Figure 74
Last Known Passamaquoddy Decorated Ocean Canoe to be built. Constructed in 1898 by Tomah Joseph, Princeton, Maine, on the same model as a canvas porpoise-hunting canoe.
The Malecite, particularly the Passamaquoddy, were especially skillful in decorating bark canoes, as can be seen from the illustrations (pp. [81]-87). Sometimes they used scraped winter bark decoration just along the gunwales; occasionally the whole canoe was decorated in this manner above the normal load waterline as described on page [87]. Usually, however, the bark decoration was confined to a long panel just below the gunwales and to the ends of the canoe. The personal "mark" of the owner-builder would usually be on the flaps near the ends, the wulegessis, meaning the outside bark of a tree or a child's diaper, but in canoe nomenclature used to indicate the protective cover which it formed for the gunwale-end lashings. Sometimes the Malecite placed his mark in the gunwale decoration. Sometimes he placed a picture or a sign on each side of the ends below the wulegessis, in about the position used for insignia on the canvas "Indian" canoe.
The swastika was used by the Passamaquoddy in a war canoe in colonial times and has been used later. The Passamaquoddy mark for an exceptional canoe (such as a war canoe that won the race home) was often on the wulegessis, and on a relatively modern canoe this mark, or gogetch, was a picture of "a funny-looking kind of doll." A common form of decoration in Passamaquoddy canoes was the fiddlehead curve which resembles the top of young fern shoots. This appears in numerous combinations; often double and back to back, joined with a long bar, or "cross." This particular combination is known as the "fiddlehead and cross" or as the "fire steel"; the latter because of a fancied resemblance of the form to the shape of the old fire-making steels of colonial times. A zigzag line appears to represent lightning to most Indians. A series of half-circles along the gunwales, with the rounded side down and just touching one another at the top, having a small circle in the center of each, represents "clouds passing over the moon." A similar series of half-circles without the center circles might mean the canoe was launched during a new moon; the number of half-circles shown would indicate the month.
Figure 75
Malecite Canoe Details and Decorations.
Yet there is not full agreement among Indians about the meaning of decorative forms; the crooked or zigzag line might also mean camps or the crooked score stick used in a Malecite game. The circle could mean sun or moon or month. A half-moon form might also be "a woman's earring," or a new moon. A circle with a very small one inside might be a "brooch," as well as "money." Right triangles, in a closely spaced series along the gunwales, apparently meant "door cloth," or tent door ("what you lift with your hand"). Shown on pages [84] and [85] are some Indian marks on the wulegessis, based upon the statements of old Malecites or upon their sketches.
After the Malecite had become Roman Catholic, a fish on the middle panel of a canoe meant that it had been launched on Friday. Pictures on a canoe sometimes indicated a mythological story; a picture of a rabbit sitting and smoking a pipe on one side of the canoe and a lynx on the other would be such a case. In Malecite mythology the rabbit was the ancestor of the tribe. He was also a great magician. The lynx was the mortal enemy of the rabbit, but in the mythological tales he was always overcome and defeated by the rabbit's magic. Hence, the idea conveyed is that "though the-lynx is near, the rabbit sits calmly smoking his pipe and as he knows he can overcome his enemy," or, in short, "self-confidence."
The Indian's mark on his canoe or weapons is not a signature to be read by anyone. The mark may, of course, be identified as to what it represents, but unless it is known as the mark used by a certain man it cannot be "read." Any mark could be used by an Indian, either because it had some connection with his activities or habits, or because he "likes it." The stone tobacco pipe used by Peter Polchies (see p. [85]) as his mark had no known connection with this Indian's habits or activities. However, his son, of the same name and well known also as "Doctor Polchies," took the same mark, but in his case it had a personal meaning since he was noted locally for his skill in making stone pipes. Another case was a Passamaquoddy who at every opportunity used to pole his canoe in preference to paddling. As a result he had become known as "Peter of the Pole" or "Peter Pole" and he then used as a canoe mark a representation of a setting pole. In submitting sketches of the marking on the wulegessis of canoes to old Indians it was seldom possible to learn the identity of the owner or builder, since the marks were usually not known to those questioned. In more recent times, the educated Malecite signed his name in English on his canoe and thus gave it more permanent identification.