Not only are mortars and troughs made from the tree trunks, but bark is cut into long strips to make smaller vessels, shallow concave trays not unlike the Arunta hardwood pitchi.[111] The method is ingenious by which the bark is stripped from the trunk, or the tree is felled, for the principle in each case is the same. Round the trunk of the selected tree a number of small holes are made, or, if only a portion is to be removed, the trunk is notched at the required distances. The edge of the stone axe is inserted in the notch, and the slip of wood is levered up with it until it splits away at the lower notch; or, if the tree is to be felled, the holes are widened into grooves that are deepened round the trunk till it gives way—a somewhat slow process, but a sure one.
In this fashion the Indians cut down the trees from which their boats are to be made. A tree is felled, preferably a cedar,[112] and the trunk is hollowed out for the length required, which varies, but may be as much as 20 feet, though the breadth will not exceed 18 inches. To hollow the trunk the Indians bore holes in the wood in order to secure the proper thickness, and then slit off pieces with their stone axes. These are kindled into a fire to which logs of wood are added. This burns out the required cavity, and when the trunk is very hot the burning embers are scraped away and the burnt trunk is forced apart, which is done by gradually inserting longer logs that are hammered into place. This is a job that needs to be done deftly and quickly, or the cooling wood will soon either contract too much or break at the strain. The heat also causes the ends to curve upwards, so that the bow and the stern of the boat will rise higher than the centre. Such a “dug-out” is a heavy concern, often with a specific gravity greater than that of water.
These boats belong to the community, and are not many in number. They are never left on the bank, nor are they kept in the maloka, but are hidden in the bush near the river-banks. The paddles, however, are kept in the house, stored overhead on the rafters.
All the tribes of the Issa and Japura valleys make these rather clumsy craft, but it is possible that the original idea is not indigenous, and that the autochthonic boat is the temporary canoe made from the hollowed trunk of the bulge-stemmed palm.[113] These canoes can be fashioned in an hour or two. The soft pulp is removed easily with a knife, or even may be crushed up with the fingers, but the bark is very hard, and the bulging portion of the trunk is shaped already for the craft. The ends are stiffened with clay, and the improvised canoe is ready for use, and is quite sufficient for casual purposes—to cross a river when too deep to ford or too wide to bridge,—and being of no permanent value it may be left to drift away down-stream when used.[114]
Spruce mentions tribes who cannot make canoes, and have to construct rafts to cross any main river;[115] but rafts are not used on the Issa or Japura streams except by the rubber-workers. They make them of trunks of light wood lashed with liana or withes, with a rail at the side, but such a construction is unknown to those Indians who have not met with the “civilized” invaders from the Rubber Belts. The Catanixi, so Wallace states, make canoes of the bark of trees stripped off in one sheet,[116] but I never saw anything approaching the “birch-bark” canoe, though some of the “civilized” Indians use a montaria, a built boat that is certainly not indigenous.
The canoes are propelled with paddles from four to five feet long, cut from the solid block of wood, elongated in the blade, not rounded, as is universal on the main Amazon river. They may be decorated with roughly painted designs. Indians always paddle in unison, sometimes on alternate sides, sometimes three together on one side and three on the other. They face the way they are going, as one would in a “Canadian” or “Rob Roy,” and the man in the bow steers. When two men paddle a large canoe both will sit forward and paddle from the bow.