108 
of the Alaekenzie and the Cordillera region of British Columbia. 
Birch bark was the commonest covering, and the most satisfactory; 
but even the Algonkian tribes of eastern Canada, who made the finest 
of all bark canoes, sometimes used other materials, spruce bark, elm 
bark, and moose hide. Spruce bark was more general than birch bark 
in the Cordilleras and in the Alaekenzie basin, probably on account 
of the scarcity of large birch trees in those regions. Bark canoes 
varied somewhat from tribe to tribe, in the amount of curvature at 
bow aiul stern, in the decking of the ends, and in a few other details, 
but the methods of construction, and the general shape, were much 
the same everywhere. The three most divergent types were the 
Beothuk canoe, in which the gunwale curved sharply upward in the 
middle as well as at the ends; the Dogrib canoe, which had small, nar- 
row ribs, widely-separated floor or side strips extending from end to 
end, and extensive decking at bow and stern ; ^ and the Kootenay- 
Salish canoe of the southei'n interior of British Columbia, which was 
often made of pine instead of birch bark, and ran out to a point under 
water at either end like the bark canoes on the Amur river in eastern 
Siberia. - 
The extreme lightness of the birch-bark canoe more than com- 
pensated for its frailty, for one man could carry it on his shoulders 
over several miles of iiortage. Although cranky, and easily capsized 
if handled unskilfully, it answeretl the slightest pressure from the 
paddle, thus allowing instant changes of direction when running 
rapids. Aloreover, even a seriously damaged canoe could be repaired 
within a few hours with no other materials than a strijD or two of 
birch bark, a few threads of spruce root to sew them on, and a little 
spruce gum to cover the seams. The birch-bark canoe was, therefore, 
an admirable craft for regions abounding in lakes and rivers that were 
separated only by low watersheds. It was immediately adopted by 
the early fur-traders, and played a most important part in the ex- 
jfloration and opening up of the Dominion. For almost a century 
it carried European trade goods from the Atlantic ocean and Hudson 
bay to the Arctic, across the prairies to the Rocky mountains, and 
through the mountains to the plateau region in the interior of British 
1 In the last two feaLures it slightly resembled tlie Eskimo kayak. Its form, liowcver, m.ay be 
post- European (.See footnote, p. 383). ' 
2 For fuller details See Waugh, F. W. ; ‘'Canadian Aboriginal Canoes”; The Canadian Field- 
Naturalist, vol. xxxiii, No. 2 (May, 1919). Mason, O. T. ; ‘‘Pointed Bark Canoes of the Kutenai and 
.^mur”; Ann. llept. Smithsonian Inst., U.S. Nat, Mus., 1S99, pp. 525-537 (Washington, 1991). 
