Little has survived concerning the form and construction of the early French-colonial fur-trade canoes. Circumstantial evidence leads to the conclusion that the model was a development, an enlargement perhaps, of the Algonkin form of high-ended canoe as described on pages 113 to 116. The early French came into contact with these tribesmen before they met the Great Lakes Ojibway, the other builders of the high-ended model. It is known that the Indians first supplied large canoes to the French governmental and church authorities and that when this source of canoes proved insufficient, the canoe factory at Trois Rivières was set up and a standard size (probably a standard model as well) came into existence. As the fur trade expanded, large canoes may well have been built elsewhere by the early French; we know at least that building spread westward and northward after Canada became a British possession. In the rise of the great canoe of the fur trade, the basic model was no doubt maintained through the method of training its builders. The first French engaged in bark-canoe building learned the techniques, let us say, from the original Indian builders, the Algonkin. As building moved westward, the first men sent to the new posts to build canoes apparently came from the French-operated canoe factory. It would be reasonable to expect that as building increased in the west, local modifications would be patterned on canoes from around the building post, but that the basic model would remain. This may account for the departures from the true Ojibway-Algonkin canoes seen in the _maître canots_. [Illustration: Figure 126 INBOARD PROFILE OF A 6-FATHOM FUR-TRADE CANOE, and details of construction, fitting, and decoration.] [Illustration: Figure 127 SMALL 3-FATHOM NORTH CANOE of the Têtes de Boule model. Built in the 19th century for fast travel, this Hudson's Bay Company canoe was also called nadowé chiman, or Iroquois canoe.] In model, all the fur-trade canoes had narrow bottoms, flaring topsides, and sharp ends. The flaring sides were rather straight in section and the bottom nearly flat athwartships. The bottom had a moderate rocker very close to the ends. In nearly all of these canoes, the main gunwales were sheered up only slightly at the ends and were secured to the sides of the inner stem-piece; the outwales and caps, however, were strongly sheered up to the top of the stem. The curvature and form of the ends, in later years at least, varied with the place of building.