Figure 125
An Old 6-Fathom Fur-Trade Canoe, or "rabeska," used on the Montreal-Great Lakes run. Also called the Iroquois canoe, it approximates the canoes built for the French, at the Trois Rivières, Que., factory and is of the style used by the North West and Hudson's Bay Companies.
Fur-Trade Canoes
Of all birch-bark canoe forms, the most famous were the canots du maître, or maître canots (also called north canoes, great canoes, or rabeskas), of the great fur companies of Canada. These large canoes were developed early, as we have seen in the French colonial records, and remained a vital part of the fur trade until well toward the very end of the 19th century—two hundred years of use and development at the very least. A comprehensive history of the Canadian and American fur trade is yet to be written; when one appears it will show that the fur trade could not have existed on a large scale without the great maître canot of birch bark. It will also have to show that the early exploration of the north country was largely made possible by this carrier. In fact, the great canoes of the Canadian fur trade must be looked upon as the national watercraft type, historically, of Canada and far more representative of the great years of national expansion than the wagon, truck, locomotive, or steamship.
Little has survived concerning the form and construction of the early French-colonial fur-trade canoes. Circumstantial evidence leads to the conclusion that the model was a development, an enlargement perhaps, of the Algonkin form of high-ended canoe as described on pages [113] to 116. The early French came into contact with these tribesmen before they met the Great Lakes Ojibway, the other builders of the high-ended model. It is known that the Indians first supplied large canoes to the French governmental and church authorities and that when this source of canoes proved insufficient, the canoe factory at Trois Rivières was set up and a standard size (probably a standard model as well) came into existence. As the fur trade expanded, large canoes may well have been built elsewhere by the early French; we know at least that building spread westward and northward after Canada became a British possession.
In the rise of the great canoe of the fur trade, the basic model was no doubt maintained through the method of training its builders. The first French engaged in bark-canoe building learned the techniques, let us say, from the original Indian builders, the Algonkin. As building moved westward, the first men sent to the new posts to build canoes apparently came from the French-operated canoe factory. It would be reasonable to expect that as building increased in the west, local modifications would be patterned on canoes from around the building post, but that the basic model would remain. This may account for the departures from the true Ojibway-Algonkin canoes seen in the maître canots.
