The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America

by Tappan Adney; Howard Irving Chapelle

Although the scale drawings accurately represent the form and details of construction, they necessarily idealize somewhat the primitive boat design. Also, in showing the hull-form, the usual method of projecting the "lines" of the hull was discarded as unsuitable. Instead structural features have been emphasized, with the result that "round"-bottom kayaks appear as multi-chine hulls, as they properly are. In view of the fluid state of design in Eskimo craft it is obvious that the examples shown represent the stage of development at the given date, though the alteration in most designs has been so gradual that the representation could serve to illustrate with reasonable accuracy a tribal or area type for a decade or more.

The Eskimos have produced two types of skin boats that have proved remarkably efficient craft for small-boat navigation in Arctic waters: an open boat ranging from about 15 to approximately 60 feet in length for carrying cargo and passengers for long distances, and a small decked canoe developed exclusively for hunting. With few exceptions these Arctic skin boats are wholly seagoing craft.

The open boat, called the umiak, is propelled by paddles or oars or sail or, in recent years, by an outboard gasoline engine, or it may be towed. While fundamentally a cargo carrier the umiak has been employed by some Eskimo in whaling and in walrus hunting. For these purposes a faster and more developed design is used than that used only to carry families, household goods, and cargo in the constant Eskimo search for new hunting grounds. To a far greater degree than any other boat of similar size, this Eskimo boat is characterized by great strength combined with lightness.

The decked hunting canoe, the kayak, is propelled by paddle alone when used for hunting and fishing, but is occasionally towed by the umiak when the owner travels. The kayak is perhaps the most efficient example of a primitive hunting boat; it can be propelled at high speed by its paddler and maneuvered with ease. These hunting kayaks are commonly built to hold but one person, though one group of Eskimo built the kayaks to carry two or three. The kayak, remarkable for its seaworthiness, lightness and strength, has been perhaps one of the most important tools in the Eskimo fight for existence. Few tribes have been unacquainted with its use. Because of its employment, the kayak often has to be designed to meet very particular requirements and so there is greater variation in its form and dimensions than in the umiak.

Seagoing skin boats have not been common outside the Arctic in historical times. In fact only the European Celts are known with certainty to have used such craft. The Irish, in particular, employed large seagoing skin boats as late as the reign of Queen Elizabeth of England; a drawing of one preserved in the Pepysian Library was reproduced in the Mariner's Mirror (vol. 8, 1922, facing p. 200). Although there can be little doubt that large seagoing skin craft had been more widely used in prehistoric times, the perishable nature of the skin covering and the light framework probably account for the lack of any archeological remains that would indicate its range. The availability of the materials required in its construction, however, suggest that its use could have been very widespread. The long voyages made by the Irish, in the dawning of recorded history, could well have made its design and construction known to others.

There are still many skin boats in use by primitive people and even a few survivals in Europe, but with the exception of the Irish "curragh," these craft are designed for inland waters and are either rather dish-shaped, or oval in plan, like half a walnut shell. In design they are related to the coracle of ancient Britain rather than to a seagoing skin boat of the Irish or Eskimo type. Both the Irish curragh and the British coracle, now, of course, are covered with canvas rather than hide.

Traditions of long voyages by the ancient Irish in the skin-covered curragh make it apparent that such voyages were relatively common, and the design and construction of existing models of the curragh and umiak indicate that these voyages could have been made with reasonable safety. Compared to the dugout canoe, the skin boat was far lighter and roomier in proportion to length and so could carry a far greater load and still retain enough freeboard to be safe. The size of the early skin boats cannot be established with certainty; the modern Irish curragh is probably debased in this respect, but early explorers of Greenland reported umiaks nearly 60 feet in length and there is no structural reason why the curragh could not have been as large or even larger.

Compared with the curragh, the umiak is lighter, stronger, and more resistant to shock. The curragh was built with closely spaced bent frames and longitudinal stringers to support the skin cover, whereas the umiak has very widely spaced frames and few longitudinals, giving the skin cover little support. The difference in construction is undoubtedly a result of the type of covering used, for the curragh was covered with cattle hides, which were less strong than the seal or walrus skins used by the Eskimo. The strong and elastic skin cover of the umiak and the lack of a rigid structural support gives this boat an advantage in withstanding the shocks of beaching or of working in floating ice; and because of its relatively light framework and the method of securing the structural members, its frame is far more flexible than that of the curragh, adding to this ability.

The skin cover of the curragh was made watertight by rubbing the hides with animal fat, and the sewn seams were payed with tallow. The Eskimo soak the skin cover of the umiak with animal oil and pay the seams with blubber or animal fat. Both treatments produced a cover initially watertight but requiring drying and reoiling to remain so. Under most climatic conditions in the North Atlantic or Pacific the oiled skins remain watertight from four days to a week. This period can be lengthened by various methods; skin boats travelling in company can be dried out in turn by unloading one and placing it aboard a companion craft. There is evidence of other methods of treating the skin covering; waterproofing it with melted tallow, for example, or with a vegetable gum or a resin such as pitch, would enable it to remain watertight for a much longer time, though such treatments would make the covering less elastic. Pitch was also used at one time in curragh building, and it would be unwise to assume that the oil treatment used by the Eskimo was their only method of producing watertight skin covers in the period before they were first observed by Europeans.