A Look at History
Birchbark Canoe
Paquin Teaches Art of Traditional Chippewa Canoe Building
BY FRANK STRAUS

A recent story in The St. Ignace News reports that Ron Paquin, an elder of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians and a native of St. Ignace, has again been honored for his skill as a master canoe builder. He was scheduled to be presented with a First Peoples Community Spirit Award Saturday, December 2.

Paquin is one of the leading citizens of the Eastern Upper Peninsula, and is one of the few men who knows how to build a birchbark canoe entirely by hand using traditional materials. He has built 21 full-size birchbark canoes over the last 20 years, which gives an idea of how much work is required to construct these traditional monarchs of the forest waterway.

Many may wonder what men and women at the Straits of Mackinac do during the wintertime. Much of the work of the winter is preparation for the summer; and this has been true since long before the Europeans came to North America. For a master canoe builder, the construction of a birchbark canoe is

the work of at least a year's time, with the first spring, summer, and fall devoted to gathering the materials, the following winter and spring to building the canoe, and the second summer to actually trying it out for use. Paquin has told The St. Ignace News that he uses birch bark, cedar bark, red willow, diamond willow, sweetgrass, basswood, and spruce roots to build his canoes.

Cecil Pavlat (left), a repatriation specialist for Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, was a recent apprentice under Ron Paquin (right) when he conducted a program on making birchbark canoes under the Michigan State University master artist program. (Photographs courtesy of Molly Paquin)

The Straits of Mackinac has been a center of canoebuilding for centuries because of the presence of all of these materials. In particular, Bois Blanc Island is one of the few places where the paper birch tree and the basswood grow in physical proximity to each other; this fact is so important that the Native Americans taught the French their name for this island, "White Wood Island," and it is called "Bois Blanc" to this day. The inner bark or "bast" of the basswood, if it is carefully peeled off the tree and then soaked for a month, produces an exceptionally strong fiber that is used for key structural fastenings within the canoe.

A birch bark canoe (wiigwaas jiimaan) made by Ron Paquin of Sault Ste. Marie.

Basswood fibers are only one of the types of cordage used in the canoe. The panels of birchbark are cut with knives into the proper shape and then sewn together with the roots of the spruce. Gathering spruce roots or "wattap" is one of the most challenging parts of this job, as the best roots grow in wet areas that are also the favorite of mosquitoes and stinging flies. As much as 1,000 feet of spruce roots are necessary to construct one fullsized canoe.

Meanwhile the canoe builder will have gathered many pieces of light cedar wood, which are either naturally shaped to serve as ribs of the canoe or can be steamed into shape. The panels of sewn birchbark are fitted to the ribs of the canoe and slowly and carefully lashed into a tight fit.

This chore is much more difficult than it sounds. The construction of a watercraft that will slip swiftly through the water is a classic problem in engineering. Today's modern ship designers have computer programs especially designed to help them create hull shapes that will minimize water resistance. A master canoe builder uses his hands and eyes to gauge the precise curves necessary to make a swift canoe that will ride in the water with reasonable stability.

The outward curve of the dry half of a birchbark canoe's hull, as it approaches the waterline, is called the "tumblehome." A properly shaped tumblehome is essential so that a canoe or kayak can do its job. The Chippewa have, for centuries, taken justifiable pride in their ability to shape a nearly perfect tumblehome, and the Chippewa canoes of the Straits of Mackinac and environs have a visual mark or fillip of this ability to this day. Not only the hulls, but also the bows and sterns of the Chippewa canoe are tumbled home; their ends are shaped like parentheses '(______)'. Unlike the hull-tumblehome, this is not absolutely necessary for the life of the canoe; the Maine canoe has a straight bow and stern, for example, and it is just as good in its territory as the Chippewa canoe is in ours.

There are very few master canoe builders left in North America, and not so much of the necessary materials, either. Only the largest and oldest paper birch trees, ones of at least two feet in diameter, can yield panels of bark large enough to make a canoe that will not leak. The canoe builder, among other chal- lenges, must minimize the number of seams in the canoe below the waterline. Even when sealed with pine or spruce tar, these seams are more or less vulnerable. The watercraft is, after all, made of a material as light as thick paper.

The Straits of Mackinac canoe, in its time, was an essential element in the mapping of the interior of North America. Nothing like it could be built anywhere else. From 1673 onward, Mackinac canoes were seen in surprising corners of the continent. That was the summer in which Marquette, Joliet, and their comrades paddled a pair of canoes south from the Straits to what is now the state of Arkansas. Mackinac canoes were also seen as far east as

Montreal, as far north as the Arctic Circle, and as far west as what is now the Canadian province of Alberta.

The incredible lightness and strength of birchbark was the key to this ability to go on far journeys. No heavier material could have been hauled by men across portages hundreds or thousands of feet long, from river to river, across a continent.