BIRCHBARK CANOES: THE  CLASSIC BOATS

by David Gidmark

David Gidmark is the author of "Birchbark Canoe: Living Among the Algonquin", published by Firefly Books. Reviewed by J. C. H. King of the British Museum, it was praised as an "excellent work for present and future generations." David Gidmark has very kindly written this article for the RUDDER. He lives with his wife, Ernestine, in Quebec.

A birchbark canoe is the epitome of the classic boat, predating all other wooden boats in North America, with the possible exception of the dugout canoe. The increasing popularity of the birchbark canoe in the last two decades is reflected in growing interest in the craft among ACBS members, but also in skyrocketing prices for birchbark canoes. A birchbark canoe that could be purchased for $70 a foot in 1990 now fetches $500 a foot. Many birchbark canoes have sold recently for over $10,000.

More than a score of North American Indian tribes made birchbark canoes. in 1900 makers of the birchbark canoe, still from several tribes, may have numbered in the hundreds, yet today there is only one traditional builder left in North America. The pressures of acculturation operate in such a way that the interests of the young are directed elsewhere. A once indispensable part of the material culture is neglected and may soon be forgotten.

The area where the birchbark canoe was built and used in North America is defined by two basic factors. Physical geography suggests that the canoe would be needed where there are many watercourses. While there are lakes and rivers on the Great Plains, they abound in the woodlands: in the province of Quebec alone there are more than 500,000 lakes. Travel on the Plains was most often overland; in the woodlands, travel would have been almost impossible without a water conveyance.

       The white birch is also known as the canoe birch or the paper birch. The canoe maker rejects bark that layers easily and looks too "papery" in favor of more solid-looking bark that often has a silver tinge to it. To test the bark, the builder takes a sample of bark about six feet up on the tree. He then bends it back on itself to see that it does not layer or open up along the "eyes" of the bark.

      The tree is then felled with a chain saw and a line is cut, either with the chain saw or with an ax, along the top of the trunk. The bark is then carefully peeled away from this longitudinal cut, giving a single sheet, sixteen feet or more in length.

      Major structural parts of the birchbark canoe--ribs, sheathing, and gunwales--are made from white cedar. These wooden members are ordinarily made from straight-grain cedar that is knot-free. This wood is prime and not easy to find in the woods. To split the cedar, one starts at the top end of the log, always splitting the battens in half.

To carve the cedar for ribs and gunwales, the builder uses the crooked knife, perhaps the most important woodworking tool of the North American Indians. This knife closely resembles a ferrier's knife. Its wooden handle curves away from the builder and its blade is mostly flat, curving up on the tip. The crooked knife is always pulled towards the craftsman. The crooked knife is worked so that the 50 or so ribs end up with dimensions of about 2 inches by 3/8 of an inch. The skilled craftsman works so well that the finish on the rib is as if it had been achieved with a hard plane.

There are about 500 feet of prepared spruce root that go in to lashing a birchbark canoe. Black spruce is usually used for a birchbark canoe, though roots of most of the coniferous trees can be used. Spruce roots are harvested by scraping into the ground a couple of yards out from the base of the tree. Once located, the root is cut and pulled out of the ground away from the tree. A spruce root can occasionally reach 20 feet in length.

To prepare the root, a split is started with a knife in the butt end of the root. If the split starts to veer in one direction, it is brought back to the center of the root by applying pressure on the opposite side. When the root is split in half, it is often boiled to help in removing the bark. The center may also be split out as well to flatten the root thong. To make the finished spruce root easier to work with, it is soaked in water until it is time to use it.

The Woodland Indians, in their travels through the forests, had regular camping spots, some of which became known as canoe building sites. A building bed is prepared near a lake; nearby water is sought so that many of the materials for canoe making can be soaked.

The traditional Algonquin method of working with the hull form involves using the gunwale assembly as a building frame. The bark is rolled out on the level building bed, the frame is weighted down with heavy rocks, and the bark sides turned up, giving the first rough shape of the canoe. Gores are cut in these sides--they're evenly spaced--to avoid crimping. The builder then fixes the inwale assembly at the proper height, about eight inches at the center thwart. The outwales are fixed precisely opposite the inwales outboard of the bark. Held in place temporarily with clamps, the gunwales are then lashed with spruce root. There are two-inch intervals along the gunwales; two inch lashing spots alternate with two-inch spaces where the rib ends meet the inwale.

Ribs are bent two at a time and inserted in the canoe to dry. The ribs have been soaking for a few days, and then boiling water is poured over the rib pair to facilitate bending. Sheathing for a birchbark canoe is thinly-split (about 1/16 of an inch) cedar that is carefully laid in three lengths in the bottom of the canoe, bow to stern. When the ribs have dried, their ends are carefully measured and cut so that the bevel on the rib tip marries to the bevel on the underside of the inwale. The ribs are pounded home with a wooden mallet, the intense pressure holding the ribs and sheathing in place and expanding the bark cover somewhat. The bow pieces are formed by splitting, soaking and bending a cedar batten to the tribal bow profile. The bow pieces are lashed in place with spruce root.

To seal the canoe, the builder collects spruce gum from wounds in spruce trees. This is melted and then purified by extrusion through a potato sack. It must be tempered with animal fat. Too much fat and the mixture will run in the sun; too little fat and the gum mixture will crack and fall off in cold weather. The gum mixture is then applied in its melted state to seams created by the gores and at the bow and stern. The canoe is then water-tight.

How long can a birchbark canoe last? There is a birchbark canoe in the collection of the National Museum, of Denmark, in Copenhagen, that is in as good a condition now as when it was made in Quebec around 1860. A birchbark canoe can be expected to last as long as the person who owns it.

It has much practical application as well. A well-made birchbark canoe made with quality bark will probably suffer less damage in a rapids than a wood-and-canvas canoe because of the increased flexibility of a birchbark canoe. Like other classic wooden boats, this ultimate classic is less noisy than other canoes and is warmer in cold waters and cooler in the hot summers.

Then there is the investment factor. In 1962, Walt Disney bought six birchbark canoes in Maniwaki, Quebec, for $75.00 each for the move "Nikki, Wild Dog of the North". Those canoes could easily each fetch $10,000 now. Another birchbark canoe is for sale for $1 million.

But monetary considerations aside, why would someone in the third millennium want to own a watercraft that is possibly millennia old? Because the beautiful birchbark canoe can take on where no other watercraft can: back, way back, into history--and into the far-flung regions of the human spirit.

For more information on birchbark canoes, please see my book "Birchbark Canoes: Living Among the Algonquin, published by  Firefly Books. And for information on courses in building a birchbark canoe, please contact me at Box 26, Maniwaki, Quebec J9E 3B3. Telephone (888) 5GIDMARK.