At the start of ribbing out a canoe, the first two 

 or three ribs might not be put at each end until after 

 the headboards had been fitted, and sometimes a rib 

 was placed on each side of the middle thwart, appar- 

 ently to hold securely the sheathing butted amid- 

 ships while the ribbing progressed toward them from 

 the ends. When a canoe was short and rather wide, 

 the ribs usually were bent by placing them inside the 

 faired bark cover before the sheathing was installed, 

 there to dry and set or to season, depending on whether 

 they were steamed or green. Prebending the ribs, 

 as described in the building of a Malecite canoe, 

 worked well only when the canoe was long, narrow, 

 and sharp. The spacing of the ribs was done by eye, 

 not by precise measurement, and was never exactly 

 the same over the length of the canoe. Ribs near 

 the ends were usually spaced at greater intervals than 

 those in the middle third of the length. 



The extension of the bark beyond the ends of the 

 inner gunwale in an eastern canoe was often about one 

 foot on each end, but this distance was actually deter- 



mined by the length of the bark available and by the 

 usual reluctance of the builder to add a panel at the 

 end. 



For the height of the end posts, in sheering the 

 gunwales, a common Malecite measurement was the 

 length of the forearm from knuckles of clenched fist 

 to back of elbow. These posts were often left in place 

 until the stems were fitted. 



The use of a building frame is known to have 

 been common in areas where, normalh', the gunwale 

 frame would be employed in the initial steps in build- 

 ing. In a few instances this occurred when a builder 

 had a number of canoes of the same size to construct. 

 It seems probable that the use of the building frame 

 spread into Eastern areas comparatively recently as 

 a result of the influence of the fur-trade canoes on 

 construction methods. The employment of the plank 

 building bed in the East is known to have occurred 

 among individual canoe builders late in the nineteenth 

 century as a result of this influence. 



The use of nails and tacks instead of pegs and 

 root lashing or sewing in bark canoe construction 

 became quite widespread early in the nineteenth 

 century; it is to be seen in many old canoes preserved 

 in museums. The bark in these is often secured to the 

 gunwales with carpet or flat-headed tacks, and both 

 the outwale and the cap are nailed to the inner gun- 

 wales with cut or wire nails. Various combinations 

 of lashings and nailing can be seen in these canoes, 

 although such combinations are sometimes the result 

 of comparatively recent repairs or restorations rather 

 than evidence of the original construction. No date 

 can be placed on the introduction of nails into Indian 

 canoe building, although it may be said that nailing 

 was used in many eastern areas before 1850. 



Among the many published descriptions of the 

 method of building bark canoes the earliest give very 

 incomplete information on the building sequence 



56 



