Canoes: A Natural History in North America

Birchbarks at Batchewang, 2012.

Contemporary birch-bark builder Erik Simula working on a bark canoe in 2009.

Erik Simula's canoe, Nama, and his dog, Kitigan, at Mountain Lake in the Arrowhead Region of Minnesota.

Solitary paddler sits in a birch-bark canoe at Moose Factory, Ontario.

Edwin Tappan Adney's model of a Beothuk Canoe.

The outer hulls of bark canoes were often engraved with symbols, animal silhouettes, and geometric shapes. Bark collected in the winter was purportedly better for such etchings than summer bark. Edwin Tappan Adney featured these designs on a canoe built in Old Town, Maine and exhibited at the New York Sportsman’s Show in 1897.

Phyllop Peter and his wife paddle a Kutenai canoe on Kootenay Lake in 1922.

Birch trees at Bognor Marsh near Georgian Bay off Lake Huron.

The Ojibwe (also called Chippewa) built different styles of canoes, including this distinctive long-nose model.

Birch-bark baskets, like this Ojibwe example from Grand Portage, are used for winnowing wild rice.

Birch had a number of uses for native tribes. Two Ojibwe women, Mary Bigwind and Maggie Skinaway, make birch vessels for maple sap, which could be made into syrup, supplying the tribe with its sugar.

The Cree were excellent birch-bark builders, as seen in this boat dating from the period 1875–1900.

Black spruce trees, from which roots were grubbed and made into sewing materials, are plentiful in northern and northeastern forests near birch trees.

The setting of a frame for a birch-bark canoe involved preparing the ground, driving in stakes, and sliding in the bark and attaching a frame in the general shape of the boat. Photograph taken ca. 1885 at an Ojibwe camp.

Splitting the bark from a down tree took a light touch and patience.

Native builders would roll the stripped birch bark into a backpack of sorts, secure it with roots, and carry it back to the canoe-making camp. This individual with the pack is identified as Cheemaun of an Ojibwe tribe in Wisconsin.

A tray or pouch made of birch bark was used to carry hardened pieces of specially prepared spruce gum (sap mixed with animal fat and ash), which could be chewed or heated and used to repair canoes when on a trip.

By the mid-twentieth century, native builders were working to pass on their knowledge before the skills were lost.

A crooked knife was an essential tool in the shaping of ribs, sheathing, thwarts, and other parts of the canoe.

In 1939, Ojibwe tribal members at Grand Portage, near the border between the United States and Canada on Lake Superior, completed a birch-bark canoe in the traditional manner as part of a Works Progress Administration arts program. Here a headboard is installed.