The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America

by Tappan Adney; Howard Irving Chapelle

In 1897, Adney went to the Klondike as an artist and special correspondent for Harper's Weekly and The London Chronicle, to report on the gold-rush. He also wrote a book on his experience, Klondike Stampede, published in 1900. In 1899 he married Minnie Bell Sharp, of Woodstock, but by 1900 Adney was again in the Northwest, this time as special correspondent for Colliers magazine at Nome, Alaska, during the gold-rush of that year. On his return to New York, Adney engaged in illustrating outdoor scenes and also lectured for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. In 1908 he contributed to a Harper's Outdoor Book for Boys. From New York he removed to Montreal and became a citizen of Canada, entering the Canadian Army as a Lieutenant of Engineers in 1916. He was assigned to the construction of training models and was on the staff of the Military College, mustering out in 1919. He then made his home in Montreal, engaging in painting and illustrating. From his early years in Woodstock he had made a hobby of the study of birch-bark canoes, and while in Montreal he became honorary consultant to the Museum of McGill University, dealing with Indian lore. By 1925 Adney had assembled a great deal of material and, to clarify his ideas, he began construction of scale models of each type of canoe, carrying on a very extensive correspondence with Indians, factors and other employees (retired and active) of the Hudson's Bay Company, and with government agents on the Indian Reservations. He also made a number of expeditions to interview Indians. Possessing linguistic ability in Malecite, he was much interested in all the Indian languages; this helped him in his canoe studies.

Owing to personal and financial misfortunes, he and his wife (then blind) returned in the early 1930's to her family homestead in Woodstock, where Mrs. Adney died in 1937. Adney continued his work under the greatest difficulties, including ill-health, until his death, October 10, 1950. He did not succeed in completing his research and had not organized his collection of papers and notes for publication when he died.

Through the farsightedness of Frederick Hill, then director of The Mariners' Museum, Newport News, Virginia, Adney had, ten years before his death, deposited in the museum over a hundred of his models and a portion of his papers. After his death his son Glenn Adney cooperated in placing in The Mariners' Museum the remaining papers dealing with bark canoes, thus completing the "Adney Collection."

Frederick Hill's appreciation of the scope and value of the collection prompted him to seek my assistance in organizing this material with a view to publication. Though the Adney papers were apparently complete and were found, upon careful examination, to contain an immense amount of valuable information, they were in a highly chaotic state. At the request of The Mariners' Museum, I have assembled the pertinent papers and have compiled from Adney's research notes as complete a description as I could of bark canoes, their history, construction, decoration and use. I had long been interested in the primitive watercraft of the Americas, but I was one of those who had discontinued research on bark canoes upon learning of Adney's work. The little I had accomplished dealt almost entirely with the canoes of Alaska and British Columbia; from these I had turned to dugouts and to the skin boats of the Eskimo. Therefore I have faced with much diffidence the task of assembling and preparing the Adney papers for publication, particularly since it was not always clear what Adney had finally decided about certain matters pertaining to canoes. His notes were seldom arranged in a sequence that would enable the reader to decide which, of a number of solutions or opinions given, were Adney's final ones.

Adney's interest in canoes, as canoes, was very great, but his interest in anthropology led him to form many opinions about pre-Columbian migrations of Indian tribes and about the significance of the decorations used in some canoes. His papers contain considerable discussion of these matters, but they are in such state that only an ethnologist could edit and evaluate them. In addition, my own studies lead me to conclude that the mere examination of watercraft alone is insufficient evidence upon which to base opinions as far-reaching as those of Adney. Therefore I have not attempted to present in this work any of Adney's theories regarding the origin or ethnological significance of the canoes discussed. I have followed the same practice with those Adney papers which concern Indian language, some of which relate to individual tribal canoe types and are contained in the canoe material. (Most of his papers on linguistics are now in The Peabody Museum, Salem, Massachusetts.)

The strength and weaknesses of Adney's work, as shown in his papers, drawings, and models, seem to me to be fully apparent. That part dealing with the eastern Indians, with whom he had long personal contact, is by far the most voluminous and, perhaps, the most accurate. The canoes used by Indians west of the St. Lawrence as far as the western end of the Great Lakes and northward to the west side of Hudsons Bay are, with a few exceptions, covered in somewhat less detail, but the material nonetheless appears ample for our purpose. The canoes used in the Canadian Northwest, except those from the vicinity of Great Slave Lake, and in Alaska were less well described. It appears that Adney had relatively little opportunity to examine closely the canoes used in Alaska, during his visit there in 1900, and that he later was unable to visit those American museums having collections that would have helped him with regard to these areas. As a result, I have found it desirable to add my own material on these areas, drawn largely from the collections of American museums and from my notes on construction details.

An important part of Adney's work deals with the large canoes used in the fur trade. Very little beyond the barest of descriptions has been published and, with but few exceptions, contemporary paintings and drawings of these canoes are obviously faulty. Adney was fortunate enough to have been able to begin his research on these canoes while there were men alive who had built and used them. As a result he obtained information that would have been lost within, at most, the span of a decade. His interest was doubly keen, fortunately, for Adney not only was interested in the canoes as such, he also valued the information for its aid in painting historical scenes. As a result, there is hardly a question concerning fur trade canoes, whether of model, construction, decoration, or use, that is not answered in his material.

I have made every effort to preserve the results of Adney's investigations of the individual types in accurate drawings or in the descriptions in the text. It was necessary to redraw and complete most of Adney's scale drawings of canoes, for they were prepared for model-building rather than for publication. Where his drawings were incomplete, they could be filled in from his scale models and notes. It must be kept in mind that in drawing plans of primitive craft the draftsman must inevitably "idealize" the subject somewhat, since a drawing shows fair curves and straight lines which the primitive craft do not have in all cases. Also, the inboard profiles are diagrammatic rather than precise, because, in the necessary reduction of the full-size canoe to a drawing, this is the only way to show its "form" in a manner that can be interpreted accurately and that can be reproduced in a model or full size, as desired. It is necessary to add that, though most of the Adney plans were measured from full-size canoes, some were reconstructed from Indian models, builders' information, or other sources. Thanks to Adney's thorough knowledge of bark construction, the plans are highly accurate, but there are still chances for error, and these are discussed where they occur.

Although reconstruction of extinct canoe types is difficult, for the strange canoes of the Beothuk Indians of Newfoundland Adney appears to have solved some of the riddles posed by contemporary descriptions and the few grave models extant (the latter may have been children's toys). Whether or not his reconstructed canoe is completely accurate cannot be determined; at least it conforms reasonably well to the descriptions and models, and Adney's thorough knowledge of Indian craftsmanship gives weight to his opinions and conclusions. This much can be said: the resulting canoe would be a practical one and it fulfills very nearly all descriptions of the type known today.