Chapter Six
NORTHWESTERN CANADA
Indians of the Northwest Territories and the Province of British Columbia in Canada, and the States of Alaska and Washington, built bark canoes that may be divided into three basic models.
The first may be called the "kayak" model, a flat-bottom, narrow canoe having nearly straight flaring sides and either a chine or a very quick turn of the bilge. These bark canoes were low-sided and were usually partly decked. A number of tribal groups built canoes of this model, the variation being relatively minor. The rake and form of the ends varied somewhat as did the amount of decking; there were also some slight variations in structure and method of construction. While these bark canoes had some superficial resemblance in general proportions to the Eskimo kayaks, it is necessary to point out that they did not, particularly in Alaska, have the same hull form as the seagoing kayaks in that area. In fact, the single-chine form of the Alaskan version of this canoe appears only in the kayaks of northern Greenland and Baffin Island. The Alaskan seagoing skin kayaks are all multi-chine forms that approximate a "round-bottom" hull. It has been thought that the flat-bottom seagoing kayak form may have existed in the Canadian Northwest, at the mouth of the Mackenzie; a kayak so identified is in the collections of the U.S. National Museum (see p. [202]), but there is now doubt among authorities as to the correctness of this identification. As will be shown later, it seems probable that it has been improperly assigned to the Mackenzie delta and is, in fact, an eastern Eskimo model.
The second model used in the Northwest area was a narrow-bottom flaring-sided bark canoe with elevated ends, having, perhaps, a faint resemblance to the Algonkin-Cree canoes of the old type. Here too there was some variation among the canoes of tribal groups, mostly in the shape and construction of the ends and in the fitting of the gunwales. Most of the canoes of this type had stem-pieces formed of a plank-on-edge, but in a few examples the stem-pieces were bent. This model was built by the same tribal groups in Canada that built the kayak form, the explanation being that the kayak form was the hunting while the second model was commonly the family or cargo canoe. In Alaska, however, only the kayak-form was used and the family, or cargo, canoe was merely an enlargement of it.
The third model may be called the "sturgeon-nose" type; in this the ends were formed with a long, pointed "ram" carried well outboard below the waterline as an extension of the bottom line of the canoe. Primitive in both model and construction, it was built in a rather limited area in British Columbia and in the State of Washington. The last canoes built on this form were canvas-covered; in earlier times spruce or pine bark was usually employed.
The birch in most of the Northwest is a small tree and the bark is of poor quality for canoe building; hence, in many areas spruce bark was commonly employed in its place; a single tribal group might build its canoes of either, depending upon what was available near the building site. However, near the Alaska coast, where kayak-form bark canoes were used and good birch was usually not available, some tribes used seal or other skins as a substitute. In the framework spruce and fir were most commonly employed, but occasionally cedar was available and was used.
The canoe-building Indians in northwestern Canada were mostly of the Athabascan family and included the Chipewyan or "Chipewans," the Slave or "Slavey" (= Etchareottine), the Beaver (= Tsattine), the Dogrib (= Thlingchadinne), the Tanana (= Tenankutchin), the Loucheux, the Hare (= Kawchodinne), and others. Some of these tribal groups built not only bark canoes but also dugouts. There were also some Eskimo people who built bark canoes for river service, as well as skin canoes, on the same model as the bark kayak-form.