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 first may be called the "kayak" model, a flat-bottom, narrow
canoe having nearly straight flaring sides and either a chine or a
very quick turn of the bilge. These bark canoes were low-sided and
were usually partly decked. A number of tribal groups built canoes of
this model, the variation being relatively minor. The rake and form
of the ends varied somewhat as did the amount of decking; there were
also some slight variations in structure and method of construction.
While these bark canoes had some superficial resemblance in general
proportions to the Eskimo kayaks, it is necessary to point out that
they did not, particularly in Alaska, have the same hull form as the
seagoing kayaks in that area. In fact, the single-chine form of the
Alaskan version of this canoe appears only in the kayaks of northern
Greenland and Baffin Island. The Alaskan seagoing skin kayaks are all
multi-chine forms that approximate a "round-bottom" hull. It has been
thought that the flat-bottom seagoing kayak form may have existed in
the Canadian Northwest, at the mouth of the Mackenzie; a kayak so
identified is in the collections of the U.S. National Museum (see p.
202), but there is now doubt among authorities as to the correctness of
this identification. As will be shown later, it seems probable that it
has been improperly assigned to the Mackenzie delta and is, in fact, an
eastern Eskimo model.
The second model used in the Northwest area was a narrow-bottom
flaring-sided bark canoe with elevated ends, having, perhaps, a faint
resemblance to the Algonkin-Cree canoes of the old type. Here too
there was some variation among the canoes of tribal groups, mostly
in the shape and construction of the ends and in the fitting of the
gunwales. Most of the canoes of this type had stem-pieces formed of a
plank-on-edge, but in a few examples the stem-pieces were bent. This
model was built by the same tribal groups in Canada that built the
kayak form, the explanation being that the kayak form was the hunting
while the second model was commonly the family or cargo canoe. In
Alaska, however, only the kayak-form was used and the family, or cargo,
canoe was merely an enlargement of it.
The third model may be called the "sturgeon-nose" type; in this the
ends were formed with a long, pointed "ram" carried well outboard
below the waterline as an extension of the bottom line of the canoe.
Primitive in both model and construction, it was built in a rather
limited area in British Columbia and in the State of Washington. The
last canoes built on this form were canvas-covered; in earlier times
spruce or pine bark was usually employed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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