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
His illustrations show that his low-ended canoes were of Micmac type
but that his high-ended canoes were not of the Ottawa River or Great
Lakes types but rather of the eastern Malecite of the lower St.
Lawrence valley. This Jesuit missionary also noted that the canoes were
alike at the ends and that the paddles were of maple and about 5 feet
long, with blades 18 inches long and 6 wide. He observed that bark
canoes were unfitted for sailing.
[Illustration: Figure 4
LINES OF AN OLD BIRCH-BARK CANOE, probably Micmac, brought to England
in 1749 from New England. This canoe was not alike at both ends,
although apparently intended to be so by the builder. (_From Admiralty
Collection of Draughts, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich._)]
The early English settlers of New England and New York were acquainted
with the canoe forms of eastern Indians such as the Micmac, Malecite,
Abnaki, and the Iroquois. Surviving records, however, show no detailed
description of these canoes by an English writer and no illustration
until about 1750. At this time a bark canoe, apparently Micmac, was
brought from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to England and delivered to
Lord Anson who had it placed in the Boat House of the Chatham Dockyard.
There it was measured and a scale drawing was made by Admiralty
draftsmen; the drawing is now in the Admiralty Collection of Draughts,
in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich. A redrawing of this plan
appears opposite. It probably represents a war canoe, since a narrow,
sharp-ended canoe is shown. The bottom, neither flat nor fully round,
is a rounded ~V~-shape; this may indicate a canoe intended for coastal
waters. Other drawings, of a later date, showing crude plans of canoes,
exist in Europe but none yet found appear as carefully drawn as the
Admiralty plan, a scale drawing, which seems to be both the earliest
and the most accurate 18th-century representation of a tribal type of
American Indian bark canoe.
Due to the rapid development of the French fur trade, and the attendant
exploration, a great variety of canoe types must have become known to
the French by 1750, yet little in the way of drawings and no early
scale plans have been found. This is rather surprising, not only
because the opportunity for observation existed but also because a
canoe factory was actually operated by the French. The memoirs of
Colonel Franquet, Military Engineer-in-Chief for New France, contain
extensive references to this factory as it existed in 1751.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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