Canoes: A Natural History in North America

Winslow Homer, Canoe in Rapids, 1897. Watercolor over graphite on off-white wove paper, 35.4 × 53.3 cm (13 15/16 × 21 in).

Canoeists paddling a Wenonah Kevlar canoe above a rapids in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.

Photograph by H. H. Bennett, canoeists in a birch-bark canoe near Steamboat Rock, Wisconsin Dells.

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.

Myron Nickerson, a former employee of J. Henry Rushton appears on the far right in this 1894 photograph.

Map of Maine’s Moosehead Lake and the headwaters of the Aroostook and Penobscot Rivers, drawn in 1880 by W. R. Curtis.

Mark Hamel, Crossing the Shallows, Snake River, 2014. Oil on mounted linen, 40.64 × 50.8 cm.

Two paddlers are photographed in 1952 at Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada. Photograph by Gar Lunney, National Film Board of Canada Collection, Library and Archives of Canada, R1196-14-7-E.

Lee Moorhouse, Log canoe on the Columbia River, ca. 1900.

Woodcut illustration of a Taino dugout canoe, Girolamo Benzoni’s La Historia del Mondo Nuovo, 1562.

Florida dugout canoe and typical Timucua houses, 1591, engraving by Theodor de Bry after Jacques Le Moyne.

Contemporary dugout photographed at Playa de San Mateo del Mar near Oaxaca, Mexico.

Inscriptions on bone from the Late Classic Era Mayan burial site at Tikal (ca. 800–ca. 1000 CE), redrawn by Linda Schele, artist and Mesoamerican scholar.

Fresco featuring Putun dugout canoes, interior walls of the Temple of the Warriors, Chichen Itza.

Map of Caribbean.

Drawing by John White (~1585–1593), inscribed The manner of their fishing and A Cannow.

Kryn Frederycks woodcut titled T’ Fort Nieuw Amsterdam op de Manhatans, ca. 1626.

The oyster industry of the East Coast relied on dugout canoes to navigate the rivers of Connecticut during the nineteenth century. This photograph dates to 1872 and depicts a dugout next to an oyster house near New Haven.

Archeologists examine a dugout canoe found during a drought in 2000 at Newnans Lake, Florida.

John Webber, Tereoboo, King of Owyhee, bringing presents to Capt. Cook.

Dugout canoes line the beach at Songhees Reserve in Victoria, British Columbia, 1868.

Sea otter engraving, 1780.

A Kwakiutl family navigating the waters of Quatsino Sound.

British botanist and ethnographer Charles F. Newcombe photographed this newly hewn Haida dugout canoe at the village of Kasaan, Alaska, along the Northwest Coast, c. 1900.

Three cedar canoes on the beach at Skidegate.

Old-growth cedar trees are immense and can provide the materials for several boats. In this photograph, four different canoes are being hewn from one red cedar log at Olympic Loop, Queets River, Washington. Photograph by Dale O. Northrup, c. 1930.

The Manner of Makinge Their Boates, Theodor de Bry, 1590.

Bill Reid and Associates Creating a Dugout Canoe, 1985.

Haisla dugout canoe carved and painted by David Shaw in 1934, overpainted by Bill Reid in 1967.

Graham Herbert (Hornby Island, British Columbia), Sacred Escort, 1994. Watercolor on paper, 36.83 x 52.07 cm.

Edward S. Curtis, Into the Shadow, 1910. Clayoquot Sound, British Columbia.

Woman In Canoe. Photograph from collection of Cruces y Campa Mexican Occupationals “cartes-de-visites” series, 1862–1877.

Photograph of the Hicks family of the Clallam tribe posing with a canoe near Chimacum Creek, Washington, ca. 1914.

Natives making canoe from tree trunk at Mission ca. 1900. Photograph by Alexander McLean.

Napolean Sanford

Napolean Sanford with a work in progress next to the Carib Council House in Salybia, Dominica.

Gommier trees grow to enormous size in the rain forests of Dominica.

Dugout fishing canoes on the beach in Martinique.

Napolean Sanford's Storm Petrel.

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.

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.

Stakes are planted in the general shape of the canoe; a frame in the shape of a gunwale is dropped in with temporary thwarts attached.

A sheet of bark is placed on the ground, the frame is set on top and weighted with rocks. The stakes are temporarily moved aside.

The stakes are put back and the bark shaped inside of them. Note that the stakes are now tied at their tops. Long battens are used to strengthen the frame.

The bark is in place and the gunwale frame is lifted into position. The sheer height is shown in cutaway (a). Blocks (b) are placed under the ends to provide the rocker.

Shaping the ends and sewing is done upside down, on sawhorses.

Sheathing and ribs are added to give the canoe its final shape.

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.

Chippewa Indian Kneeling in Canoe, ca. 1914.

Seth Eastman, Rice Gatherers, 1867.

Edwin Tappan Adney, the expert on bark canoes, studies one of his models in 1896.

A row of Tetes de Boule canoes was photographed by Edwin Tappan Adney in the early 1900s.

The crooked canoe was built to turn quickly and handle major river systems, with their quick bends and dangerous rapids.

Forest rangers needed canoes to travel on the frontier just as natives, trappers, and explorers did.

Joseph John Kirkbride, Picnic along Shore of Lake, near Mouth of Socateau, ca. 1884, photograph.

Photograph of an expedition to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Lake Superior, ca. 1868. Photographer unknown.

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

Frederic Remington, Evening on a Canadian Lake, ca 1908. Library of Congress.

Tappan Adney, Calling Moose with the “Moose Horn,” ca. 1896

Artist Unknown, Indians Making Birch Bark Canoes, ca. 1871.

The Baron of Lahontan (Louis-Armand de Lom d'Arce) drew this description of the Iroquois' elm-bark canoes for a three-volume memoir of his time in New France, which ended in 1693.

As a canoe material, elm bark was distinctly different than birch, as evidenced by this example built by Rick Nash.

John Enys

This Penobscot canoe, held by the Peabody Essex Museum, is one of the oldest birch barks in existence and the oldest canoe in one piece.

Frances Anne Hopkins, The Red River Expedition at Kakabeka Falls, 1877.

Théophile Hamel, Portrait de Samuel de Champlain, 1870. Oil on canvas, 66 x 86 cm.

French explorers witnessed the pearl diving industry in the Caribbean, where the newcomers got a glimpse of the native dugouts used in the activity.

George Agnew Reid, The Arrival of Champlain at Quebec, 1909. Pastel on wove paper, 62 × 43 cm.

Samuel de Champlain, Map of New France, 1632.

After Hyacinthe Rigaud, Portrait of Louis, XIV, after 1701.

The painter John James Audubon is more well-known for his images of North American birds, but he also painted other wildlife, such as these two beavers working on a tree.

John Bowles, Thomas Bowles and Herman Moll, A New and Exact Map of the Dominions of the King, 1731.

Beaver pelts were used in making felt, which could be turned into a top hat, shown here with its case.

The process of making hats from the pelts of beavers is partially illustrated in this 1858 artwork from Charles Knight, produced by the London Printing and Publishing Company.

Arthur Heming, The Voyageur, 1915. Oil on canvas, 76.7 × 102.2 cm.

Abby Fuller Abbe, The Voyageur, ca. 1860.

Frederic Remington, Radisson and Groseilliers, 1905. Oil on canvas, 110.2 x 194.3 cm.