With so much to offer, its admirers believe it should not become a mere collector’s item or museum piece but should continue in use, a link with the past for the future. Because of its construction without a keel, its handling is regarded as a special art but, light and responsive, its mastery provides much pleasure and satisfaction.

The canoe still provides a severe test of the paddlers skill and sense of balance. The honey-colored bark and the irregular gummed seams and edges are pleasing to the eye, while the woodsy odor of the drying materials are tantalizing to the olfactory senses. The finished birch bark canoe remains a work of natural beauty since none of its surfaces are preserved in any way. The secrets can only be learned with patience. His final success is assured because he has the “feel” of materials he knows the natural stress and shrinkage of green materials he understands the allowances he must take to fashion a craft with the graceful, sweeping, curving lines that create the traditional symmetry of the Indian canoe. The experienced canoe-builder goes about his task with sure deftness, often with no shelter. Ojibwe communities were historically based on clans, or “doodem,” which determined a person’s place in Ojibwe society.Ferdy Goode paddling an Ojibwe-style birch bark canoe photo by Walt Jones Prior to the 20th century, the Ojibwe lived in wigwams and travelled the waterways of the region in birch bark canoes.

Excavations in Denmark reveal the use of dugouts and paddles during the Ertebølle period, (c. Two major art areas are dance and song which have already been discussed When did canoe start?Ĭonstructed between 82 BC, and found in the Netherlands, the Pesse canoe may be the oldest known canoe. Ojibwe art is largely made up of oral art forms. The Ojibwe people devised a system of writing on birch bark long before contact with Europeans. Older variants of Ojibwe (or Proto-Algonquian) date back several thousand years. However, linguists believe that Ojibwe is a very ancient language that has been in existence for over 1,000 years. Then, sheets of birch bark were soaked in hot water and fitted over the frame, with the white outside of the bark inside the canoe and the tan inner bark on the outside to take advantage of the bark’s natural curl. How did the Ojibwe travel? How did the Ojibwe make their canoes?Ĭanoes were begun by making a frame of split cedar or spruce.

Ojibwe style canoe