Mrs. Billy Ellis, widow of Frank Francis, a Malecite, said of them, "Old Indian earrings, that is only what I can call them. Also in nose. Wild Indian made them of silver or moose-bone, I guess he thought he looked nice; it looked like the devil." Joe Ellis, an old canoe builder, also called this form "earrings" and when asked why an Indian would put these on a canoe, replied "He will think what he will put on here. He might have seen his wife at bow of canoe, and put it on [there]." Shown the right-triangle-in-series design, Mrs. Ellis said "I fergit it but I will remember; what you lift with your hand, we call it that—camp door" (referring to the cloth or hide hung over a camp door, and raised at one corner to enter, so that the opening is then divided diagonally).
In a later period, the Malecite usually confined decoration to the wulegessis and to the pieced-out bark amidships, the panel formed on each side. The wulegessis was of various forms; its bottom was sometimes shaped like a cupid's bow, sometimes it was rectangular. A common form was one representing the profile of a canoe. Being of winter bark, it was red or brown, with the part where the design was scraped showing white or yellow. The center panel was also of winter bark, and the design on it showed a similar contrast in color. Even when the bark cover was not pieced out, the panel was formed by scraping all the cover except a panel amidships on each side. Old models indicate that the early Malecite canoes may have used decoration all over above the waterline (see p. [81]) far more frequently than has been the recent custom. The decorations were a fiddlehead design in a complicated sequence so that it bore a faint resemblance to the hyanthus in a formal scroll, but the design apparently had no ceremonial significance; it was used for the same reason given Adney for so many forms of bark decoration, "it looked nice."
Figure 78
End Decorations, Passamaquoddy Canoe built by Tomah Joseph.
Figure 79
Passamaquoddy Decorated Canoe built by Tomah Joseph.
The drawings and plans on pages [71] to 87 will serve better than words to show these characteristic designs and decorations. It is doubtful that color, paint or pigment, was used in decorating the Malecite bark canoes before the coming of Europeans, but it was employed occasionally in the last half of the 19th century. The beauty of the Malecite canoe designs lay not in the barbaric display of color characteristic of the large fur-traders' canoes, but in the tasteful distribution of the scraped winter bark decoration along the sides of the hull. The workmanship exhibited by the Malecite in the construction of their canoes was generally very fine; indeed, they were perhaps the most finished craftsmen among Indian canoe-builders.