Oecoro/fd Ocran Canoe, /iiua/T^a^uocyc/y, /398 



Last Known Passama^uoddy Decorated Ocean Canoe to be built. Con- 

 structed in 1898 by Tomah Joseph, Princeton, Maine, on the same model as a 

 canvas porpoise-hunting canoe. 



ment when available. Sometimes the whole paddle, 

 including the blade, was covered with incised line 

 ornamentation. This was usually a vine-and-leaf 

 pattern, or a combination of small triangles and 

 curved lines. The Passamaquoddy used designs 

 suggesting the needlework once seen on fine linens. 

 Sometimes other designs showing animals, camps, or 

 canoes were used. 



The Malecite, particularly the Passamaquoddy, 

 were especially skillful in decorating bark canoes, 

 as can be seen from the illustrations (pp. 81-87). 

 Sometimes they used scraped winter bark decoration 

 just along the gunwales; occasionally the whole canoe 

 was decorated in this manner above the normal 

 load waterline as described on page 87. Usually, 

 however, the bark decoration was confined to a long 

 panel just below the gunwales and to the ends of the 

 canoe. The personal "mark" of the owner-builder 

 would u.sually be on the flaps near the ends, the 

 wulegessis, meaning the outside bark of a tree or a 

 child's diaper, but in canoe nomenclature used to 

 indicate the protective cover which it formed for the 



gunwale-end lashings. Sometimes the Malecite placed 

 his mark in the gunwale decoration. Sometimes he 

 placed a picture or a sign on each side of the ends 

 below the wulegessis, in about the position used for 

 insignia on the canvas "Indian" canoe. 



The swastika was used by the Passamaquoddy in a 

 war canoe in colonial times and has been used later. 

 The Passamaquoddy mark for an exceptional canoe 

 (such as a war canoe that won the race home) was 

 often on the wulegessis, and on a relatively modern 

 canoe this mark, or gogelch, was a picture of "a funny- 

 locking kind of doll." A common form of decoration 

 in Passamaquoddy canoes was the fiddlehead curve 

 which resembles the top of young fern shoots. This 

 appears in numerous combinations; often double and 

 back to back, joined with a long bar, or "cross." 

 This particular combination is known as the "fiddle- 

 head and cross" or as the "fire steel"; the latter 

 because of a fancied resemblance of the form to the 

 shape of the old firemaking steels of colonial times. 

 A zigzag line appears to represent lightning to most 

 Indians. A series of half-circles along the gunwales, 



82 



