Chapter Five 



CENTRAL CANADA 



JL H 



HE INDIANS INHABITING Central Canada were 

 expert builders of birch-bark canoes and produced 

 many distinctive types. The area includes not only 

 what are now the Provinces of Quebec (including 

 Labrador), Ontario, Manitoba, and the eastern 

 part of Saskatchewan, but also the neighboring 

 northern portions of Michigan, Wisconsin and 

 Minnesota in the United States. The migrations of 

 tribal groups within this large area in historical times, 

 as well as the influence of a long-established fur 

 trade, have produced many hybrid forms of bark 

 canoes and, in at least a few instances, the transfer 

 of a canoe model from one tribal group to another. 

 It is this that makes it necessary to examine this 

 area as a single geographic unit, although a wide 

 variation of tribal forms of bark canoes existed within 

 its confines. 



The larger portion of the Indians inhabiting this 

 area were of the great Algonkian family. In the east 

 during the 18th and 19th centuries, however, some 

 members of the Iroquois Confederacy were also 

 found, and in the west, from at least as early as the 

 beginning of the French fur trade, groups of Sioux, 

 Dakota, Teton, and Assiniboin. From the fur trade 

 as well as from normal migratory movements there 

 was much intermingling of the various tribes, and it 

 was long the practice in the fur trade, particularly in 

 the days of the Hudson's Bay Company, to employ 

 eastern Indians as canoemen and as canoe builders 

 in the western areas. These apparently introduced 

 canoe models into sections where they were formerly 

 unknown; as a result, the tribal classification of bark 

 canoes within the area under examination cannot be 

 very precise and the range of each form cannot be 

 stated accurately. It was in this area, too, that the 

 historical canol du maitre (also written maitre canot), or 

 great canoe, of the fur trade was developed. 



Most of central Canada, except toward the extreme 

 north in Quebec and toward the south below the Great 



Lakes, is in the area where the canoe birch was plenti- 

 ful and of large size. There the numerous inland 

 waterways, the Great Lakes, and the coastal waters of 

 James and Hudson Bays make water travel conven- 

 ient, and natural conditions require a variety of canoe 

 models. Hence, when Europeans first appeared in 

 this area they found already in existence a highly 

 developed method of canoe transportation. This 

 they immediately adopted as their own, and in the 

 long period lasting until very recent times, during 

 which the development of the northern portion of 

 this area was slow, the canoe remained the most 

 important means of forest travel. 



In the northeastern portion of the area, including 

 the Province of Quebec (with Labrador) from a line 

 drawn from the head of James Bay eastwardly 

 through Lake St. John and the Saguenay River 

 Valley to the St. Lawrence and thence northward 

 to the treeline in the sub-Arctic, dwelt the eastern 

 branch of the far-ranging Cree tribe. Those living 

 on the shores of Hudson and James Bays, along the 

 west side of the Labrador Peninsula, were known as 

 the Eastern, Swamp, or Muskeg Cree. To the north, 

 at the Head of Ungava Bay, around Fort Chimo, and 

 to the immediate southward, were the Nascapee, or 

 Nascopie, supposedly related to the Eastern Cree. 

 In southern Labrador and in Quebec along the north 

 shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and for some 

 distance inland, dwelt another related tribal group 

 now known as the Montagnais. 



Although the most recent canoe forms employed by 

 these three Indian groups were very much the same, 

 this may not have been the case earlier. A common 

 canoe model in this area was the so-called "crooked 

 canoe," in which there was a very marked fore-and- 

 aft rocker to the bottom without a corresponding 

 amount of sheer; as a result the canoe was much 

 deeper amidships than near the ends. Another 

 common model had a rather straight bottom fore 



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