The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America

by Tappan Adney; Howard Irving Chapelle

The bark most favored by the Iroquois was that of the white elm. Next most favored was red elm, and then other barks—certain of the hickories and chestnut are mentioned in various early references. It was necessary to find a tree of sufficient girth and height to the first limbs to give a sound and fairly smooth bark sheet in the length and breadth required. If possible the bark was stripped from the standing tree; even after steel tools were available, felling was avoided for fear of harming the bark. Great care had to be taken in the operation, to avoid splitting or making holes in the bark, and often two or more trees had to be stripped before a good sheet of bark was obtained. In warm weather the bark could be removed without much difficulty, but in the spring and fall it might be necessary to apply heat; this was apparently done by means of torches or by the application of hot water to the tree trunk.

When the bark was removed from the tree, the rough outer bark was scraped away; if the builder was hurried this scraping was confined to the areas to be sewn or folded. The bark was then laid on a cleared piece of ground, the building bed, with the outside of the bark up, so that it would be inside the finished boat. The building bed does not appear to have required much preparation; apparently not raised at midlength, it was merely a plot of reasonably smooth ground, located in the shade of a large tree if building was to be done in summer.

It is not wholly clear from the descriptions whether the gunwales were shaped before or after being secured to the bark. However, extensive experiments in building model canoes show very plainly that it would be easiest to assemble the main gunwale frame and use it in building, after the fashion of eastern birch-bark canoe construction. With the main gunwales assembled, the stakes would be placed on the bed, the bark replaced, the frame laid on it and weighted, and the stakes then redriven in the usual way and their heads lashed together in pairs.

Each gunwale was formed either of two small saplings or of split poles, with the butts scarfed at the canoe's midlength. The canoe of an Iroquois war party would probably have gunwales of split saplings so that inwale and outwale for half the length of one side of the canoe would be from a single pole; this would allow the flat sides to be placed opposite one another, on each side of the edge of the bark, to form a firm gunwale structure. However, when a rather permanent craft was being built, the poles might be split twice, or quartered, to give pieces to make half of the gunwales of a canoe; these too might be worked nearly round before assembly.

That the gunwale joints were scarfed is reasonably certain. The elm-bark canoes of the St. Francis Indians are known only from a model, as are the spruce-bark hunters' canoes of the Malecite, but the testimony of old St. Francis and Malecite builders support the evidence of the models; therefore it is probable that the use of scarfed gunwales was common in these canoes, and, hence, also in the canoes of the Iroquois, who dwelt nearby. The manner of scarfing is not certain. Probably the butts were snied off so that the lap would be flat face, as was usual in the Malecite spruce-bark canoes of this same class. The butts were secured together by lashings—apparently let into shallow grooves around the members. In a very hastily built canoe the butts might be merely lapped for a short distance, one butt above the other, and lashed; this, of course, would make a jog in the sheer, but do no harm, as the jog would occur in both inwale and outwale, and the bark would lay up between these and be trimmed to suit.

The thwarts were described in old accounts as very small saplings, or tree branches, with their ends sharply reduced in thickness so that they were thin and pliable enough to be bent around the gunwales and brought inboard under the thwart, as done by some Kutenai in the West (see p. [169]). The thwart ends might be lashed or, as in some eastern spruce-bark canoes, brought up through a hole in the thwarts to the top where it could be jammed or lashed. In the Iroquois canoe it seems probable that the thwart ends passed around the main gunwales only and were secured under the thwarts for, as noted, the evidence strongly suggests that the main gunwale members were preassembled, a procedure that requires the thwarts to be in place. In the small hunters' canoes, however, some eastern builders apparently put in a temporary spreader in place of a single thwart until the canoe was completed to the point where the outwales were in place, then the thwarts were added, the ends passing over and around both inwale and outwale and through the bark cover below, to the underside of the thwart.

One requirement in building these canoes was to crimp the edges of the bark at the gunwales in such manner that the bottom of the canoe would be rockered and at the same time would be moulded athwartships. First steps in the process were to set into the building bed two heavy stakes on each side of the stems, a little inboard of the ends, and to tie the heads of each pair together with a heavy bark cord or a rawhide thong. Then a sling was made, the bight of which went under the bottom of the bark cover near its ends, and the ends of the sling were made fast to the heads of the stakes. By taking up on these slings, the ends of the bark cover were sharply lifted and then the folding of the bark along the gunwales could be easily accomplished, as they then formed naturally, without strain. The crimps were commonly located a fourth to a fifth the length of the canoe inboard of the ends, about where the end thwarts would be located. In small hunters' canoes the end thwarts were often replaced by twisted cords across the gunwales, but in the large Iroquois canoes there were probably five or seven or perhaps as many as nine thwarts according to length.

The ends of the gunwales were simply lashed together with cords or thongs in shallow grooves to prevent slipping. They were raised by a small inside post, its heel placed on the bark near the stem and its head brought under the gunwales, so that it served the purpose of a headboard in sheering the gunwales.

The procedure in building to this point, then, appeared to follow the general plan used in birch-bark construction. Next, the stakes were redriven in the bed around the gunwale frame, which was weighted on the bark with stones, and the sides of the bark cover were brought upright. Apparently only a few stakes were considered necessary—three or four to a side and two pairs of end stakes to raise the stems. The gunwale frame was then lifted to the required height of side and lashed temporarily to the side stakes, the ends of the bark cover were creased to form bow and stern, and the headboard posts were inserted to support the ends of the inwales and to sheer the canoe. Before this, of course, the ends of the bark cover had been raised by means of the slings to the end stakes.

The outwales of split saplings were now put into place, with the edges of the bark cover lashed between the flat surfaces of the inwale and outwale, the gunwales having been assembled with the flat face of the longitudinal members outboard. The lashings were in small groups spaced 5 to 7 inches apart so as not to split the bark, and these not only secured the bark in place but also held the inwales and outwales tightly together, to clamp the edges of the bark cover. At the thwarts, the outwales were notched on their inboard face to allow them to come up against the bark pressed against the face of the inwales (in some eastern canoes the bark cover was notched at the thwart ends to lay up smoothly there, and this may have also been done in the Iroquois canoes). In placing the outwales, the crimps were carefully formed and held by the clamping action of the inwale and outwale, and reinforced by a lashing through the crimp or by two lashings close to the sides of the fold. The fold of the bark forced the outwale away from the inwale, and although this was counteracted to some extent by the lashings, the gunwales were unfair at these points. The crimps were formed so that the maximum fold in the bark took place at the gunwales; below this the fold tapered away to nothing, ending low in the side with an irregular bulge in the bark. Such a bulge could only be avoided by goring, which is impractical with elm, pine, chestnut, or hickory barks.