The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North AmericaChapelle, Howard Irving
History
The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America
Chapelle, Howard Irving
Canoes and canoeing -- North America; Indians of North America -- Boats; Skin boats -- North America
As did many of the eastern Indians, the old Malecite tribesmen built
canoes of materials other than birch bark. When a canoe was required
for a temporary use such as in hunting, it could be made of spruce
bark. (As the designs of such canoes were rather standardized, they
will be dealt with in Chapter 8.) When bark was unobtainable, the
Malecite built canoes covered with moosehide, or, in rare instances,
they built wooden dugouts.
The old Malecite river canoe shown on page 71 will serve to illustrate
a description of the details of construction that were used. These
canoes were obviously built with their gunwales (which were the length
of the bottom only) serving as a building frame. The ends of the
gunwales were supported by headboards stepped on the heels of the inner
stem-pieces, and the stems raked outward from their heels. The gunwale
ends were joined to the head of the stem-piece by the outwales and the
gunwale caps. Bark was used to the ends of the canoe. One side of the
bark cover was cut so that it stood well above the sheer line from the
gunwale end outboard, and the opposite side was cut to the level of the
sheer. The first piece was then folded over the opposite side and down,
so that it covered both the extreme ends of the gunwales and the top of
the inner stem-piece. Another piece of bark was then fitted over this
fold, and this new piece formed the flaps below the outwales on each
side, the _wulegessis_. The outwales ran past the gunwale ends and were
cut off flush with the outboard face of the stem; the caps ran likewise
and covered the bark over the head of the inner stem piece. The
characteristic sheer of these canoes, where the rise toward the ends
began, showed a quick curve that faired into a rising straight line at
the gunwale and then continued straight and rising to the stem head.
The _wulegessis_ was therefore quite long. The ends of the gunwales
were not of the half-arrowhead shape, but were snied off on their
inboard sides so that they met on a rather long bevel; the lashing was
slightly let in to the outboard faces to keep it from slipping over the
gunwale ends. The caps of the gunwales were similarly reduced in width,
where they came together over the ends of the canoe.
[Illustration: Figure 64
LARGE 3-FATHOM OCEAN CANOE OF THE PASSAMAQUODDY porpoise hunters. These
canoes were sometimes fitted to sail or outrigged for rowing. The last
of this type had much lower ends.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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