The Evolution of Culture, and Other Essays

by Augustus Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers

It has been thought that the use of hollowed canoes may have arisen from observing the effect of a split reed or bamboo upon the water. The nautilus is also said to have given the first idea of a ship to man; and Pliny, Diodorus, and Strabo have stated that large tortoise-shells were used by primitive races of mankind (Kitto, Pictorial Bible). It has also been supposed that the natural decay of trees may have first suggested the employment of hollow trees for canoes, but such trees are not easily removed entire. It is difficult to conceive how so great an advance in the art of shipbuilding was first introduced, but there can be no doubt that the agent first employed for this purpose was fire.

I have noticed when travelling in Bulgaria that the gipsies and others who roam over that country usually select the foot of a dry tree to light their cooking fire; the dry wood of the tree, combined with the sticks collected at the foot of it, makes a good blaze, and the tree throws forward the heat like a fireplace. Successive parties camping on the same ground, attracted thither by the vicinity of water, use the same fireplaces, and the result is that the trees by degrees become hollowed out for some distance from the foot, the hollow part formed by the fire serving the purpose of a semi-cylindrical chimney. Such a tree, torn up by the roots, or cut off below the part excavated by the fire, would form a very serviceable canoe, the parts not excavated by the fire being sound and hard. The Andaman islanders use a tree in this manner as an oven, the fire being kept constantly burning in the hollow formed by the flames.

One of the best accounts of the process of digging out a canoe by means of fire is that described by Kalm, on the Delaware river, in 1747. He says that, when the Indians intend to fell a tree, for want of proper instruments they employ fire; they set fire to a quantity of wood at the roots of the tree, and in order that the fire might not reach further up than they would have it, they fasten some rags to a pole, dip them in water, and keep continually washing the tree a little above the fire until the lower part is burnt nearly through; it is then pulled down. When they intend to hollow a tree for a canoe, they lay dry branches along the stem of the tree as far as it must be hollowed out, set them on fire, and replace them by others. While these parts are burning, they keep pouring water on those parts that are not to be burnt at the sides and ends. When the interior is sufficiently burnt out, they take their stone hatchets and shells and scoop out the burnt wood. These canoes are usually 30 or 40 feet long. In the account of one of the expeditions sent out by Raleigh in 1584 a similar description is given of the process adopted by the Indians of Virginia, except that, instead of sticks, resin is laid on to the parts to be excavated and set fire to: canoes capable of holding twenty persons were formed in this manner.

The Waraus of Guiana employ fire for excavating their canoes; and when Columbus discovered the Island of Guanahani or San Salvador, in the West Indies, he found [fire] employed for this purpose by the natives, who called their boats ‘canoe’, a term which has ever since been employed by Europeans to express this most primitive class of vessel.

Dr. Mouat says that, in Blair’s time, the Andaman islanders excavated their canoes by the agency of fire; but it is not employed for that purpose now, the whole operation being performed by hand. Symes, in 1800, speaks of the Burmese war-boats, which were excavated partly by fire and partly by cutting. Nos. 1276 and 1277 of my collection are models of these boats. In New Caledonia, Turner, in 1845, says that the natives felled their trees by means of a slow fire at the foot, taking three or four days to do it. In excavating a canoe, he says, they kindle a fire over the part to be burnt out, and keep dropping water over the sides and ends, so as to confine the fire to the required spot, the burnt wood being afterwards scraped out with stone tools. The New Zealanders, and probably the Australians also, employ fire for this purpose [Cook]. The canoes of the Krumen in West Africa are also excavated by means of fire.

A further improvement in the development of the dug-out canoe consists in bending the sides into the required form after it has been dug out. This process of fire-bending has already been described on p. 87 of my Catalogue (Parts i and ii), when speaking of the methods employed by the Esquimaux and Australians in straightening their wooden spears and arrow-shafts. The application of this process to canoe-building by the Ahts of the north-west coast of North America is thus described by Mr. Wood in his Natural History of Man, vol. ii. p. 732. The canoe is carved out of a solid trunk of cedar (Thuja gigantea). It is hollowed out, not by fire, but by hand, and by means of an adze formed of a large mussel-shell; the trunk is split lengthwise by wedges. All is done by the eye. When it is roughly hollowed it is filled with water, and red-hot stones put in until it boils. This is continued until the wood is quite soft, and then a number of cross-pieces are driven into the interior, so as to force the canoe into its proper shape, which it ever afterwards retains. While the canoe is still soft and pliant, several slight cross-pieces are inserted, so as to counteract any tendency towards warping. The outside of the vessel is then hardened by fire, so as to enable it to resist the attacks of insects, and also to prevent it cracking when exposed to the sun. The inside is then painted some bright colour, and the outside is usually black and highly polished. This is produced by rubbing it with oil after the fire has done its work. Lastly, a pattern is painted on its bow. There is no keel to the boat. The red pattern of the painting is obtained by a preparation of anato. For boring holes the Ahts use a drill formed by a bone of a bird fixed in a wooden handle.

A precisely similar process to this is employed in the formation of the Burmese dug-out canoes, and has thus been described to me by Capt. O’Callaghan, who witnessed the process during the Burmese War in 1852. A trunk of a tree of suitable length, though much less in diameter than the intended width of the boat, is cut into the usual form, and hollowed out. It is then filled with water, and fires are lit, a short distance from it, along its sides. The water gradually swells the inside, while the fire contracts the outside, till the width is greatly increased. The effect thus produced is rendered permanent by thwarts being placed so as to prevent the canoe from contracting in width as it dries; the depth of the boat is increased by a plank at each side, reaching as far as the ends of the hollowed part. Canoes generally show traces of the fire and water treatment just described, the inner surface being soft and full of superficial cracks, while the outer is hard and close.

It is probable that this mode of bending canoes has been discovered during the process of cooking, in which red-hot stones are used in many countries to boil the water in vessels of skin or wood, in which the meat is cooked. No. 1256 of my collection is a model of an Aht canoe, painted as here described. No. 1257 is a full-sized canoe from this region, made out of a single trunk; it is not painted, so that the grain of the wood can be seen.

The distribution of the dug-out canoe appears to be almost universal. It is especially used in southern and equatorial regions. Leaving Australia, we find it employed with the outrigger, which will be described hereafter (pp. [218-9]), in many parts of the Polynesian and Asiatic islands, including New Guinea, New Zealand, New Caledonia, and the Sandwich Islands. It was not used by the natives of Tasmania, who employed a float consisting of a bundle of bark and rushes, which will be described in another place (p. 203). Wilkes speaks of it in Samoa, at Manilla, and the Sooloo Archipelago. De Guignes in 1796 and De Morga in 1609 saw them in the Philippines, where they are called pangues, some carrying from two to three and others from twelve to fifteen persons. They are (or were) also used in the Pelew, Nicobar, and Andaman Isles. In the India Museum there is a model of one from Assam, used as a mail boat, and called dâk nao. In Burmah, Symes, in 1795, describes the war-boats of the Irrawaddy as 80 to 100 feet long, but seldom exceeding 8 feet in width, and this only by additions to the sides; carrying fifty to sixty rowers, who use short oars that work on a spindle, and who row instead of paddling. Captain O’Callaghan, however, informs me that they sometimes use paddles (Nos. 1276 and 1277). They are made of one piece of the teak tree. The king had five hundred of these vessels of war. They are easily upset, but the rowers are taught to avoid being struck on the broadside; they draw only 3 feet of water. On the Menan, in Siam, Turpin, in 1771, says that the king’s ballons are made of a single tree, and will contain 150 rowers; the two ends are very much elevated, and the rowers sit cross-legged, by which they lose a great deal of power. The river vessels in Cochin China are also described as being of the same long, narrow kind. At Ferhabad, in Persia, Pietro della Valle, in 1614, describes the canoes as being flat-bottomed, hollow trees, carrying ten to twelve persons.

In Africa, Duarte Barbosa, in 1514, saw the Moors at Zuama make use of boats, almadias, hollowed out of a single trunk, to bring clothes and other merchandise from Angos. Livingstone says the canoes of the Bayeye of South Africa are hollow trees, made for use and not for speed. If formed of a crooked stem they become crooked vessels, conforming to the line of the timber. On the Benuwé, at its junction with the [Yola], Barth, for the first time in his travels southward, saw what he describes as rude little shells hollowed out of a single tree; they measured 25 to 30 feet in length, 1 to 1½ foot in height, and 16 inches in width; one of them, he says, was quite crooked. On the White Nile, in Unyoro, Grant says that the largest canoe carried a ton and a half, and was hollowed out of a trunk. On the Kitangule, west of Lake Victoria Nyanza, near Karague, he describes the canoes as being hollowed out of a log of timber 15 feet long and the breadth of an easy-chair. These kind of canoes are also used by the Makoba east of Lake Ngami, by the Apingi and Camma, and the Krumen of the West African coast; of which last, No. 1272 of my collection is a model.