There is no certainty about the decorations of Algonkin canoes. Some of the older Indians claimed that the old form of canoe was often decorated with figures formed by scraping the winter bark; usually these depicted the game the owner hunted. Five-pointed stars, fish, and circular forms are known to have been used on the wabinaki chiman, but it is not known whether these were really Algonkin decorations or merely something that had been copied "because it looked good."
The Algonkin called the large fur canoes nabiska, a name which the Têtes de Boule rendered as rabeska. The word may be a corruption of the Cree word for "strong." At any rate, the name rabeska (sometimes pronounced ra-bas-ha), rather than the French maître canot, was long applied by white men in the fur trade to the large canoes built in the Ottawa River Valley for their business. In late years the rabeska was a "large" 2½-fathom high-ended birch-bark canoe, but originally it meant a fur-trade canoe, with the characteristic ends, of from 3 fathoms upward in length.
Ojibway
The Indian bands that were called "Outaouais" by the early French do not appear to have been an independent tribe, as has been mentioned, but were largely made up of Ojibway from the Great Lakes region. Perhaps some Têtes de Boule were among these bands before these people were given their nickname. The Ojibway were a powerful tribal group, made up of far-ranging bands, located all around Lake Superior and to the northwest as far as Lake Winnipeg. They had been in the process of taking over the western end of Lake Superior when the earliest French explorers reached that area; they pushed the Sioux from these forest lands into the plains area, joining with the western Cree in this movement. In the process they seem to have absorbed both some Sioux and some Cree bands. Within the Ojibway tribal group, later called Chippewa or Chippeway by the English and Americans, the bands had local names, or were given nicknames, such as the Menominee, Saltreaux, Pillagers, etc. All the important bands within the tribal group were expert canoemen and builders. As far as can be discovered now, the Ojibway added to their own tribal types the models of canoes they encountered in their expansion westward. It has long been true that the Ojibway canoe can be one of at least three forms, depending upon which area of their territory is being discussed.
What is believed to be their old tribal form was a high-ended canoe in all respects very much like the high-ended Algonkin type. This was the model used by the Lake Nipigon Ojibway, north of Lake Superior in Ontario, and by those of the same tribe that once lived near Saginaw, Michigan, as well as by the Menominee of Wisconsin. At the late period, from the middle of the 19th century onward, for which information was available or in which investigation was possible, it appears that the Ojibway canoes of this high-ended model were built in larger sizes than contemporary Algonkin canoes of like design. The Ojibway canoes had the same end structure as these; the early examples found had "chin" in the end profiles and the tumble-home of the stem was straight, or nearly so, between the large curve of the forefoot and the very short hard curve at the stem head. The Ojibway used the same inner stem-piece, laminated and brought downward abaft the stem-head and then inboard so that the end fitted into a slot in the headboard a little above its midheight, at which point was fitted a strut from the headboard to the back of the stem-piece. The midsection of the Ojibway canoe was very much like that of the Algonkin; it had a narrow bottom somewhat rounded athwartships, a well-rounded bilge, and flaring topsides.
A small Ojibway portage canoe built in the middle of the 19th century had an end profile somewhat different from that described above; the ends were well rounded and had a heavy chin, the stem was carried into the tumble-home with a full rounded curve all the way to the stem-head, where the stem piece was bent in and downward very sharply and then inboard sharply again, so that the end pierced the vertical headboard at sheer height. The S-curve was so located that the main gunwales could be lashed to the stem piece at the point where they paralleled it well below the stem head. In these canoes the Ojibway followed Algonkin practice in ending the gunwales; there was, therefore, no strut. Where this canoe was built is uncertain.
Figure 114
Ojibway 2-Fathom Hunter's Canoe, used by the eastern tribal groups. Probably the ancient model.