each hole. The connecting stitch between groups,
which were usually about 1½ inches apart, usually passed from the last
hole in a group to the second hole in the next. Some builders laid a
wooden measuring stick along the gunwales to space the lashings; this
was perhaps the practice of many tribal groups.
The lashing of the ends of the cover was passed through the stem
pieces; when the latter were not laminated, holes through the soft,
thin cedar were made by a sharp awl and an in-and-out or harness stitch
was quite commonly used. On laminated stem pieces the form of lashing
varied; in the _wabinaki chiman_ it was commonly some combination of
spiral and crossed turns; in the old form of high-ended canoe multiple
turns through a single hole (usually at the top of the stem-head)
were also used in combination with closely spaced long-and-short
turns in triangular groups near the top of the stem profile. Below,
in the forefoot, spiral or crossed stitches were used. The ends of
the outwales were lashed together with a close wrapping of turns in
contact where they turned upward sharply, and the caps were secured
there by two or more group lashings. The head of the headboard was
lashed to each gunwale by passing the thong through holes each side
of the headboard; these lashings were in a long group and were passed
around gunwale and outwale before the caps were in place. With plank
stem-pieces the ends of the bark cover were slightly inboard of the
cutwater line, sometimes protected by a rabbet.
The side panels were sewn on with in-and-out stitches, back stitches,
or a double line of either. The gores were sewn spirally in the usual
manner or were stitched with a closely spaced lacing.
Some of the old Algonkin canoes examined had what appeared to be a
_wulegessis_ just outboard of the headboards. No marking was found on
these and they were too far aft to protect the ends of the gunwales.
The bark was carried across the gunwales, under the caps, and hung down
a little below the outwales. On top, it reached from the headboard out
to the lashings of the outwales, forming between the headboards and
the lashings a short deck that may have been intended to keep dirt
and water out of the ends of the canoe. Sometimes a modern _wabinaki
chiman_ has a _wulegessis_, copying the Eastern practice but without
markings.
[Illustration: Figure 113
ALGONKIN CANOE DECORATIONS by Tommy Sersin (or Serzia), Golden Lake,
Ont., showing four sides of stems of one canoe. Indian shown has the
eastern headdress rather than that of the Plains Indian. Moose, bear,
beaver, and goose are shown. (_Sketches by Adney._)]
The thwarts were of various designs; a common one had parallel sides in
plan. The old canoes had thwarts much like those of the Têtes de Boule.
The end lashings of these were usually passed through three holes in
the thwart ends, but some had only two holes.
Sheathing was laid somewhat as in the Têtes-de-Boule canoe, with
overlapping edges and butts. The end sheathing was short and was laid
first; the centerline strake was parallel-sided to a point near the
sharp end of the canoe. The strakes on each side of it were tapered
and were laid with their wide ends toward the middle of the canoe and
with the sides and narrow end lapped. In the middle of the canoe the
strakes were parallel-sided and their butts were on top of those of
the strakes in the end of the canoe. The sheathing was carried up to
within about three inches of the gunwales. The edges were not thinned
or feathered as much as were those in the Têtes de Boule canoe.
Ribs were of cedar from 2 to 3 inches wide, closely spaced and, as
usual, without taper until near the ends, which were formed with a
narrow chisel edge as in the Têtes-de-Boule canoe. The ribs were first
roughly bent, using the building frame as a general guide for length,
in order to obtain a somewhat dish-shaped cross section; by this
means the width of the bottom could be established to the builder's
satisfaction.
The foregoing description of building methods and construction is
based largely upon what is known of the old canoes. In later times the
Algonkin copied the eastern canoes and their procedure altered. Not
only did they copy extensively the appearance of the St. Francis and
Malecite canoes, but they built some canoes much like those of the
Têtes de Boule and Ojibway. As a result, it has become difficult to
determine what their tribal practices were.
Their paddles were of the same design as those of the Têtes de Boule,
round-pointed and with the blade parallel-sided for most of its length.
In portaging, the Algonkin, like many forest Indians, placed a pair
of paddles a foot or so apart fore-and-aft over the middle thwart and
those on each side of it. These were lashed in place with the ends of
a band of hide or the inner bark of a tree like the basswood or elm.
This band had been first passed around the ends of the middle thwart,
outside the shoulders, and hitched with ends long enough to secure the
paddles in place. The shoulder on the middle, thwart, a few inches
inside the gunwales, was placed there for just this purpose, not as a
mere decoration, so that the line could not slide in along the thwart.
The canoe was then lifted and turned over by raising one end, or by
lifting the whole canoe, and was placed on the carrier's shoulders, so
that the paddle handles were on his shoulders. This brought the middle
thwart to just behind the carrier's head. The loop of the bark or hide
cord was then placed around the forehead of the carrier in order to
keep the canoe from slipping backward. In this fashion one man could
carry a canoe for miles if the canoe were small--and all woods, or
portage, canoes were small and light. The headband was known to white
men as a "tump line." The Indians used it to carry not only canoes but
other heavy or awkward loads (see p. 25).
There is no certainty about the decorations of Algonkin canoes. Some
of the older Indians claimed that the old form of canoe was often
decorated with figures formed by scraping the winter bark; usually
these depicted the game the owner hunted. Five-pointed stars, fish, and
circular forms are known to have been used on the _wabinaki chiman_,
but it is not known whether these were really Algonkin decorations or
merely something that had been copied "because it looked good."
The Algonkin called the large fur canoes _nabiska_, a name which the
Têtes de Boule rendered as _rabeska_. The word may be a corruption of
the Cree word for "strong." At any rate, the name _rabeska_ (sometimes
pronounced ra-bas-ha), rather than the French maître canot, was long
applied by white men in the fur trade to the large canoes built in the
Ottawa River Valley for their business. In late years the rabeska was a
"large" 2½-fathom high-ended birch-bark canoe, but originally it meant
a fur-trade canoe, with the characteristic ends, of from 3 fathoms
upward in length.
_Ojibway_
The Indian bands that were called "_Outaouais_" by the early French do
not appear to have been an independent tribe, as has been mentioned,
but were largely made up of Ojibway from the Great Lakes region.
Perhaps some Têtes de Boule were among these bands before these people
were given their nickname. The Ojibway were a powerful tribal group,
made up of far-ranging bands, located all around Lake Superior and to
the northwest as far as Lake Winnipeg. They had been in the process of
taking over the western end of Lake Superior when the earliest French
explorers reached that area; they pushed the Sioux from these forest
lands into the plains area, joining with the western Cree in this
movement. In the process they seem to have absorbed both some Sioux and
some Cree bands. Within the Ojibway tribal group, later called Chippewa
or Chippeway by the English and Americans, the bands had local names,
or were given nicknames, such as the Menominee, Saltreaux, Pillagers,
etc. All the important bands within the tribal group were expert
canoemen and builders. As far as can be discovered now, the Ojibway
added to their own tribal types the models of canoes they encountered
in their expansion westward. It has long been true that the Ojibway
canoe can be one of at least three forms, depending upon which area of
their territory is being discussed.
What is believed to be their old tribal form was a high-ended canoe
in all respects very much like the high-ended Algonkin type. This was
the model used by the Lake Nipigon Ojibway, north of Lake Superior in
Ontario, and by those of the same tribe that once lived near Saginaw,
Michigan, as well as by the Menominee of Wisconsin. At the late period,
from the middle of the 19th century onward, for which information was
available or in which investigation was possible, it appears that the
Ojibway canoes of this high-ended model were built in larger sizes than
contemporary Algonkin canoes of like design. The Ojibway canoes had the
same end structure as these; the early examples found had "chin" in the
end profiles and the tumble-home of the stem was straight, or nearly
so, between the large curve of the forefoot and the very short hard
curve at the stem head. The Ojibway used the same inner stem-piece,
laminated and brought downward abaft the stem-head and then inboard so
that the end fitted into a slot in the headboard a little above its
midheight, at which point was fitted a strut from the headboard to the
back of the stem-piece. The midsection of the Ojibway canoe was very
much like that of the Algonkin; it had a narrow bottom somewhat rounded
athwartships, a well-rounded bilge, and flaring topsides.
A small Ojibway portage canoe built in the middle of the 19th century
had an end profile somewhat different from that described above; the
ends were well rounded and had a heavy chin, the stem was carried into
the tumble-home with a full rounded curve all the way to the stem-head,
where the stem piece was bent in and downward very sharply and then
inboard sharply again, so that the end pierced the vertical headboard
at sheer height. The ~S~-curve was so located that the main gunwales
could be lashed to the stem piece at the point where they paralleled it
well below the stem head. In these canoes the Ojibway followed Algonkin
practice in ending the gunwales; there was, therefore, no strut. Where
this canoe was built is uncertain.
[Illustration: Figure 114
OJIBWAY 2-FATHOM HUNTER'S CANOE, used by the eastern tribal groups.
Probably the ancient model.]
[Illustration: Figure 115
EXAMPLES OF THE OLD MODEL OJIBWAY 3-FATHOM rice-harvesting canoe
(above), and 2-fathom hunter's canoe, showing the easy paddling form
used.]
[Illustration: Figure 116
OJIBWAY 3-FATHOM FREIGHT CANOE FROM LAKE TIMAGAMI, apparently a hybrid
based on canvas canoes.]
[Illustration: Figure 117
THE OLD FORM OF OJIBWAY 2½-FATHOM CANOE of the eastern groups (above),
and the long-nose Cree-Ojibway canoe of the western groups.]
At Lake Timagami, north of Georgian Bay in Ontario, the Ojibway used a
low-ended canoe with a remarkably straight tumble-home stem profile;
the forefoot had a very short radius ending at the bottom line with
a knuckle, and the stem-head stood slightly above the gunwale caps.
The stem-piece was made from a thin plank cut to profile; thus no
lamination was necessary. The headboard stood straight, falling
inboard slightly at the head. The midsection was dish-shaped, with
a flat bottom athwartships and strongly flaring sides, the turn of
the bilge being rather abrupt. The ends were strongly ~V~-shaped in
cross-section; a number of the frames there being "broken" at the
centerline of the bottom. A canoe of this design was seen by Adney at
North Bay, Ontario, in 1925, indicating that the design may have been
used in some degree outside the Lake area in later years.
The most common Ojibway model used to the northwest and west of Lake
Superior was the so-called "long-nose" form, a rather straight-sheered
canoe. The bottom, near the ends, had a slight rocker, and the sheer
turned up very sharply there, becoming almost perpendicular at the
extremities, yet the ends were not proportionally very high. The
end-profile came up from the bottom very full and round, then fell
sharply inboard in a slightly rounded sweep to join the upturned
sheer well inboard. The midsection was somewhat dish-shaped, but with
well-rounded bilges, so that the flare of the topsides was rounded and
not very apparent to the casual observer. The end section developed
into a tumble-home form, so that a section through the top of the
headboard was rather oval. As a result, these canoes appeared rather
clumsy and unfair in their lines, but this apparently did not harm
their paddling qualities or seaworthiness.
[Illustration: Figure 118
EASTERN OJIBWAY CANOE, OLD FORM. (_Canadian Pacific Railway photo._)]
[Illustration: Figure 119
OJIBWAY LONG-NOSE CANOE, RAINY LAKE DISTRICT.]
These canoes had narrow headboards that were sharply bellied, somewhat
like those in the crooked canoes, and the belly was sufficient to allow
the heel of the end-board to pass under the bottom sheathing and inside
the bark cover so that two end ribs served to hold the heel in place.
The inside stem-piece was often no more than a light stick or rod bent
to profile, with the head split and brought over the gunwale ends and
down inside, between them. Each half of the split was then lashed to
its neighboring gunwale member. A strip of bark was often placed over
the end of the bark cover and carried down the face of the stem, under
the sewing. The rail caps were then brought up over the tops of the
gunwales and overlapped the top portion of the stem piece. The heel of
the stem-piece was bevelled off on the inboard side so that it could be
wedged under the headboard, inside the bark cover. These headboards,
it should be noted, were no more than a thin, narrow batten, and in
some canoes the head of this batten was lashed under the gunwale ends
instead of coming up between them inboard, as usual. A variation in the
fitting of the stem head was found in a canoe at Long Lake, Ontario;
the stem head, instead of being split, was lashed between the gunwale
ends and thus was brought inboard level with the top of the gunwales.
[Illustration: Figure 120
SMALL OJIBWAY CANOES OF THE TWO TRIBAL FORMS showing (above) early
trend toward the long nose form, and the final Ojibway-Cree hybrid form
combining flaring sides amidships with tumble-home sections at ends.]
The cross section of the main gunwales was round or nearly so in nearly
all long-nose canoes, and often a gunwale cap was fitted. The bark
cover was secured to the gunwales by a continuous lashing, but in at
least one example, from Minnesota, the gunwale wrappings were in groups
over an outwale after the regular fashion to the eastward. The ends of
the thwarts were wedge-or chisel-shaped and instead of being tenoned
were forced into splits in the round gunwales. Many canoes had bark
covers at the gunwale ends and vestiges of the _wulegessis_ were to be
seen.
All Ojibway canoes were built with a building frame, the bed being
slightly higher at midlength than at the ends. The stakes were driven
nearly perpendicular, instead of with heads slanted outward. It is
apparent from observed examples that some canoes were built by the same
procedure as the Algonkin, but that not all the long-nose canoes were
built by spreading the gunwales; some were built using the methods of
the St. Francis.
[Illustration: Figure 121
OJIBWAY CANOE BUILDING, LAC SEUL, 1918.
Preparing a building site or bed; building frame in place.
Bark set up; bark staked out on building bed.
Bark cover being sewn on building bed.
(See pp. 170-171 for more photos of Ojibway canoe building.) Gunwales
being lashed.
Securing gunwales.
Pitch being applied to seams.]
[Illustration: Figure 122
LONG LAKE OJIBWAY LONG-NOSE CANOE. (_Canadian Geological Survey
photo._)]
The lashing in the high-ended Ojibway canoes was about the same as that
in the Algonkin canoes, but in the long-nose type the workmanship was
often coarse. On many of the latter the stems were lashed by use of
small groups in which two turns were taken through each of two closely
spaced holes in the bark and the connection between the groups was
made by a long spiral around the outside of the stem. This pattern was
carried down from the stem-head to about the level of the midship sheer
height; from there down around the forefoot the lashing consisted of a
simple spiral. Another style was to use widely spaced groups made up of
two or three turns through a pair of facing holes in the bark, one on
each side and inboard of the stem. The turn went around the stem, and
the last connected with the next pair of holes below. A few canoes of
this style used closely spaced wrapping, as in the high-ended canoes.
The long-nose Ojibway canoe is surprisingly primitive by comparison
with the graceful and well-finished high-ended model built after the
Algonkin style. Adney believed that the long-nose type originated
with the Sioux Dakotas, before the combined Ojibway and Cree movement
forced them out of the forest lands to the west of Lake Superior. He
considered it possible that both the Ojibway and Cree adapted the
Dakota model, modifying it somewhat to their methods of construction.
It is true that the western Cree built a long-nose canoe, but it had
less chin than the Ojibway model. On the other hand, the Ojibway
prebent ribs in pairs like the eastern Cree, and used spreaders in the
end ribs while drying them, in exactly the same manner. A picture taken
in 1916 shows the gunwales of a Cree long-nose canoe being set; it was
laid on the ground and weighted along the midlength by stones laid on
boards placed across the longitudinals. The ends had been sheered up
and were supported at each end by a thong made fast to the gunwale end
and then brought over a post, or strut, a few feet inboard and made
fast to the middle thwart.
It is unnecessary to detail the construction of the Ojibway canoes, as
they employed a building-frame, as the drawings on pages 123 to 127
show plainly enough the pertinent details of fitting and construction.
It is important to observe that the wide variation in model and in
construction details of the Ojibway canoes produced a variety of
building procedures that in the main were like those of the Algonkin
and Cree. Hence the older tribal method of construction cannot now be
stated with any accuracy.
The paddle forms used by the Ojibway groups varied somewhat. Most were
made with parallel-sided blades and oval tips. The hand grip at the top
of the handle was rectangular and was large in comparison to the grip
of the eastern Cree paddles. A few variations have been noticed; the
blade of one was widest at the top, the tip was almost squared off, and
the upper hand grip was much as in the factory paddle of today. This
paddle, from an unknown locality, was used in 1849.
As in the case of the Algonkin, the eastern Ojibway built fur-trade
canoes under supervision. Though these canoes differed somewhat from
those built by the Algonkins, it is now impossible to say whether
or not there was any real relationship between them and the small,
high-ended "old-form" canoe. Likewise, the Ojibway built a version
of the _wabinaki chiman_ which seems to have influenced some types
of their own, such as, for instance, the straight-stem Lake Temagami
canoe.
[Illustration: Figure 123
NINETEEN-FOOT OJIBWAY CANOE with thirteen Indians aboard (1913).]
_Western Cree_
The western portion of the great Cree tribe appear to have occupied the
western shore of James Bay and to have moved gradually northwestward
in historical times. Their territory included the northern portion of
Ontario and northern Manitoba north of Lake Winnipeg, and as early
as 1800 they had entered northwestern Alberta. The line of division
between the canoes of the eastern and western Cree cannot be strictly
determined, but it is roughly the Missinaibi River, which, with the
Abitibi River, empties into the head of James Bay at the old post of
Moose Factory. The southern range of the Cree model was only a little
way south of the head of James Bay, irregularly westward in line
with Lake St. Joseph to Lake Winnipeg. To the west, the Cree type of
canoe gradually spread until it met the canoe forms of the Athabascan
in the Northwest Territories, in the vicinity of Lake Athabaska in
northwestern Saskatchewan.
The canoes of the western Cree, as has been noted, strongly resembled
the long-nose Ojibway model except that they had less pronounced chin.
But unlike those of the eastern Cree, their canoes employed an inside
stem-piece that was sometimes a laminated piece and sometimes a piece
of spruce root. The stem head was commonly bent sharply and secured
between the gunwale ends at the point where the two longitudinals were
fastened together, much as in some Ojibway long-nose canoes. The Cree
canoe had basically the same dish-shaped midsection, but it had very
full, round bilges and the flare was so curved in the topside that it
was even less apparent than in the Ojibway model. The shorter chin of
the Cree canoe also made tumble-home in the end sections unnecessary,
and cross section near the headboards was given the form of a slightly
rounded ~U~.
The bottom had very little rocker at the ends, being straight for
practically the whole length. The stem-piece if laminated (often in
only two or three laminations) came up from the bottom in a fair round
forefoot and then tumbled in by a gentle curve to the stem-head, where
it was bent sharply to pass down between the gunwale ends as previously
noted. But if the stem-piece was of spruce root, the profile was often
somewhat irregular and the chin was more pronounced. In a common style
the stem came fair out of the bottom in a quick hard curve, then curved
outward slightly until the height of the least freeboard amidships
was reached, at which height another hard turn began the tumble-home
in a gentle sweep to the stem-head, where there was a very hard turn
downward. The stem-head was often split, as in some Ojibway canoes,
so that it came over the joined ends of the main gunwales and the two
halves were then lashed to the inside faces of the gunwales.
Birch bark was often poor or scarce in the territory of the western
Cree, as in that of their eastern brothers. As a substitute, they
employed spruce bark and in general seem to have achieved better
results, for their spruce-bark canoes had a neater appearance. If the
canoe was built when or where root material was difficult to obtain,
the western Cree used rawhide for sewing the bark cover. When the stems
were lashed with rawhide, a stem-band of bark under the lashing was
common.
The gunwales were round in cross section and were often spliced
amidships. The bark cover was lashed to these with a continuous
lashing, no caps or outwales being employed. As in the Ojibway
long-nose canoe, the headboards were very narrow and much bellied.
These canoes were built with four or five thwarts; the 4-thwart type
was used for gathering wild rice, as was the Ojibway type, while the
5-thwart canoe was the portage model. The thwarts were sometimes
mortised into the gunwales, but some builders made the thwart ends
chisel-pointed and drove them into short splits in the gunwales before
lashing them, one or two holes being drilled in the thwart ends to take
the lashing thongs. When the thwarts were tenoned into the gunwales,
the builders of course made the inside of the gunwales flat.