THE CANADIAN FIELD-NATURALIST 



VOL. XXXIII. 



MAY, 1919. 



No. 2. 



CANADIAN ABORIGINAL CANOES. 



By F. W. Waugh, Geological Survey, Ottawa. 



Canoeing, It may be remarked by way of in- 

 troduction, is one of a number of things which have 

 been borrowed, either for use or amusement, from 

 the American Indian. The name, strangely enough, 

 has been mtroduced from a region at some distance 

 from that with which we are accustomed to con- 

 nect canoe culture in its typical form, being derived 

 from the word "canoa," in use among the Arawak 

 of the West Indies. This was adopted in a similar 

 form by the Spaniards, and as "canot" by the early 

 French in Canada. The fact that there was already 

 a name in current use, then, is no doubt the reason 

 none of the names applied by the Indians of the 

 Eastern Woodland area of America was adopted. 



An Ojibwa term, fairly well-known from its em- 

 ployment by Longfellow in "The Song of Hia- 

 watha", is "cheemaun". A name applied to a very 

 large craft is "nabikwan". A Mohawk appella- 

 tion is "gahonwe'ia"; rendered by the Onondaga, 

 a related tribe, as "gaho'nwa". It is interesting to 

 note, in the last-mentioned dialects, the close resem- 

 blance to the term for a bark bowl or trough. 



Quaint early English forms, now obsolete, are 

 "canow" and "cannoe". 



There is little doubt that, in the earlier days of 

 French exploration and settlement along the St. 

 Lawrence and of English settlement in New Eng- 

 land, the birch-bark canoe of Indian make was very 

 soon adopted as the most convenient method of 

 travel. We can readily infer, also, from early 

 writers and other such sources, the extremely im- 

 portant part played by the canoe in the develop- 

 ment of a very large portion of the North Am- 

 erican continent. 



It would obviously be most interesting to trace the 

 canoe and other such devices to their origins, but 

 there are indications that the problem in hand is 

 one of the diffusion or spread of a cultural trait 

 already elaborated, or partly elaborated, it may be 

 in some other region. This is in part suggested 

 by both the extent and the continuity of the area 

 in which canoes are used. We can see that migra- 

 tions of population, or the influence of one tribe 



upon a neighboring one (accultural influence) would 

 soon disseminate the canoe idea, possibly in a simple 

 form, very widely, and that, under the influence of 

 the varied materials at hand and diversified require- 

 ments, specialization in various directions would 

 later arise. 



Materials naturally played an important part.. In 

 areas where trees were not at hand, or were less 

 convenient, such materials as rushes were sometimes 

 built into a boat-shaped raft (see the balsa of Cali- 

 fornia) ; or a skin-covered craft was employed, as 

 in the Eskimo area, among the neighboring Kutchin 

 of the Yukon, the Tahltan and other Athabascans 

 of the Mackenzie region, and in some parts of the 

 Plains) see the "bull-boat," a tub-shaped craft of 

 skin and withes, used by various Siouan tribes, in- 

 cluding the Mandan and the Hidatsa; also by the 

 Arikara, a Caddoan tribe). The Omaha (Siouan) 

 used hide-covered boats or canoes of ordinary type, 

 but with a rude framework, indicating the slight de- 

 velopment among them of ideas regarding naviga- 

 tion. In the last-mentioned craft, an oar or large 

 paddle was used for steering, the paddlers sitting 

 near the bow. 



One of the most interesting developments in 

 North American navigation was the canoe of 

 birch-bark, which apparently reached its perfection 

 in the Algonkian area, a region extending from 

 around the Great Lakes, and some distance west- 

 ward, to the maritime provinces and the New Eng- 

 land states, though the birch canoe area exhibits cul- 

 tural extensions in various directions, but particularly 

 northward and westward to the Mackenzie river 

 basin. There is little doubt that this distribution was 

 largely determined by the range of the canoe birch 

 (Betula papyrijera), which extends practically from 

 the Atlantic coast to the Rockies, as well as to some 

 distance south of the international boundary. The 

 disappearance of the birch southward is indicated by 

 the fact that very inferior canoes of elm, butlonwood 

 and basswood bark were constructed by the Iro- 

 quois of Central New ^ ork state and southward, 

 who evidently found the materials last mentioned 



