Stone Age Pickup from page 1 September 2004 |
Like many of their crafted items, the canoe was something native families built for themselves. It was more like the woven basket or the clay pot, than something seemingly exceptional, at least as it is from today’s perspective. The labor to make it was divided among the family. The men got the bark and the wood parts and the women sewed the seams and sealed them. Most families made them, most families needed one. Maine and Canada have a lot of rivers, streams, and lakes, they were the transportation system and the canoe the vehicle. Life as they knew it would not have been possible without a means of water transport. They used them to go hunting, fishing, trading and visiting. The bark canoe was the pickup truck of the stone age.
Just how long they built these canoes is unknown, but probably thousands of years. The Native Americans didn’t keep written records. The canoes were known to deteriorate, and ultimately, many considered them disposable. They were people who traveled and lived light. Paying to store stuff you never use was not on the agenda. If they needed a canoe to get somewhere, they might build it, leave it there, and continue on. The Penobscot River had more canoe routes than other Maine rivers. Its tributaries span the width of the state and the drainage covers about one fourth of the entire state. Maine was a maze of waterways and portages that allowed travel over much of the state. There were major north-south routes on the big rivers that usually went to an important place; short routes over tributaries between watersheds; portage or carrying places and neighborhood routes to fishing and hunting grounds. Thousands of beaver dams created waterways. But use of the canoe by the English settlers and traders in this part of Maine was nothing, compared to the French use of the canoe to the east and north. The British/American colonists often seemed to have a different relationship with the native Americans and the canoe, than the French. Benedict Arnold’s men, pushing 200 wood boats at 400 lbs. each up the Kennebec River and later dragging them overland in 1775, must have drawn a few curious glances from natives paddling past in canoes. The French somehow immediately saw the perfection in the native birch bark canoe for wilderness travel. In one of the odd twists of history, felt hats made from beaver fur became a European fad around 1550. By then, the beaver was near extinction in Europe, and the French came to Canada for the pelts, which eventually became a large-scale business. Traders used canoes in the fur trade, buying them from the natives before building their own. Indians trapped in winter months, when the fur was best. In spring, after the rivers and lakes thawed, they brought out their furs to trading posts to trade for pots, guns, knives, clothes, blankets, etc. French traders traveled by canoe to trading posts to pick up furs. In the early 1600’s, Indians brought their pelts in canoes to the French trading posts. By the late 1660’s, French traders were going to the interior and bringing out the Indian furs. As trade grew, several factors increased the need for more canoes. Going to the interior required different canoes for different parts of the trip. Heavy use wore out canoes and there were just more traders. These traders soon needed larger and larger freight canoes. The largest known was 40', but the more common 33'-36' was six feet wide and carried over four and half tons. The French fur traders used the canoe with a success that led to them building their own to keep up with demand. The Indian villages along the St. Lawrence River had been building for the traders. Then the French set up factories to build birch bark canoes, and for over 200 years, cranked out thousands. The St. Lawrence River around Trois Rivieres, between Montreal and Quebec, where the St. Lawrence widens for a few miles, was soon lined with producers. This became an industry within the fur trade that the French developed. They were building the same canoes the natives had built with modifications related mostly to size. However, the stems were raised and projected more in their trading canoes than native designs. Also, minor changes below the waterline helped lift the laden bow after the sharp stem sliced a swell. They also began building on a platform indoors rather than outside on the ground. From families producing more for the increased trade, to the French canoe factories, an ancient craft had been industrialized. This was done, with the exception of metal tools and nails, using the same ancient materials and techniques. Production lasted until the introduction of the canvas covered wood canoe around 1910, when the bark canoe rapidly vanished.
Instrumental in a contemporary revival of interest in bark canoes and picking up where Edwin Adney left off, has been Henri Vaillancourt. For Vaillancourt, this has also been a nearly lifelong interest. Years ago, he traveled in Canada meeting Indian builders, seeing examples of their work and later recording the process on video. When he first went to northern Quebec in the 1970’s, the natives were still going to their hunting grounds in canoes. Then, he said, “there was still a connection to the cultural aspects of the canoe and therefore, great pride in producing something special.” For centuries, these skills were passed down in families. Vaillencourt is not sure of the source of his determined interest. He said recently that his earliest memory of what he now does was, “sitting on the back steps at about five years of age trying to stitch together pieces of birch bark because I had heard it could be done to make a canoe.” He made an attempt when he was about 12, and later succeeded at 15 years of age with his first birch bark canoe. That was 1965; he has since succeeded about 180 times. Vaillancourt’s canoes are labor intensive projects that sell for between $8,000 and $14,000. Vaillancourt builds his canoes the way they were built a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago; that is, on the ground outside, with a few simple hand tools. He gets the materials out of the woods, everything: birch bark, cedar, spruce roots, and spruce sap. He does it all himself, as it was done, with thousands of cuts, stitches and adjustments, slowly shaping the final product. His ancestors emigrated to New Hampshire in 1880 from a part of Canada along the St. Lawrence River near Quebec City. An elderly relative recently brought him a knife found in his great grandfather’s workshop nearby. It was a crooked knife, with hearts and crosses carved in the handle, and so polished from use, it appeared varnished. The crooked knife, with a bowed blade and curved handle, is one of the primary tools used in cutting the many parts in a bark canoe. This has Vaillancourt wondering about what his ancestors’ occupations were back on the St. Lawrence. Another birch bark canoe builder is Steve Cayard, of Wellington, Me. He, too, has been interested in the bark canoe for many years and builds highly-finished Maine-style birch bark canoes. They are the Passamaquoddy or Malecite type, with a sheer line that sweeps back from the stem, more like a lobster boat than Vaillancourt’s St. Lawrence fur-trader-style canoes. Cayard said, “the bark canoe was the foundation of the Native American culture,” in the northeast. Both these builders are highly-regarded craftsmen who build a handful of boats that were, in pre-European contact Maine, as common as cars are today. A chapter on building the bark canoe appears in Rollin Thurlow’s book, The Wood and Canvas Canoe. Henri Vaillancourt’s website is http://www.birchbarkcanoe.net |
