The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America

by Tappan Adney; Howard Irving Chapelle

Figure 47

Gunwale Construction and thwart or crossbar fastenings, as shown in a sketch by Adney. (From Harper's Young People, supplement, July 29, 1890.)

At the start of ribbing out a canoe, the first two or three ribs might not be put at each end until after the headboards had been fitted, and sometimes a rib was placed on each side of the middle thwart, apparently to hold securely the sheathing butted amidships while the ribbing progressed toward them from the ends. When a canoe was short and rather wide, the ribs usually were bent by placing them inside the faired bark cover before the sheathing was installed, there to dry and set or to season, depending on whether they were steamed or green. Prebending the ribs, as described in the building of a Malecite canoe, worked well only when the canoe was long, narrow, and sharp. The spacing of the ribs was done by eye, not by precise measurement, and was never exactly the same over the length of the canoe. Ribs near the ends were usually spaced at greater intervals than those in the middle third of the length.

The extension of the bark beyond the ends of the inner gunwale in an eastern canoe was often about one foot on each end, but this distance was actually determined by the length of the bark available and by the usual reluctance of the builder to add a panel at the end.

For the height of the end posts, in sheering the gunwales, a common Malecite measurement was the length of the forearm from knuckles of clenched fist to back of elbow. These posts were often left in place until the stems were fitted.

The use of a building frame is known to have been common in areas where, normally, the gunwale frame would be employed in the initial steps in building. In a few instances this occurred when a builder had a number of canoes of the same size to construct. It seems probable that the use of the building frame spread into Eastern areas comparatively recently as a result of the influence of the fur-trade canoes on construction methods. The employment of the plank building bed in the East is known to have occurred among individual canoe builders late in the nineteenth century as a result of this influence.

The use of nails and tacks instead of pegs and root lashing or sewing in bark canoe construction became quite widespread early in the nineteenth century; it is to be seen in many old canoes preserved in museums. The bark in these is often secured to the gunwales with carpet or flat-headed tacks, and both the outwale and the cap are nailed to the inner gunwales with cut or wire nails. Various combinations of lashings and nailing can be seen in these canoes, although such combinations are sometimes the result of comparatively recent repairs or restorations rather than evidence of the original construction. No date can be placed on the introduction of nails into Indian canoe building, although it may be said that nailing was used in many eastern areas before 1850.

Among the many published descriptions of the method of building bark canoes the earliest give very incomplete information on the building sequence and usually contain obvious errors as to proportions and materials. (An example is that of Nicolas Denys, who, sometime between 1632 and 1650, saw bark canoes being built in what is now New Brunswick and Cape Breton.) The best descriptions are relatively recent and, as a result, may describe methods of construction that are not aboriginal.

The description given here is based upon notes made by Adney in 1889-90 and upon inspection of old canoes from the various tribal areas. It was noted that, although among canoes of the same approximate length there was some variation in dimensions and some variety in end form, the construction appeared to vary remarkably little, and it is apparent that the Malecites held very closely to a fixed sequence in the building process. There was, however, great variation in detail. The number of gore slashes in canoes 18 to 19 feet long varied from 10 to 23 on a side. The number was not always the same on both sides of a canoe nor were the gores always opposite one another. Canoes with long, sharp ends often had a large number of closely spaced gores in the middle third of the length, with widely spaced gores toward the ends. Full-ended canoes, on the other hand, had rather equally spaced gores their full length. The amount and form of rocker was also a factor in spacing the gores, and when the rocker was confined to short distances close to the ends there would naturally be rather closely spaced gores in these portions of the sides.