628 EEPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1899. 



THE KUTENAI CANOE. 



The pine-bark canoe, pointed at both ends below water, is used in 

 only a circumscribed area on the Kootenai River, and on the Columbia 

 at the mouth of the Kootenai. In order to make sure of this and to 

 know more about the uses of this craft, at the suggestion of the curator 

 of the Division of Ethnology in the U. S. National Museum, an exten- 

 sive correspondence was conducted with missionaries and others who 

 have spent years on the Kootenai and the Upper Columbia. (Plate 1.) 



It is well to say that the birch-bark canoe of regions east of the 

 Rocky Mountains does not exist on the Columbia or the Kootenai, 

 but the dugout, in ruder form, is to be found in many localities, 

 becoming more beautiful and seaworthy as one approaches the ocean. 

 The writer has never heard of any other regularly built canoe of bark 

 or other material in America pointed at or below the water line. All 

 the birch-bark canoes are rounded up the other way, like the prow of 

 an old-fashioned ship or of a lifeboat. It was the writer's purpose to 

 work up the matter with greater detail, but he was prevented by 

 continued illness. 



In the second volume of Ross's Fur Hunters he says, speaking of the 

 Kutenai upon the Arrow Lakes, in British Columbia: 



At the water's edge we saw and examined a birch-rind canoe, of rather singular 

 construction, such as I had never seen in any other part of the country, but used by 

 the natives here; for I saw several of the same make when I passed this place two 

 years ago. Both stem and stern, instead of being raised up in a gentle and regular 

 curve, as is customary elsewhere, lie flat on the surface of the water, and terminate 

 in a point resembling a sturgeon's snout. The upper part is curved, except a space 

 in the middle. Its length is 22 feet from point to point and the whole bottom 

 between these points is a dead level. ^ 



Such craft must prove exceedingly awkward in rough water, and 

 there is often a heavy swell on these lakes. Dawson has also mentioned 

 these canoes in the following language: 



In addition to the ordinary and always rough dugout canoe made from the cotton- 

 wood {Populus trichocarpa) probably, and employed occasionally on certain lakes 

 or for crossing the rivers, the Shushwaps in the eastern part of their territory in 

 British Columbia made small and shapely canoes from the bark of the western white 

 pine {Pinus monticola). These may still be occasionally seen on Shush wap Lake 

 and in the vicinity of the Columbia. The inner side of the bark stripped from the 

 tree in one piece becomes the outer side of the canoe, which is fashioned with two 

 sharp, projecting spur-like ends, strengthened by wooden ribs and thwarts inter- 

 nally; the whole is lashed and sewn with roots, and knot holes and fissures are 

 stopped with resin. The canoes thus made are very swift, and, for their size, when 

 properly ballasted, remarkably seaworthy.* 



Mr. G. M. Sproat, author of Scenes and Studies of Savage Life, 

 says that the pointed canoe is the common craft on the Columbia River 



^ Alexander Koss, The Fur Hunters of the Far West, London, 1855, 2 vols. Vol. 

 II, pp. 169, 170. 

 * Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, December 11, 1891, fig. 4. 



