Traditional Boatbuilding: Canoes

The original wooden boatbuilders of the British Columbia coast were the First Nations people, who travelled by canoe through the myriad inlets, passages and rivers of the coastal rainforest. Even photographs of coastal villages into the 20th century show large flotillas of canoes parked along the shore.

The cedar canoe used extensively on the Northwest Coast was a sophisticated, seaworthy design well suited to the lifestyle of the marine environment. The canoe was part of everyday life, just as the car is to most of us today. Canoes came in many sizes to suit many purposes, and were constructed with superb technology. They were propelled by paddle or sail. Canoes were highly valued, and were often given a name and painted with a clan crest or other design.

Canoes enabled the diverse cultures of the Northwest Coast to flourish. Not only were they crucial for local travel to a variety of resource locations, they facilitated complex trading systems and the interchange of ideas along the coast from Alaska to California. To be able to travel great distances along the coast, a fast, dependable vessel was needed, and there is none better in the world than the canoe of the Northwest Coast.

Bill Reid, Haida carver and canoe builder, cites the canoe as a major stimulus for the development of the sophisticated art of the people of the Northwest coast. He called the canoe "the single most important artifact used by the peoples of the Northwest coast and the challenge of extracting the form of a canoe from a giant cedar played a key role in the evolution of Northwest Coast art". [Source: http://www.civilization.ca/aborig/reid/reid10e.html]

When Europeans settled on the Northwest Coast, they depended on canoe owners and crews to transport passengers and goods along the coast and up the major rivers like the Skeena River. Gradually the use of canoes gave way to the coastal steamers and power boats, until canoes were seldom built. Today, however, there is a resurgence in the canoe as a focal point for some First Nations of the coast, and the canoe stands as a symbol of the vitality and power within First Nations communities.

Types of Canoes

Canoes were used for many reasons:
• fishing
• moving to different food resource areas
• hunting seal, sea lion, fur seal
• trading
• visiting other villages
• attending significant events such as potlatches, weddings, funerals, feasts
• warfare

The canoes were different sizes and styles depending on their use. Canoes used for hunting were about 2.4 m (8 feet) in length. These were light and portable and carried one, two or three people. They could be taken up small rivers and streams.

Canoes used for fishing and carrying families with their camping supplies and baggage were about 11 m (36 feet) in length.

Some canoes were up to 18 m (60 feet) long and 2.4 (8 feet) wide. These large canoes held at least 20 people and were used for travelling great distances to trade. These large canoes were also used as war canoes.

Canoes were built by all the First Nations of the coast. Some of the most desired were the huge Haida canoes constructed of red cedar trees of a size only available on Haida Gwaii. They were frequently traded for other goods not available on the islands, such as oolichan oil.

Canoe Construction

Canoe construction is very difficult, painstaking work which only skilled, precise craftsmen can do. The boat is made from one log, hollowed out and steamed. Most canoes were made from red cedar, though spruce and birch were used sometimes for smaller canoes. Red cedar wood is easy to work with; by applying steam, it is possible to bend it without breaking it. It is light, splits easily and naturally resistant to rot and decay.

People from one family or clan would work together to make a canoe; completing a canoe would take from one to three months, depending on how many people were working on it. They usually began constructing canoes in the spring when the weather was warm.

To find red cedar large enough for canoes, people would have to travel great distances. They would usually try to find trees on territories belonging to their clan or house group. Sometimes, if their clan did not have large enough trees, another chief would let them choose a tree off his territory.

Steps in Construction

1. Falling and shaping. The first step was to find a suitable red cedar tree - the correct size, straight-grained, free from large knots and with no centre rot. Once it has been located, respect was paid to the tree, usually with a song or words of thanks, acknowledging that it was giving itself to the people's use. The tree was felled using a combination of chopping with stone-bladed adzes and chisels and controlled burning. The same techniques were used to cut the log to the desired length and to remove limbs and branches

2. Rough shaping. First the outer bark of the log was removed, then the outside of the canoe roughly shaped. The inside was then roughly hollowed out with a large wood chisel or adze or by controlled burning. Sometimes the carvers would work on the canoe at the site where they cut it down, but often they would tow the log back to the village and work on it there.

3. The carvers carefully measured, then adzed the outside of the bow and stern to the desired shape and size.

4. The carvers carefully chiseled out the inside of the canoe until the edges and the sides were about 3 cm thick and the bow, stern and bottom were approximately 5 cm thick.

5. The canoe-makers shaped or spread the canoe by steaming it. The canoe was half-filled with sea-water. Planks were placed on the bottom of the canoe and hot rocks were placed on these planks until the water began to steam. Cedar bark mats and blankets placed over the canoe held the steam in. When the wood became soft, the canoe-makers put cross-pieces in to shape the sides wider in the middle and narrower at the ends. After the water was dumped out of the canoe and the wood had cooled it would keep its shape.

6. Pieces of yellow cedar were lashed tightly onto the bow and stern of the canoe; these added to the seaworthiness of the canoe. These pieces of yellow cedar were often carved, adding to the canoe's beauty.

7. Holes were drilled into the sides of the canoe so seats could be lashed or pegged in. Pitch from trees was used to seal the holes.

8. The surface of the canoe was smoothed using the rough skin of a dogfish as sandpaper. Then it was greased with whale oil or oolichan oil to help preserve the wood. Often designs would be painted and/or carved onto the outside.

After a canoe was finished, the clan held a large feast or potlatch and invited members of other house groups, clans and tribes to celebrate the finished canoe. The canoe would be given a name and be treated as a living entity.

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