The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America

by Tappan Adney; Howard Irving Chapelle

The Micmac were a hunting people with warlike characteristics; they aided the Malecite and other New England Indians in warfare against the early New England colonists and in later times aided the French against the English in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. These Indians lived in an area where water transport represented the easiest method of travel and so they became expert builders and users of birch-bark canoes, which they employed in hunting, fishing, general travel, and warfare.

The area in which they lived produced fine birch bark and suitable wood for the framework. Through experience, they had become able to design canoes for specific purposes and had produced a variety of models and sizes. The hunting canoe was the smallest, being usually somewhere between 9 and 14 feet long, with an occasional canoe as long as 15 feet. This light craft, known as a "woods canoe" and sometimes as a "portage canoe," was intended for navigating very small streams and for portaging. Another model, the "big-river canoe," somewhat longer than the woods canoe, was usually between 15 and 20 feet long. A third model, the "open water canoe," was for hunting seal and porpoise in salt water and ranged from about 18 feet to a little over 24 feet in length. The fourth model, the "war canoe," about which little is known, appears to have been built in either the "big-river" or "open-water" form, and to the same length, but sharper and with less beam so as to be faster.

The tribal characteristics of the Micmac birch-bark canoes were to be seen in the form of the midsection, in certain structural details, and in their generally sharp, torpedo-shaped lines. The construction was very light and marked by good workmanship. The distinctive profiles of bow and stern, which do not appear in the canoes of other tribes in so radical a form, were almost circular, fairing from the bottom around into the sheer in a series of curves. The break in the profile of the ends at the sheer, a break that marks in more or less degree, the end profile of other tribal forms, never occurs in the Micmac canoe. At most, a slight break in the "streamlined" curve might occur at the point where the profile was started in the bottom, at which point there might be a short, hard curve.

Figure 49

Micmac 2-Fathom Pack, or Woods, Canoe for woods travel with light loads, used by the Nova Scotia Micmacs.

The form of the sheer line of the Micmac canoes apparently varied with the model: the woods canoe had the usual curved sheer with the point of lowest freeboard about amidships, the big river canoe had either a nearly straight sheer or one very slightly hogged, while the open-water canoe had a strongly hogged sheer in which the midship portion was often as much as 3 or 4 inches above that just inboard of the ends. However, there is a possibility that, at one time, the sheer of all Micmac canoes was more or less hogged. The little that is known of the war canoes of colonial times indicate that they had the strongly hogged sheer that now marks the open-water model, through it is also known that some of these were really of the big-river model, which in later times had usually no more than a vestige of the hogged sheer.

The hull-forms of the Micmac canoes were marked in the topsides by a strong tumble-home, carried the full length of the hull, that gave these canoes more beam below than at the gunwale. The form of the midsection varied with the model; the woods canoe usually had a rather flat bottom athwartships, the big river canoe a slightly rounded bottom, and the open water canoe either a well-rounded bottom or one in the form of a slightly rounded V. The fore-and-aft rocker in the bottom was always moderate, usually occurring in the last few feet near the ends; however, many of the canoes were straight along the bottom. This condition will be again referred to in discussing the building beds used in this type. The ends were usually fine-lined; in plan view the gunwales came into the ends in straight or slightly hollow lines. The level lines below the gunwales might also be straight as they came into the ends, but were commonly somewhat hollow; a few examples show marked hollowness there. Predominantly, the Micmac canoes were very sharp in the ends and paddled swiftly. Early Micmac canoes seem to have been narrower than more recent examples, which are usually rather broad as compared to the types used by some other tribes.

Structurally, the Micmac canoes were distinguished by the construction of the ends and by their light build throughout. The canoes had no inner framework to shape the ends; stiffness there was obtained by placing battens outside the bark, one on each side of the hull, that ran from the bottom of the cut in the bark required to shape the ends to somewhat inboard of the ends of the gunwales at the sheer. These two battens, as well as a split-root stem-band covering the raw ends of the cut bark, were held in place by passing a spiral over-and-over lashing around all three. Sometimes thicker battens reaching from the high point of the ends inboard to the end thwarts were added, in which case the side battens were stopped at the high point of the ends and there faired into the thick battens.