

Confinvo<^t Hym^inyj 



-^. 



WIPF- 



"Xa*/ efnoe wtii »Aovf ^'tHfprr /fian, ni yi wy vjum/ 





Kayak-Form Canoes of the Alaskan Eskimos and Canadian 

 Athabascan Indians: chine form of Eskimo birch-bark canoe 

 (above) and the dish-sectioncd form of the Canadian Athabascans. 



respectively, of the middle ribs. However, not all 

 these canoes had such double ribs; some were framed 

 out in the usual manner, with the ribs widely spaced 

 and canted toward their respective ends of the hull, 

 away from the midship of the canoe. 



In most of these canoes the paddler sat on a sheet 

 of bark secured on the bottom; this was held in place 

 by one or two false ribs having their ends under the 

 inner gunwales and their middle forced down against 

 the bark on the bottom framework. In place of 

 bark, some Eskimo builders of the type used thin 

 splints of wood laced together by two or three lines 

 of double-thong stitching athwartships, which was 

 passed through two holes in each splint. This might 

 be loose or held in place by a false frame. 



The paddle was single-bladed and the same as that 

 used with the second class of Mackenzie Basin 

 canoe (fig. 151). The blade was parallel-sided with 

 the point formed in a short straight-sided V-form; 

 The blade of Yukon paddles was often taper-sided 

 toward the point, which was a rounded V. Other 

 variations in blade form existed, however, and the 

 narrow leaf-shaped blade was used in some areas in 

 Alaska. In the Mackenzie paddles the handle ended 

 in a knob, but in Alaskan versions it ended in a 

 cross-grip like those of paddles used with some 

 Alaskan sea kayaks. The Eskimo double-blade paddle 

 was used with the kayak-form canoe by some paddlers; 

 Hearne mentions its use. 



.Some of the kayak-form canoes were decorated; in 

 Alaska this decoration often took the form of a line of 

 colored beads sewn along each side of the afterdeck 

 at the gunwale, or it consisted of a few oval panels 

 of red, blue, or black paint along the sides or center- 

 line of the afterdeck. In some Mackenzie kayak forms 

 the decks were painted in various designs; a rather 

 common one seems to have been two or more bands 

 of paint around the deck edges, along the gunwales, 

 ending at bow and stern with a full round sweep. 

 Painted disk designs appeared on some of the large 

 Algonkin-Ojibway canoes of the second type. 



A number of kayak forms became extinct before 

 any accurate, detailed records of their shape and 

 construction had been made; models of some of 

 these canoes exist but are not to scale and arc un- 

 trustworthy as to detail, since they are often simplified. 

 One model of the extinct British Columbia bateau 

 form, for example, showed but three longitudinals 

 in the bottom, though the probable size of the canoe 

 undoubtedly would have required a greater number. 

 On the other hand, the model may have represented 

 a spruce-bark canoe constructed for temporary use, 

 in which case a simplified construction might have 

 been employed. One can only speculate which it 

 was. Models of some kayak-form Yukon canoes show 

 the decks lashed to the gunwales with a very coarse 

 spiral stitch not recorded for any of the observed 

 full-size canoes; thus it mav Ije a model-maker's 



163 



