XXII BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 



June 1 be was appointed to the position of Assistant 

 Ethnologist in the Bureau, and was assigned to work 

 related to his previous researches. He at once took up 

 the subject of birch bark, with the aboriginal industries 

 depending on this natural commodity of a considerable 

 fraction of the North American continent. One of the 

 most important products of the birch -bark industry is 

 the canoe ; and this, like other industrial products of con- 

 sequence, exerted a powerful influence on the lives of the 

 producers. Through one of those harmonies of nature 

 on which the progress of mankind so largely depends, 

 much of the birch -bearing region of North America (a 

 zone stretching from Maine to Washington State and 

 Alaska, and extending from below the Great Lakes nearly 

 to the treeless Arctic) is also the region of late Pleisto- 

 cene glaciation, and hence of glacial lakes, swamps, and 

 labyrinthine streams; so that throughout the period of 

 aboriginal development an ideal canoe material coexisted 

 with illimitable functions for the canoe in the way of 

 travel and transportation. 



Under the natural combination, aided by native intelli- 

 gence and skill, the lakes and streams became routes of 

 passage, and by reason of the lightness and strength of 

 the material, and the lowness and narrowness of the ice- 

 molded divides, portages were easy, so that the routes 

 passed from lake to lake, river to river, and drainage sys- 

 tem to drainage system, practically across the continent. 

 Under the stimulus of facility, the birch-canoe makers 

 became travelers and explorers; energetic hunters and 

 fishermen explored new waters and carried tribal knowl- 

 edge into new regions ; ambitious scions struck out into 

 the remoter wilderness to make conquest over the unknown 

 and often to establish families and clans, and eventually 

 tribes, in new localities; so that in course of time the pad- 

 dlers of the light canoe carried their kindred, their dia- 

 lects, their faiths, over the greater part of the vast region 

 defined by the birch tree and the glacial waterways. Most 

 of the canoemen belong to the Algonquian stock, most 

 of the remainder to the Athapascan stock ; and the recent 



