3 Bark Canoes
The use of bark for canoes might have been suggested by the hollowed trunk; but, on the other hand, we find this material employed in Australia, where the hollowed trunk is not in general use. Bark is employed for a variety of purposes, such as clothing, materials for huts, and so forth. Some of the Australian shields are constructed of the bark of trees. The simplest form of canoe in Australia consists, as already mentioned (p. 203), of a mere bundle of reeds and bark pointed at the ends. It is possible that the use of large pieces of bark in this manner may have suggested the employment of the bark alone. Belzoni mentions crossing to the island of Elephantine, on the Nile, in a ferry-boat which was made of branches of palm trees, fastened together with cords, and covered on the outside with a mat pitched all over. The solid papyrus boats represented on the pavement at Praeneste, before mentioned, have evidently some other substance on the outside of them; and Bruce imagines that the junks of the Red Sea were of papyrus, covered with leather.226 The outer covering would prevent the water from soaking into the bundle of sticks, and thus rendering it less buoyant. Bark, if used in the same manner, would serve a like purpose, and thus suggest its use for canoe-building. Otherwise I am unable to conceive any way in which bark canoes can have originated, except by imitation of the dug-out canoe.
For crossing rivers, the Australian savage simply goes to the nearest stringy-bark tree, chops a circle round the tree at the foot, and another seven or eight feet higher, makes a longitudinal cut on each side, and strips off bark enough by this means to make two canoes. If he is only going to cross the river by himself, he simply ties the bark together at the ends, paddles across, and abandons the piece of bark on the other side, knowing that he can easily provide another. If it is to carry another besides himself, he stops up the tied ends with clay; but if it is to be permanently employed, he sews up the ends more carefully, and keeps it in shape by cross-pieces, thereby producing a vessel which closely resembles the bark canoe of North America (Wood, Nat. Hist. of Man, ii. 103). I have not been able to trace the use of the bark canoe further north than Australia on this side of the world, probably owing to its being ill adapted for sea navigation; nor do I find representatives of it in any part of Europe or Africa, although bark is extensively used, in the Polynesian Islands and elsewhere, for other purposes.
It is the two continents of America which must be regarded as the home of the bark canoe.
The Fuegian canoe has been described by Wilkes, Pritchard, and others. It is sewn with shreds of whalebone, sealskin, and twigs, and supported by a number of stretchers lashed to the gunwale; the joints are stopped with rushes, and, without, smeared with resin. In Guiana the canoe is made of the bark of the purple-heart tree, stripped off and tied together at the ends. The ends are stopped with clay, as with the Australians. This mode of caulking is not very effectual, however, and the water is sure to come in sooner or later.
The nature of the material does not admit of much variety in the construction; suffice it to say that it is in general use in North America, up to the Esquimaux frontier. Its value in these regions consists in the facility with which it is taken out of the water and carried over the numerous rapids that prevail in the North American rivers. The Algonquins were famous for the construction of them. Some carry only two people, but the canot de maître was thirty-six feet in length, and required fourteen paddlers. Kalm, in 1747, gives a detailed account of the construction of them on the Hudson river, and Lahontan, in 1684, gives an equally detailed description of those used in Canada. The bark is peeled off the tree by means of hot water. They are very fragile, and every day some hole in the bottom has to be stopped with gum.
Mr. T. G. B. Lloyd, in an excellent paper descriptive of the Beothucs of Newfoundland, published in Journ. Anthrop. Inst. (vol. iv. pp. 26-8), has described the remarkable bark canoe of these people. Its form is different from any other canoe of this or any other region that I have heard of, the line of the gunwale rising in the middle, as well as at the ends, and the vessel being V-shaped in section, with a straight wooden keel at the bottom. Its form is so singular, that the only idea of continuity which I can set up for it is, that it must have been copied from some European child’s paper boat, capable, by a single additional fold, of being converted into a cocked hat; the central pyramidal portion of the paper boat having given the form to the pyramidal sides of the Beothuc vessel. If this be rejected, then its history has yet to be told, for no native tribe ever employed such a peculiar form unless by inheritance.
Nos. 1248 and 1249 of my collection are South American bark canoes; Nos. 1250 to 1252 are bark canoes from North America.