The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America — John Shaqi
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
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_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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