The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America

by Tappan Adney; Howard Irving Chapelle

The fitting of the bark cover of the kayak-form canoes was not the same in all types. In the Mackenzie canoes the bottom, which might be in three, four, or five pieces sewn together, was alike on both sides; to it the side pieces were sewn at, or just above, the chines. The sides were made up of deep panels, five to nine to a side. There were no horizontal seams other than the one near the chines.

In some Yukon canoes, however, the bottom sheet was often made of three pieces and covered not only the bottom but also a portion, such as the after two-thirds, of one side. The forward portion of that side would then be covered by a single large panel or perhaps two, so that the horizontal seam on that side would run from the stem aft to the inboard end of the foredeck and would be just above the chine. On the opposite side a sheet would cover the bottom there and the bow topside from the stem aft for a short way. Deep panels would then cover the rest of that side to the stern, so that the horizontal seam there began forward at the sheer, some feet abaft the bow, and swept downward in a gentle curve to near the chine and then ran aft to the stern in a long sheered line just above the turn of the bilge, rising slightly as it neared the stern. Hence the foremost of the panels on that side was nearly triangular and the others were nearly rectangular. Inside, at the chine, was placed a reinforcing strip of bark wide enough to reach 3 inches beyond both sides of each chine longitudinal and running the length of the bottom; or if a seam near the chine permitted, the side and bottom pieces were overlapped. As has been noted, in the Yukon canoes a reinforcing piece at the outwale was not used, but was in the Mackenzie canoes; it extended down the side about 3 inches below the underside of the outwale amidships and ran to the ends of the canoe, or nearly so, tapering with the outwales to a width of about 1½ inches at bow and stern. In these canoes much of the lashing at stem and stern was double-thong; the longitudinal sewing was often over a batten in the usual spiral stitch, and a simple spiral stitch was also used to join the panels, although in-and-out stitching might also be seen in some canoes.

In many of the kayak-form canoes two ribs often stood noticeably close together amidships, and the rest stood parallel to the rake of the end on their side, respectively, of the middle ribs. However, not all these canoes had such double ribs; some were framed out in the usual manner, with the ribs widely spaced and canted toward their respective ends of the hull, away from the midship of the canoe.

Figure 150

Kayak-Form Canoes of the Alaskan Eskimos and Canadian Athabascan Indians: chine form of Eskimo birch-bark canoe (above) and the dish-sectioned form of the Canadian Athabascans.

In most of these canoes the paddler sat on a sheet of bark secured on the bottom; this was held in place by one or two false ribs having their ends under the inner gunwales and their middle forced down against the bark on the bottom framework. In place of bark, some Eskimo builders of the type used thin splints of wood laced together by two or three lines of double-thong stitching athwartships, which was passed through two holes in each splint. This might be loose or held in place by a false frame.

The paddle was single-bladed and the same as that used with the second class of Mackenzie Basin canoe (fig. 151). The blade was parallel-sided with the point formed in a short straight-sided V-form; The blade of Yukon paddles was often taper-sided toward the point, which was a rounded V. Other variations in blade form existed, however, and the narrow leaf-shaped blade was used in some areas in Alaska. In the Mackenzie paddles the handle ended in a knob, but in Alaskan versions it ended in a cross-grip like those of paddles used with some Alaskan sea kayaks. The Eskimo double-blade paddle was used with the kayak-form canoe by some paddlers; Hearne mentions its use.

Some of the kayak-form canoes were decorated; in Alaska this decoration often took the form of a line of colored beads sewn along each side of the afterdeck at the gunwale, or it consisted of a few oval panels of red, blue, or black paint along the sides or centerline of the afterdeck. In some Mackenzie kayak forms the decks were painted in various designs; a rather common one seems to have been two or more bands of paint around the deck edges, along the gunwales, ending at bow and stern with a full round sweep. Painted disk designs appeared on some of the large Algonkin-Ojibway canoes of the second type.

A number of kayak forms became extinct before any accurate, detailed records of their shape and construction had been made; models of some of these canoes exist but are not to scale and are untrustworthy as to detail, since they are often simplified. One model of the extinct British Columbia bateau form, for example, showed but three longitudinals in the bottom, though the probable size of the canoe undoubtedly would have required a greater number. On the other hand, the model may have represented a spruce-bark canoe constructed for temporary use, in which case a simplified construction might have been employed. One can only speculate which it was. Models of some kayak-form Yukon canoes show the decks lashed to the gunwales with a very coarse spiral stitch not recorded for any of the observed full-size canoes; thus it may be a model-maker's method of securing the decking firmly rather than an actual practice used on full-size canoes.