lashing that held the laminae together. The ends of 

 the gunwales and outwales were next permanently 

 lashed together with root or other material and to the 

 stem and stern pieces. This done, the gunwales were 

 spread apart amidships, pressing the stakes outward 

 still more at the tops. At this point the tenons may- 

 have then been cut in the main gunwales and the 

 thwarts inserted. This method, incidentally, was 

 used in building some western Indian bark canoes. 



The usual steps of completing a birch-bark canoe 

 would then follow — the insertion of sheathing, held 

 in place by temporary ribs, and then the driving home 

 of the prebent ribs under the main gunwales, with 

 their heads in the spaces between the group lashings 

 along the gunwales and against the lower outboard 

 corner of the main gunwale member, which was prob- 

 ably beveled as in the Malecite canoe. The sheath- 

 ing may have been in two or three lengths, except 

 close to the gunwale amidships where one length 

 would serve. On each side of the keel piece a sheath- 

 ing strake was placed which was thick on the edge 

 against the keel but thin along the outboard edge, 

 in order to fair the sheathing into the keel piece. 



At some point in this process, the bark cover was 

 pieced out to make the required width, and gores 

 were cut in the usual manner. In spreading the 

 gunwales, the bow and stern would have to be freed 

 from any stakes, as these would tend to pull inboard 

 slightly as the gunwales were spread in the process 

 of shaping the hull. The ribs could have been put 

 in while green and shaped in the bark cover by use 

 of battens and cross braces inside, as were those 

 of the St. Francis canoes. 



The sewing of the bark cover at panels and gores 

 would take place before the sheathing and ribs were 

 placed, of course. A 1 5-foot canoe when completed 

 would have a girth amidships of about 65 to 68 inches 

 if the beam at the gunwales were 48 inches, and a 

 bark cover of this width could be taken from a tree of 

 roughly 20 inches in diameter. Hence, there may 

 have been little piecing out of the bark for width. 

 In the form of the Beothuk canoe as reconstructed 

 there is nothing that departs from what is possible by 

 the common Indian canoe-building techniques. The 

 finished canoe would, in all respects, agree with 

 most of the descriptions that have been found and 



would be a practical craft in all the conditions 

 under which it would be employed. 



These were the only birch-bark canoes supposed to 

 have made long runs in the open sea clear of the land. 

 In them the Beothuk are supposed to have made voy- 

 ages to the outlying islands, in which runs in open water 

 of upward of 60 miles would be necessary, and they 

 probably crossed from Newfoundland to Labrador. 



The V-form used by the Beothuk canoe was the 

 most extreme of all birch-bark canoe models in 

 North America, although, as has been mentioned, less 

 extreme V-bottoms were used elsewhere. The Beo- 

 thuk canoe may have been a development of some 

 more ancient form of bark sea canoe also related to the 

 V-bottom canoes of the Passamaquoddy. The most 

 marked structural characteristic of the Beothuk canoe 

 was the keel; the only other canoe in which a true 

 keel was employed was the temporary moosehide 

 canoes of the Malecite. 



The Beothuk keel piece may have sometimes been 

 nearly round in section like the keel of the Malecite 

 moosehide canoe (p. 214). The two garboard strakes 

 of the sheathing may have been shaped in cross sec- 

 tion to fair the bark cover from the thin sheathing 

 above to the thick keel and at the same time allow 

 the ribs to hold the garboards in place. They could, 

 in fact, be easily made, since a radial split of a small 

 tree would produce clapboard-like cross sections. 

 This construction would perhaps comply better with 

 Cartwright's description of the keel than that shown 

 in the plan on page 97. 



The sheer of the Beothuk canoe is an exaggerated 

 form of the gunwale shape of the Micmac rough- 

 water canoe but this, of course, is no real indication 

 of any relationship between the two. Indeed, the 

 probable scarfing of the gunwales of the Beothuk 

 canoe might be taken as evidence against such a 

 theory. On the other hand, the elm-bark and other 

 temporary canoes of the Malecite and Iroquois had 

 crudely scarfed gunwale members, as did some north- 

 western bark canoes. 



Most of the building techniques employed by 

 Indians throughout North America are illustrated by 

 these eastern bark canoes, yet marked variation in 

 construction details existed to the westward, as will 

 be seen. 



98 



