Chapter Four 



EASTERN MARITIME REGION 



e 



O T 



' TUDY OF THE TRIBAL FORMS of bark canoes might 

 Well be started with the canoes of the eastern coastal 

 Indians, whose craft were the first seen by white men. 

 These were the canoes of the Indians inhabiting what 

 are now the Maritime Provinces and part of Quebec, 

 on the shores of the St. Lawrence River and in New- 

 foundland, in Canada, and of the Indians of Maine 

 and New Hampshire, in New England. Within this 

 area were the Micmac, the Malecite, and the mixture 

 of tribal groups known as the Abnaki in modern times, 

 as well as the Beothuk of Newfoundland. All these 

 groups were expert canoe builders and it was their 

 work that first impressed the white men with the 

 virtues of the birch-bark canoe in forest travel. 



Micmac 



The Micmac Indians appear to have occupied the 

 Gaspe Peninsula, most of the north shore of New 

 Brunswick and nearly all the shores of the Bay of 

 Fundy as well as all of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward 

 Island, and Cape Breton. They may have also oc- 

 cupied much of southern and central New Brunswick 

 as well, but if so they had been driven from these 

 sections by the Malecites before the white men came. 

 The Micmacs were known to the early French in- 

 vaders under a variety of names; "Gaspesians," 

 "Canadiens," "Sourikois," or "Souriquois," while 

 the English colonists of New England called them 

 merely "Eastern Indians." The name Micmac is 

 said to mean "allies" and not known, but this name 

 was in use early in the 18th century, if not before 1700. 



The Micmac were a hunting people with warlike 

 characteristics; they aided the Malecite and other 

 New England Indians in warfare against the early 



New England colonists and in later times aided the 

 French against the English in Nova Scotia and New 

 Brunswick. These Indians lived in an area where 

 water transport represented the easiest method of 

 travel and so they became expert builders and users 

 of birch-bark canoes, which they employed in hunting, 

 fishing, general travel, and warfare. 



The area in which they lived produced fine birch 

 bark and suitable wood for the framework. Through 

 experience, they had become able to design canoes 

 for specific purposes and had produced a variety of 

 models and sizes. The hunting canoe was the small- 

 est, being usually somewhere between 9 and 14 feet 

 long, with an occasional canoe as long as 15 feet. 

 This light craft, known as a "woods canoe" and some- 

 times as a "portage canoe," was intended for navigat- 

 ing very small streams and for portaging. Another 

 model, the "big-river canoe," somewhat longer than 

 the woods canoe, was usually between 15 and 20 feet 

 long. A third model, the "open water canoe," was for 

 hunting seal and porpoise in salt water and ranged from 

 about 18 feet to a little over 24 feet in length. The 

 fourth model, the "war canoe," about which little is 

 known, appears to have been built in either the "big- 

 river" or "open-water" form, and to the same length, 

 but sharper and with less beam so as to be faster. 



The tribal characteristics of the Micmac birch-bark 

 canoes were to be seen in the form of the midsection, 

 in certain structural details, and in their generally 

 sharp, torpedo-shaped lines. The construction was 

 very light and marked by good workmanship. The 

 distinctive profiles of bow and stern, which do not 

 appear in the canoes of other tribes in so radical a 

 form, were almost circular, fairing from the bottom 

 around into the sheer in a series of curves. The 

 break in the profile of the ends at the sheer, a break 

 that marks in more or less degree, the end profile 

 of other tribal forms, never occurs in the Micmac 

 canoe. At most, a slight break in the "streamlined" 



58 



