ELP Elm Bark Canoe

"They make canoes and barrels of the bark of trees and sew with bark as well" -Journey to the Mohawk Country, 1634 - 35

                    "If they wish to proceed by water, or having been hunting are anxious to return home heavily laden with meat and skins, they speedily make a canow of bast, load it with their things and go whither they will. These canows are fashioned of one piece of bast bark, the outer side of which is turned inward, both ends sharply pointed and securely sewn with bast..." ; "The elme tree already noticed above, is of no particular use, for the wood rots quickly, except that the Mingoes make bast canoes and kettles for boiling sugar of the bark, which is very tough." -David Zeisberger, History of the North American Indians, 1779

                     In mid-May, 2006, Kevin Finney (www.pathwayscrg.org) and myself, Erik Vosteen, decided - after years of making baskets, ladles, sap trays, and other early domestic item replicas - to finally build a elm bark canoe based on early writings and sketches of early-historic crafts. The first challenge was to locate a healthy tree large and strait enough to form the hull with a single sheet of bark. Locating the tree was my job, and it took several weeks of talking to foresters, landowners and woodsy types to find a tree that met our requirements. While I was busy locating our tree, Kevin was putting together a collection of documentation that we would reference as we mapped the steps, gathered tools and supplies, and built the canoe. We chose the third week of May for the construction since the bark peels well at this season and the weather is generally pleasant. The first step was peeling the tree, and we chose to remove the bark without cutting the tree down since we have damaged bark by felling a tree in the past, and peeling standing trees for canoes appears in the documentation to have been preferred over felling. Peeling a sheet of bark that is 20 feet long and weighs around 200 pounds without damaging the bark or ourselves was the most challenging step of the process.

With the bark removed, we next cleared an area and began laying out the outline of the gunwales with stakes and the inwale saplings. We then drove larger stakes along this outline creating a "form" that we dropped the sheet of bark into and began clamping on the outwales.

The rocker is created by putting crimps in the bark that draw the bow and stern up. We made straps of donated linen cloth tied to stakes that held the ends up while we made the crimps.

The crimps are secured temporarily with clamps around the gunwales and after they are secured along the full length the excess bark is trimmed.

After carving out a few components, splitting some root, and several contemplative coffee breaks, we sewed up the ends.

Now the thwarts and ribs are made and secured in place - we used hickory bark to secure the thwarts, and the ribs are pressed in behind the inwales and then the gunwales are lashed securely with tamarack root.