Figure 151
Kayak-Form Canoe of British Columbia and upper Yukon valley. Shows hogged bottom, usual in the type with a rigid bottom frame, which becomes straight or cambered when canoe is afloat and manned. Original in the Museum of the American Indian, New York.
It now remains only to give short descriptions of the various kayak-form canoes that have been observed.
The ends of the Eskimo-built canoes of the lower Yukon had a short rake, the heel of the end profile breaking out of the bottom line at a slight angle and sweeping upward and outward in a gentle curve, often becoming almost straight near the stem head. The bow and stern were nearly the same height, the bow being a little higher, about half the midship depth above the sheer amidships. The sheer at each end was almost dead straight until within a few inches of the end; thence it swept up sharply with the inner gunwale ends, broadened, resting on the inboard side of the stem piece. The extreme ends of the inner gunwales were thus at the extreme stem-head. The stem-pieces were of plank, the cutwater portion outside the bark cover being sharpened the full height of the stems. These lower Yukon canoes had three side battens above the chine piece, but not all ran the full length in one piece; some were in two, in which case the ends merely ran past one another for a few rib-spaces and were neither butted nor lapped. The forward deck extended nearly one-third the canoe's length and had a batten across the inboard deck-end; the after deck reached to the after thwart. Adney's model of such a canoe shows the after deck lashed to the gunwales with spiral turns over a batten along the deck edges and finished toward the stern with chain stitching, but no such arrangement was seen in any full-sized canoe.
The form of these Eskimo-built canoes was nearly that of a double-ended flat-bottom skiff; the bottom being flat athwartships and without rocker fore-and-aft. The sides flared and were nearly straight. The turn of the bilge was quite sharp, the chine having a very short radius. In plan, the canoe showed no hollow in the ends, which were convex both at gunwale and on the bottom frame. In some of the full-sized canoes inspected there appeared to be a slight hog ranging from ¼ to ⅜ inch in the bottom, but there was no evidence to suggest that this was a result of the drying and shrinkage of the canoe structure with age. Hearne's drawing of a kayak-form canoe shows an impossible amount of hog in the bottom, and he indicates that some hog was intentional in building. This would disappear when the canoe was loaded afloat owing to the light and flexible structure, and it is evident that the builders usually sought to have the bottom slightly hogged.
Figure 152
Construction of Kayak-Form Canoe of the lower Yukon, showing rigid bottom frame. (Smithsonian Institution photo.)