The voyageur was particular about his paddle; no man in his right mind would use a blade wider than between 4½ and 5 inches, for anything wider would exhaust him in a short distance. The paddle reached to about the users' chin, when he stood with the tip of the paddle on the ground in front of him. Longer paddles, about 6 feet long, were used by the bow and stern men, the two most skillful voyageurs in the canoe and the highest paid. These men had, also, spare paddles whose total length was 8 feet or more; these were used in running rapids only. The paddles were of hardwood, white or yellow birch or maple, as hardwood paddles could be made thin in the blade and small in the handle without loss of strength, whereas softwood paddles could not. The blades were sometimes painted white, the tips in some color such as red, blue, green or black, but other color combinations were often used.
In Christopherson's service, sail was rarely used, as the canoemen were unskilled in handling it and loss had resulted. In early times, however, it appears to have been much used on the Great Lakes routes by the French and the North West Company. A single square-sail was the only rig employed; the canoes could not be worked to windward under fore-and-aft sails.
During the great seasonal movements the trade canoes moved in fleets called brigades, the usual brigade in early times being three or four canoes, but later, when the needs of the individual posts had grown, the brigade could be of any necessary number of canoes to carry in the required supplies and goods or to bring out the season's catch of furs. The leader of the brigade was the conducteur or guide; sometimes he was the post's factor. In French times the maître canot would be loaded with 60 pieces, or packs, to the total of about 3 short tons and half a ton of provisions, and eight men, each with an allowance of 40 pounds for gear, so that the whole weight in the canoe would be something over 4 short tons. An example of such a canoe measured, inside the gunwales, 5½ fathoms long and 4½ feet beam. The usual brigade of four of these canoes would thus carry roughly 12 short tons of goods.
The Company would send one brigade after another, at close intervals of time, until the whole seasonal movement was in progress. Those brigades going the greatest distance were started first. Although cargoes left the coast from early spring on to late summer, the great canoe movement took place towards the fall. Canoe travel north and northwestward from the Great Lakes had to be carefully timed, as goods had to be accumulated at the base posts on the Lakes and the brigades placed in movement at the last safe date which would permit them to reach their destination before the first hard freeze-up. The base posts were those where the run of the maître canot ended and that of the canot du nord began, the places where reloading for the individual trading posts in the Northland was necessary. The late start was usually desirable in order to await the arrival at the base posts of all the goods required, for movements of freight were uncertain before the days of railroads and steamers.
Figure 143
Decorations: Fur-trade Canoes. (Watercolor sketch by Adney.)
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, before the whole canoe trade fell under the control of the Hudson's Bay Company, it was the custom to distribute 8 gallons of rum to each canoe for consumption during the run, and it was also the custom for all hands to see how much of this they could drink before starting out. This grandiose undertaking usually began as soon as the local priest, who gave his blessing to the canoemen, had left the scene. The magnificent drunk lasted one day and the next morning the crew had to be underway. The first day's run, old accounts repeatedly show, not only was short but was often beset by difficulties.
The era of the bark trading canoe did not close with a dramatic change. Its ending was a long, slow process. By the last decade of the 19th century the bark trading canoe had disappeared from most of the old routes, and even in the Northwest it had been almost wholly displaced by York boats, scows, bateaux, and canvas or wooden canoes of white-man construction. By the beginning of the first World War, the maître canots and canots du nord were finished, except as curiosities—hardly even as these, for not one was preserved in a museum.
Indeed, so complete was the disappearance of the fur-trade canoe that any attempt to record its design, construction, and fitting would have been almost hopeless, had it not been for the notes, sketches, and statements of such men as L. A. Christopherson, aided by a few models and pictures, and for the memories of a few Indian builders who had worked on the canoes.