THE AMERICAN BOAT
Here is that fairy ship of the wilderness, the birch-bark canoe, the
first craft of America, antedating even the arrival of the white man. It
is the ship of risk and of adventure, belonging by right to him who goes
far and travels light, who is careless of his home coming. It is a boat
that now carries the voyager, and now is carried by him. It is a
great-hearted craft. You shall take it upon your shoulders, and carry it
a mile across the land trail, without needing to set it down; but when
you place it on the water it in turn will carry you and your fellow, and
yet another, and your household goods of the wilderness up to five times
your weight.
Freakish as a woman, as easily unsettled, yet if you be master it shall
take you over combing waves, and down yeasty rapids and against steady
current, until finally you shall find yourself utterly apart from the
familiar haunts of man, about you only the wilderness, the unadventured.
This is the ship of the wilderness, the fairy ship, the ship of heroes.
To-day it is passing away. With it goes great store of romance and
adventure.
The red man taught the white man how to build and how to use this boat.
He taught how to cut the long strips of toughest bark from the
birch-tree, prying it off with sharpened pole or driven wooden wedge. He
showed how to build the frame of the boat on the ground, or in a long
hole dug in the ground, where stakes hold fast the curves of the
gunwales, between which are later forced the steamed splints that serve
as ribs and as protection for the fragile skin, soaked soft and pliable,
which is presently laid on the frame of gunwale and rib and bottom
splint. This covering of bark is sewn together with the thread of the
forest, fiber of swamp conifers—“wautp,” the Indians of the North call
this thread.
Then over the seams is run the melted pitch and resin taken from the
woods. The edges of the bark skin are made fast at the gunwales, the
sharply bent bows are guarded carefully from cracks where the straining
comes, and the narrow thwarts, wide as your three fingers, are lashed
in, serving as brace and as all the seat you shall find when weary from
kneeling. The fresh bark is clean and sweet upon the new-made ship, the
smell of the resin is clean. Each line of the boat is full of spirit and
grace and beauty.
The builder turns it over, and where he finds a bubble in the pitching
of a seam he bends down and puts his lips to it, sucking in his breath,
to find if air comes through. So he tests it, well and thoroughly,
mending and patching slowly and carefully, until at last it pleases him
throughout. And then he places his new-made ship on the water, where it
sits high and light, spinning and turning at its tether, never still for
an instant, but shifting like a wild duck under the willows, responsive
to the least breath of the passing airs. It is eager to go on. It will
go far, in its life of a year or two. If it gets a wound from the rocks,
or from the clumsiness of the tyro that drives it upon the beach instead
of anchoring it free, then it is easily mended by a strip of bark and
some forest pitch. When at last it loses its youth, and cracks or soaks
in water so freely that it takes too long to dry it at the noonday
pipe-smoking, then it is not so difficult to build another in the
forest.
The canoe is as the ax and the rifle, an agent economical, capable of
great results in return for small expenditure of energy. It is American.
There was much to do, far to go. It was thus because America existed as
it did.
No craft has been found easier of propulsion to one knowing the art of
the paddle. The voyager makes his paddle about as long as his rifle, up
to his chin in length. He paddles with the blade always on one side of
the canoe. As the blade is withdrawn from the backward stroke, it is
turned slightly in the water, so that the course of the bow is still
held straight. If he would approach a landing sidewise with his boat, he
makes his paddle describe short half curves, back and forth, and the
little boat follows the paddle obediently. The advance of the canoe is
light, silent, spirit-like. It is full of mystery, this boat. Yet it is
kind to those who know it, as is the wilderness and as are all its
creatures.
This is the boat of the northern traveler, the voyager of the upper
ways. In the South, where the birch does not grow in proper dimensions,
the bark of the elm has on occasion served to make a small craft. In
different parts of the North, too, the birch canoe takes different
shapes. In the northeast the Abenakis made it long and with little rake,
with low bow and stern and with bottom swelling outward safely under the
tumble-home,—this stable model serving for the strong streams of the
forested regions of the North. Far to the west, where roll the great
inland lakes, the Ojibways made their boats higher at bow and stern,
wider of beam, shorter, rounder of bottom, all the better fitted for
short and choppy waves.
Then, under the white fur traders’ tutelage, there were made great ships
of birch-bark, the canot du Nord of the Hudson Bay trade, such as came
down with rich burdens of furs when the brigades started down-stream to
the markets; or yet the greater canot du maitre once used on the Great
Lakes, a craft that needed a dozen to a dozen and a half paddles for its
propulsion. Again, at the heads of the far off Northwestern streams
there were canoes so small as to carry but a single person, propelled by
a pair of sticks, one in each hand of the occupant, the points of these
hand-sticks pushing against the bottom of the stream. But ever this ship
of the wilderness was so contrived that its crew could drive it by water
or carry it by land.
Thus were the portages mastered, thus did the man with small gear to
hinder him get out from home, westward into the wilderness. Down stream
or up stream, this boat went far. Paddle or sail or shodden pole served
for the wanderer before the trails were made, and before the boats of
the white settlers followed where the savage red men and scarcely less
savage white adventurers had found the way.
There were other boats for the early traveler, and these were employed
by those that had crossed the Alleghanies on foot and would fare farther
westward. The dugout, made of the sycamore or sassafras log, ten to
twenty feet in length, narrow, unstable, thick-skinned and a bit clumsy,
was good enough for one pushing on down-stream, or prowling about in
sluggish, silent bayous. This was the boat of the South in the early
days. Soon the great flat-boat succeeded it for those that traveled with
family goods or in large parties. The wooden boats came later, the
flat-boat after the dugout, the keel-boat but following the far trail of
the birch-bark to the upper ways, or perchance passing, slipping
down-stream, the frail hide coracle of the hunter that had ventured
unaccompanied far into unknown lands.
Above all things in these early days must compactness and lightness be
studied. This American traveler was poor in the goods of this world; his
possessions made small bulk. This ax made him bivouac or castle, or
helped him make raft or canoe. This rifle gave him food and clothing. He
walked westward to the westward flowing streams, and there this light
craft, dancing, beckoning, alluring, invited him yet on and on,
proffering him carriage for his scanty store, offering obedience to him
who was the master of the wilderness, of its alluring secrets and its
immeasurable resources.