Canoes: A Natural History in North America

Sigurd Olson’s Border Lakes Outfitting Company, April 4, 1940.

Francis Lee Jaques, Picture Rock at Crooked Lake (Return of the Voyageur), 1947. Oil on canvas, 83.8 x 106.6 cm.

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.

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.

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.

A lob tree was an evergreen, often like this white pine, trimmed of lower branches and smaller trees and brush around it to mark the head of the portage or a campsite.

In 1967, Minnesota-based Alumacraft (shown here as Aluma Craft Apex Co.) was apparently shoveling canoes out the door as fast as they could be produced.

Mark Hamel, Canoe Livery, Lake Nokomis, 2014. Oil on mounted linen, 16 × 20 in.

A party of four girls canoeing near an island on Burntside Lake. Photograph located in the records of the United States Forest Service. 1940.

One of the famous twentieth century marathon canoe racers and designers was Eugene (Gene) Jensen, who made a name for himself racing on the Mississippi River.

The business of canoe liveries and outfitters in the lakes and rivers region of North America, including Ely, Minnesota, in 1958, allowed city dwellers to experience the joys of wilderness travel without actually owning a canoe.

Sigurd Olson, a biologist by training and a canoe outfitter in Ely, Minnesota, was among the important writers and political activists in the environmental movement.

Groups interested in preserving canoe country from development sprang up all over the continent. Canoes were often used as images of a free and quiet outdoors experience, including this poster with artwork by Francis Lee Jaques, ca. 1949.

Threats to canoe routes across the continent came (and sometimes went) as industry and government eyed the land for other uses.

In the late 1970s, legislation to ban motors from canoe country in Minnesota was a controversial issue.

Camille Poirier, Duluth Pack Patent, December 12, 1882

The Poirier Pack Sack was the forerunner of the Duluth Pack, named after the city where it was manufactured. Duluth Packs are specially designed for use in canoe tripping.

In June 1930, Eric Sevareid (left) and Walter Port started their canoe journey from Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and paddled 2,250 miles to Hudson Bay.

Eric Sevareid’s nickel-plated, cased magnetic compass that guided the 1930 canoe trip to Hudson Bay.

T. W. Ingersoll, Views of Dalles of the St. Louis River, ca 1890, photograph.