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.

Jean Antoine Theodore Gudin, Jacques Cartier Discovering the St. Lawrence River, 1847. Oil on canvas, 142 x 266 cm.

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.

Birch-bark canoe from the Amur River Valley region in Russia. From Puteshestvie na Amur . . . (Expedition to the Amur), Richard Karlovich Maack, 1859.

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

The range of the paper birch (Betula papyrifera) in North America. The tree is sometimes called canoe birch.

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

Paul Kane, White Mud Portage, Saulteaux, ca. 1776–1780.

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.

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

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.