Canoes: A Natural History in North America

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.

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.

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.

Chippewa Indian Kneeling in Canoe, ca. 1914.

Carl Gustave Linde, Mending His Canoe, ca. 1912.

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.

Seth Eastman, Rice Gatherers, 1867.

Eastman Johnson, Canoe of the Indians, ca. 1856–1857.

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.