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 drawing of a Baffin Island umiak on page 188 is based on measured
dimensions of a single boat and upon a small model in the U.S. National
Museum. This model conforms in most respects with the drawings and
sketches made by Boas.[5] The umiak is a small one, 24 feet 7¼ inches
long, 5 feet 8⅜ inches extreme beam, 3 feet 10 inches wide over the
chines, and 1 foot 10½ inches deep. These measurements show that the
bottom of this type of umiak is wider than that of western types. The
bottom is flat, and sheer and camber are both slight. The stem and
stern are practically upright and are not formed of knees; rather,
they are made by fitting the post into the keelson with an open tenon.
Instead of the carved block headboards seen in the Alaskan umiaks, the
Baffin Island boat has very wide headboards, and these are tenoned over
the posts as in the Asiatic Koryak umiaks. The details of the rest of
the framing are not dissimilar from those of the Alaskan umiaks, except
that the Baffin Island umiak does not employ any short frames in the
end of the hull. The framework is rather heavy and the square-ended
appearance of this class of umiak makes it appear more clumsy than is
actually the case. The side battens and risers stop short of the posts,
and the risers used in this umiak are notched into the side frames,
whereas in the Alaskan umiak only the lashings of the riser are let
into the frames. The Baffin Island umiaks carry a square sail lashed
to a yard, and the mast is placed right up in the eyes of the boat.
Boas shows that some of these umiaks have rudders hung on metal pintles
and gudgeons, a result of the influence of the white traders, whalers,
and sealers who had operated in these waters long before Boas made his
investigations. The umiak is rowed in the usual manner, using thong
loops as tholes, and is usually steered with an oar or long paddle.
[5] See bibliography.
The ends of the gunwales of the Baffin Island umiak are cut off a
little inside the forward edges of the headboards, making this the
only American type that does not have projecting gunwales at bow and
stern. The projection of the gunwales undoubtedly serve a practical
purpose in lifting the boat out of water, but obviously this is of
minor importance. Probably the real reason for these projections is
that they originally made building easier by providing space for a
retaining lashing when the gunwales were being bent. As the headboards
became wider and the spring of the gunwales, in plain view, became
less acute, less strain was put on the lashings of the gunwales at the
headboards, but by then the projecting gunwales and their retaining
lashings were being utilized in lashing on the skin covering at bow and
stern. Thus, beginning as a practical solution of a building problem,
the projecting gunwales may have eventually become a traditional tribal
feature of the umiak in many localities.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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