Birch-Bark Crooked Canoe, Ungava Cree. {Smithsonian Institution photo.) 



Eastern Cree 



The construction of canoes of the eastern Cree 

 and related tribes seems generally like that of the 

 Micmac craft. Instead of the gunwale method 

 employed in the Maritime area, a building frame 

 was used, and as a result the gunwales were longer 

 than the bottom. In constructing the crooked canoe, 

 the building frame must be heavily sheered, and 

 there is evidence that the building bed was depressed 

 amidships, rather than raised as was usual in the east. 

 The great amount of rocker in the bottom in this 

 form of Cree canoe made it necessary to block up the 

 ends of the building frame to a very great height, and 

 there was no need to raise the building bed at mid- 

 length, since the rocker extended the full length of 

 the bottom. The bark cover had to be gored at closely 

 spaced intervals to allow the rocker to be formed, and 

 even in the straight-bottom model, the quick rise 

 of the bottom near the ends required closely spaced 

 gores there. In the straight-bottom model, however, 

 the building bed was raised at midlength, as in 

 eastern canoe-building, and the building frame was 

 ballasted to a cupid's-bow profile, when on the bed, 

 so as to acheive the combination of straight bottom 

 amidships with sharply rising ends. 



The gunwales were formed of the main gunwale 

 member and a light gunwale cap, no outwale being 

 employed. They were joined at the ends and, after 

 hot water had been applied, were staked out with 

 posts under the ends to obtain the required sheer. 



The thwarts were then tenoned into the main gun- 

 wales, though occasionally a canoe was built with 

 "broken" gunwales, that is, the thwart-ends were let 

 flush into the top and covered by the caps. Some 

 builders did not spread the gunwales and place the 

 thwarts until after the bark cover was lashed at the 

 sheer; others used the eastern methods of assembling 

 the gunwale structure prior to securing the bark cover 

 at sheer. The bark cover was attached to the main 

 gunwales with a continuous lashing, as in the Micmac 

 canoes, but the bark was not always brought over the 

 top of the gunwales. As a result, some canoes had a 

 batten placed under the lashing, near the edge of the 

 cover, to prevent the lashing from tearing away. Due 

 to the lack of good root material, the lashing was often 

 of rawhide. For all horizontal seams in the side 

 panels of the bark cover, rawhide sewing over a root 

 batten was used. The ends of the gunwales were 

 supported by sprung headboards; in some canoes 

 these were bellied toward the ends to such a degree 

 that they almost paralleled the end profiles. 



The ends were formed by means of the same tech- 

 nique used for Micmac canoes; no inside stem-piece 

 was employed and the bark cover was stiffened by 

 outside battens covered by the lashing. In the Cree 

 canoes, however, the stem battens were "broken" 

 sharply at the sheer to form a slightly rounded peak 

 where the end met the gunwale caps. The "break" 

 in the battens was made by bending them very 

 sharply, so that they were almost fractured. The Cree 

 practice also differed from that of the Micmac, 

 although not universally, by passing the lower end of 



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