The Indian Canoe

Dugout to Birchbark

The Indian canoe must be as close to engineering perfection as most inventions are likely to come. At some point the initial brainchild was improved upon until it fit it's purpose perfectly.

It had an ideal hydrodynamic form, it allowed a paddler to face the direction he was going, and the Eastern Woodlands canoes could be made in short order from materials at hand in the boreal forest.

Besides which, a canoe was small, light and fast. Even a 30 foot long freight canoe that could hold 18 people could be portaged by three men!

The canoe in the photos was re-discovered in 2010 and is probably the oldest birchbark canoe in the world. A young man had worked for a time in the fur trade in the New World...possibly for the Hudson Bay Company. When he returned home he took along a birchbark canoe as a souvenir, stored it and forgot about it. Hundreds of years later it was discovered in an outbuilding on his familiy's estate in Cornwall, England.

There's talk of the canoe eventually being repatriated and displayed in its restored state at the Canoe Museum in Peterborough.

Although today's canoes are made of sturdy aluminum or fibreglass with a couple of polystyrene floats stuck into either end, they're essentially design duplicates of the old Indian canoes made of birchbark.

Dugout Canoes

Birchbark canoes evolved from dugout log canoes which were still the preferred method of water transport in some cultures 150 years ago. The northwest coast tribes built huge dugout canoes from giant cedars and used them to hunt whales in the Pacific Ocean.

Eastern Woodland Indians in the southeast part of the continent were still using dugout canoes when Columbus crossed the Atlantic. Early settlers adapted them to be used with sails and more easily transported goods up and down the rivers.

Because an Indian canoe was completely biodegradable few archaeological remains exist to date the crafts appearance in the prehistoric past. Nevertheless, a few years ago 85 primitive dugout canoes were discovered in a lake bed near Gainesville, Florida. Most were built between 3000 and 5000 years ago.

The wooden canoes had survived at the bottom of the lake for thousands of years until water levels dropped during a recent dry spell. The dugouts were found accidently by high school students who were working on an environmental assignment.

Archaeologists said that the canoes had been dug from pine trunks and were up to 22 feet long with rounded sterns and bows.

The dugouts were reburied at the bottom of the lake once they had been documented because they would have quickly crumbled if left exposed to the air and sun.

The information about the find has been added to earlier data that relates to more than 300 canoes that have been found in that part of the world over the years. The oldest dugout canoe discovered in Florida was radio-carbon dated at 6,000 years old.

Of Course I Had My Own Indian Canoe

I grew up in canoes. My parents had purchased a canvas covered cedar canoe, but after my grandfather's death my grandmother insisted that we learn how to make a real canoe from birchbark. Here's how it was done.