down on the stiff skin cover, the rib ends being worked 

 into the holes prepared for them on the underside 

 of the gunwales. These ribs usually stood approxi- 

 mately square to the curve, or rocker, of the bottom. 

 Now the skin could be trimmed to the stem profiles 

 and sewn. The stitching was usually done so as to 

 be outside the stem-pieces, with an occasional turn 

 going around inside them to help hold the structure 

 in place. Some builders first put in the stems tem- 

 porarily and then trimmed the skins to match; after 

 this was done the stem-pieces were removed to allow 

 easy sewing. When they were replaced and secured 

 permanently, a few more stitches were added along 

 the stems to secure the woodwork. 



The next step was to sheath the canoe inside with 

 the small poles; these were placed a few inches apart 

 transversely and their ends worked under the most 

 inboard of the ribs on the stem-pieces, then held in 

 place, while the necessary adjustments were made, by 

 a few temporary ribs. Then the ribs were forced into 

 place, one by one, each prebent to the desired section, 

 just as in birch-bark canoe construction. In this final 

 shaping, the skin cover might have to be wetted again 

 to soften the material and to allow stretching. The 

 seams were then payed with gum or tallow, and the 

 canoe was ready for launching. 



The description is for canoes of minimum finish, 

 builders often used split and shaped gunwales, split 

 ribs, and splint sheathing if these could be prepared 

 during the winter. The construction of a skin canoe 

 was not a specialized process in which a hunter con- 

 sistently built this one type; the selection was deter- 

 mined by natural conditions. If he were to come out 

 of the woods too early in the spring to make the 

 construction of a spruce-bark canoe easy, then he 

 would resort to skin construction; the statements of 

 old Malecite hunters leads to the conclusion that as 

 emergency craft they used spruce-bark canoes most 

 often. 



Perhaps the most primitive of the skin boats built 

 by the North American Indian was the so-called 

 bull-boat of the Plains Indians. These were not 

 canoes but coracles — bowl-shaped and suitable only 

 for use on streams, where ferrying would be the main 

 requirement. The boats were covered with buffalo- 

 hides and their framework was usually made of the 

 willow shoots found along the streams. The frame- 

 work followed, to some extent at least, the basketwork 

 principle, a circular gunwale or rim being used. The 

 ribs were set in two groups, half at right angles to the 

 other half in very irregular fashion. This construction 



formed a sort of rough grating in the bottom. The 

 ribs were lashed together with rawhide and apparently 

 the craft was built up on the skin as were the Malecite 

 skin canoes. Battens in circular form were used on 

 the sides to fair the cover. The form of the bull-boat 

 varied somewhat among individual builders; some- 

 times it assumed almost a dish shape with shallow 

 flaring sides, but more commonly the sides were 

 nearly upright; the bottom was always flat, or 

 nearly so. These bull-boats appear always to have 

 been small. Judging by the examples preserved, a 

 bull-boat 5 feet over the rim or gunwale, or made of 

 more than one skin, was extremely rare, and most 

 examples are nearer 4 feet and built on a single skin. 

 Many were too small to carry a person; these were 

 intended to be loaded with cargo to be kept dry and 

 towed by a swimmer. When they were large enough 

 to be paddled, the paddler worked over the "bow," 

 as in a coracle. Probably all the Plains Indians 

 living near streams once used the bull-boat, but 

 existing records show only the Mandan, Omaha, 

 Kansas, Hidatsa, and Assiniboin to have used it. 

 The Blackfoot (Siksika) and Dakota are said to 

 have used some kind of a skin boat in which their 

 tepee poles were employed as a temporary frame, 

 but nothing is recorded of their form. 



The use of spruce bark as a building material in 

 the Northwest and throughout the extreme northern 

 range of the birch-bark canoe has been discussed in 

 earlier chapters (pp. 155 to 158). In these areas, the 

 emergency canoe was usually built of caribou skin. 

 On the Alaskan coast seal skin may also have been 

 used, but generally it was used for the permanent 

 kayak-type canoe and not for a hastily built temporary 

 craft. The caribou-skin canoe was also built as a 

 permanent type, in either kayak form or somewhat on 

 the model of the spruce- or birch-bark canoe of the 

 area. However, although references to temporary 

 craft covered with caribou skin exist in early accounts 

 of the fur trade, there is no record of their form or 

 details of their construction. Early in the present 

 century some of the Indians of the Mackenzie River 

 country built skin canoes much like the modern canvas- 

 covered freight canoes. Also, some of these skin 

 canoes were built so that they resembled York boats 

 or the whaleboats of the white man. No observer has 

 described the methods used to construct the emer- 

 gency canoe of the Northwest; we do not know 

 whether they resemble those used in the Indian bark 

 canoe or in the Eskimo skin boat. 



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