Video - Making a dugout canoe (with help from Churchill Clark)

[SwampDonkey]

"The Belladonna Beaver"

Churchill is a descendent of Captain William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Canoe was carved from an old Doug fir log.

Dugout Canoe Carving: The Story of Belladonna Beaver - YouTube




She sails here on the Marias River in Montana

Dugout Canoe Paddling: The Marias River Adventure in Montana - YouTube

[Hilltop366]

I would not want to portage that one!

[SwampDonkey]

Heavy looking beast ain't it? :D

Dugouts here were piroques made of white pine.

[Hilltop366]

Not just the wood, I bet it soaks up a few pounds of water too.

[WV Sawmiller]

   Neat video. Shows a lot of hard work and craftsmanship involved. I never saw one being built but I rode in several when I worked and vacationed in Africa and the Amazon. Most would have one guy running a motor and 4-5 baling. :D Most of the "pirogues" as the local French speaking natives I rode in called them were built of planks and showed a lot of skill to build but a few were true dugouts.

 We vacationed in Ecuador on a tributary of the Amazon and used a 50' canoe powered by a 40 hp Yamaha outboard and an Indian operator named "Clever" (The area where we were vacationing was later picked for one of the 40 day challenges for Naked and Afraid extreme.) Our "dugout" was basically a big fiberglass shell and had movable benches like church pews about 5' long for seating. A guy had gone into the region and set up a "factory" to make the "dugouts" which were designed like the local wooden ones. The man's plan/stated goals were to reduce the number of big trees being cut to make dugouts. The normal life expectancy of a wooden dugout canoe in active use was only about 10 years or less if I remember correctly.

EDIT/ADD-ON: Come to think of it we later took a trip out in the Okavango Delta in a Fiberglass "Mokoro" patterned after the dugout. I guess somebody else had the same idea about saving the trees. You had to look real close to see it was not actual wood as I think they even added a woodgrain pattern to it. This was a much smaller version about 20' long with just me and my wife and our guide paddling through the channels between the papyrus thickets which housed hippos and crocodiles and tons of birds and such.

[SwampDonkey]

True dugouts was used here at least late 18C, many old photos show them, not made of cut lumber, even birch bark canoes still used. Then they went canvas back with cedar ribs around here for a least last 140 years. I see old photos of Braithrite using dugout, birch bark and then canvas. He was a geologist and a guide outfitter. A lot of game was brought out to teamster sleds or wagons, then on to trains after if things was sent to the USA or other towns. 1860's onward.

[wisconsitom]

I read things like "900 Menominee warriors left La Baye (Green Bay) for Fort Machillimac (Mackinac Island) in their birchbark canoes.  They were setting out to canoe from where Green Bay is today to Mackinaw Island!  I think if someone took me to the edge of Lake Michigan and said, 'here you go now...canoe to Fort Mackinac'.....I think I'd be crying.

Everybody seems to think they are so tough nowadays.  But I think we're all soft babies!  Take a canoe across the Great Lakes?  I could not begin to imagine such an undertaking, yet apparently, it was routine.

A bit off-topic but if you want your head spun around as to what actually happened on this continent when the first European explorers met with the Indian tribes of the Upper Great Lakes region, find a copy of the book ' Up Country'.  It describes everything that happened west of Quebec!  If nothing else, you will then understand why the United States is an English-speaking country rather than French.

Again, sorry for the topic drift, but the canoe angle is there.  That Up Country book is special.

[Ianab]

The Maori here in NZ were masters of dugout canoes. 

Modern ones tend to be carbon fibre  :D. But there are still some old style ones being made. Needs a large Totara tree to make one though. 

They were originally hollowed out with stone tools and fire, now that's dedication. 

Waka paddling in Waitangi - YouTube

[SwampDonkey]

Pacific NW coast Indian sea worthy dugout canoes.

1-Introduction - NW Coast Indian Canoe Project - YouTube

[RPF2509]

Rule number one of making a dugout canoe - find a log with small knots!

[Don P]

I remember reading a book by Eric Sevareid "Canoeing with the Cree". Just out of High School he and a friend got the local paper to sponsor them on a canoe trip from Minneapolis 2,250 miles up to York Factory in exchange for writing about their journey.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canoeing_with_the_Cree

[SwampDonkey]

That would be quite the journey. I read an account of the journey up there and it was a lot of portage across pockets of water, some places a river is more like a giant marsh wetland up through northern Manitoba. There are two big long lakes up there and ponds of water by the thousands all around them. Mosquito breeding country. When I was a kid, the Sunday School newsletter for kids had a section in it to choose a pen pal. I used to write for a short time to a Cree girl up near the Bay. Near Churchill I like. Long long time ago, name long forgotten. Funny what 40+ years will do to memory. ;)

There is a train up to there and an old fort (Prince of Wales) that the French army captured from the Brits about 300 years ago.  The Company of Adventurers (The Bay) made the first fort of logs (late 1600's) as a trading post. Then the Brits built a stone one. In and out of there was by sail out the Bay. That is a heck of a long ways north of what we even settle today. Most of Canada lives along the border not up into ogre country. :D