These canoes had narrow headboards that were sharply bellied, somewhat like those in the crooked canoes, and the belly was sufficient to allow the heel of the end-board to pass under the bottom sheathing and inside the bark cover so that two end ribs served to hold the heel in place. The inside stem-piece was often no more than a light stick or rod bent to profile, with the head split and brought over the gunwale ends and down inside, between them. Each half of the split was then lashed to its neighboring gunwale member. A strip of bark was often placed over the end of the bark cover and carried down the face of the stem, under the sewing. The rail caps were then brought up over the tops of the gunwales and overlapped the top portion of the stem piece. The heel of the stem-piece was bevelled off on the inboard side so that it could be wedged under the headboard, inside the bark cover. These headboards, it should be noted, were no more than a thin, narrow batten, and in some canoes the head of this batten was lashed under the gunwale ends instead of coming up between them inboard, as usual. A variation in the fitting of the stem head was found in a canoe at Long Lake, Ontario; the stem head, instead of being split, was lashed between the gunwale ends and thus was brought inboard level with the top of the gunwales.
Figure 120
Small Ojibway Canoes of the Two Tribal Forms showing (above) early trend toward the long nose form, and the final Ojibway-Cree hybrid form combining flaring sides amidships with tumble-home sections at ends.
The cross section of the main gunwales was round or nearly so in nearly all long-nose canoes, and often a gunwale cap was fitted. The bark cover was secured to the gunwales by a continuous lashing, but in at least one example, from Minnesota, the gunwale wrappings were in groups over an outwale after the regular fashion to the eastward. The ends of the thwarts were wedge-or chisel-shaped and instead of being tenoned were forced into splits in the round gunwales. Many canoes had bark covers at the gunwale ends and vestiges of the wulegessis were to be seen.
All Ojibway canoes were built with a building frame, the bed being slightly higher at midlength than at the ends. The stakes were driven nearly perpendicular, instead of with heads slanted outward. It is apparent from observed examples that some canoes were built by the same procedure as the Algonkin, but that not all the long-nose canoes were built by spreading the gunwales; some were built using the methods of the St. Francis.
Figure 121
Ojibway Canoe Building, Lac Seul, 1918.
(See pp. [170]-171 for more photos of Ojibway canoe building.)