How Early Peoples Built Bark Canoes for Their Transportation

On this National Canoe Day, learn about early canoe experiments

Peter Kalm (1716–79) was a new professor of economics at Åbo (Turku) Academy in the Swedish eastern province called Finland when, in 1747, the Swedish Royal Academy (SKA) commissioned him to travel to North America to collect information on flora, fauna, and any novelties that might be useful for the Swedish kingdom. Kalm’s travel was funded by the SKA and promoted by his supporter, Carolus Linné (Carl Linnaeus); he had passports to enter the Dutch and French territories in North America and was accompanied by a gardener from the Botanical Garden in Åbo. Kalm was the first trained European natural scientist to study the new American continent, take notes on everything he could, and collect new plants and seeds to be grown in Sweden.

Kalm traveled via London in 1748 and settled in “New Sweden,” in Pennsylvania. He remained in North America until 1751, touring widely on the East Coast and in Canada and meeting American learned men, among them Benjamin Franklin. Curious about American Indians, Kalm wrote about their crops and food, their healing methods and medicine, their hunting and fishing, their dwellings, and their material culture, including bark canoes and dugout boats. When he returned to Åbo Academy in 1752, he edited his diaries, which were printed in four volumes around 1755. In 1772, they were translated into English, published in London, and became popular in Europe and North America.

Soon after his return, Kalm and his students began constructing the sort of Indian canoes that he had documented being made in Canada in 1749. One of the American-Canadian canoes he had seen was made of birch bark, the second of white pine bark, and the third of elm bark. Swedish King Adolf Frederick is supposed to have tested one of the birch-bark canoes when he visited Åbo. The canoes were kept in the Botanical Garden, where the newly acquired American plants were being grown. Matti Leikola, a professor of forestry at Helsinki University, has studied Kalm’s work and found that Finnish birch (Betula pendula) is the tree best suited for canoes, proving to be nearly as good as American birch; he also found that spruce was a good substitute for hickory for the canoe ribs.

One of Kalm’s most gifted students was Anders (Antti) Chydenius (1729–1803), who wrote a dissertation on American birch-bark canoes. When “Den Amerikanska Näverbåten” (American Bark Canoes) was published in 1753, the small booklet became Europe’s first manual on constructing birch-bark canoes. In it, Chydenius advised Finnish peasants—including hunters and fishermen on the frontier—to build birch-bark boats to cross rivers or lakes because they were easier and faster to make than expanded log boats. Nevertheless, despite these efforts, the American bark canoe never became popular in Finland, primarily because expanded log boats were common and more sturdy, while on the coast the more durable lapstrake boat was by this time the favorite choice.

In his introduction to “Den Amerikanska Näverbåten”, Anders Chydenius described the Native American method of constructing a birch-bark canoe, which he learned from his professor Peter Kalm’s studies in North America. We include excerpts here because this method is similar to that used by Eurasian canoe builders but is not well described in Eurasian sources:

They [Native Americans] make their boats from the bark of cedar or birch trees, which are huge there, and stitch them handily together . . . and when they come to some narrow bays or rivers which they want to cross, they launch the boats in the water and travel wherever they want. . . . My interest was aroused, and I wanted to know how such boats could be made. . . . The North American Natives have made bark boats from time immemorial. . . .

The bark is loosened from large, branchless trees in sheets as long as the boat is intended to be. . . . The ends of the bark sheets are layered two or sometimes four thick . . . and are sewn together . . . using thin split spruce roots. . . . The bark . . . is put on level ground, the inner part of the bark outward, and then stones are placed on the large sheet in the shape that the boat bottom will take. The ends [of the sheet] are lifted up and stakes are driven into the ground so that the bark sheet takes the shape of the boat, with two narrow ends. Then the sheet is covered inside with thin laths of a tree called thuya [white cedar, Thuja occidentalis]. . . . The ribs are also made of thuya, usually 3 inches [8 centimeters] wide and ½ inch [1 centimeter] thick, and they are set about 1–2 inches [3–5 centimeters] apart; all of them should reach up to the gunwale, which is made in the following way. . . . Two very thin strips, flat on opposite sides, are cut for both gunwales, and . . . the birch bark [is] folded over the ribs. The ends of the ribs are put between the inwale and the outwale and are shaved down narrow and thinned so as not to keep [the planks] from being lashed together. And then taking the spruce roots mentioned earlier, the inwale and outwale are fastened together by being sewn with stitches one-half inch apart, each stitch penetrating the bark. . . . Then from thuya wood two inches wide and one inch thick, thwarts are made, with their ends a little wider. At the ends of the thwart, three or four holes are drilled so they can be lashed to the gunwales some 24 to 30 inches [61 to 76 centimeters] apart, to keep the boat’s shape open. . . . Finally, all the seams in the bottom are smeared with hot pitch or resin to prevent water from penetrating.

At this point, we can ask an interesting question: did Chydenius know that in the 1750s the Saami were still building bark canoes in Swedish and Finnish Lapland? In his short dissertation, he never referred to any sources other than North American canoes and papers written about them, because the North American bark canoe was his main theme. But it is very likely he knew about Saami bark canoes, as he had grown up in Finnish Lapland. From 1743 to 1746, his father, Jacob Chydenius, was a priest in Kuusamo parish, in northeastern Finland, next to the territory called Kemi Lappmark in Sweden. When Anders was 17, he left Saami territory, as his father was transferred to Gamla Karleby Pastorat, on the western coast of Finland.

Kemi Lappmark consisted of the huge Kemijoki River basin—some 51,000 square kilometers, or one-sixth of modern Finland—and in those days, it was part of Sweden. Its river system extends to Norway and Russia and was easily traveled by boat, via portages, to the White Sea and via Inari Lake—another Saami territory—to the Norwegian coast and Arctic Ocean. Kemi Lappmark may have been the largest Saami territory in all Lapland at that time.

A.J. Sjögren reported that in 1744, the Kuusamo parish population was a combination of Lapp people and peasant settlers from other regions. However, by 1750, only 13 Saami were still living in Kuusamo; the rest had retreated to Kuolajärvi Lake. According to Tapani Salminen, the Saami had disappeared or retreated north from these regions by the end of the 1800s. But during Chydenius’s time in Kuusamo parish, several Kemi Saami villages still were engaged in wild reindeer hunting, fishing, and bird hunting. In this respect, their economy resembled that of traditional hunters such as the Mansi in the Urals, the Nganasan and Samoyed in the Ob and northern Yenisey, and the Evenk in Eastern Siberia. All these groups lived from the forest and hunted reindeer or moose as their main occupation. Before Finnish settlers entered western Kemi Lappmark in the late 1500s and started slash-and-burn agriculture, the Kemi Saami knew no trades other than hunting and fishing. They had only a few tame reindeer, which they used to pull sledges. By the end of the 1700s, Finnish settlers had burned most of the Kemi River basin forests, and the Saami had lost both their wildlands and their hunting economy. Sjögren’s 1828 study of the Kemi Saami noted that the Karelians were also moving north and west in the 1500s and migrated into Saami territory from the east. The White Sea Karelians regularly boated across Finland along its rivers and later engaged in sealing on the Gulf of Bothnia coast. These Kemi Saami were among the last Scandinavians to build bark canoes. We can deduce this from the many paddles found in Kemi Lappmark, whose dates range from the Stone Age to 1700 ce, when these people’s traditional lifestyle came to an end. The size, shape, and lightness of these paddles suggest they were used with small craft such as bark canoes or skin boats.

In Savukoski and Syväkangas, two Younger Stone Age paddles have been recovered; the Savukoski one is made of pine (Pinus sylvestris) and has been dated to 4500 bp. It is about 154 centimeters long, and the shaft and blade are of about equal lengths. The blade, which has a ridge running down each side, has a long leaf form, pointed at the end, and is 16.5 centimeters wide. The shaft, about 3 centimeters in diameter, has a grooved handle 6.5 centimeters wide. The Finnish National Museum’s record on the Syväkangas Kemi Saami paddle notes, “Saami paddle, broken, only a part of the shaft and the blade are left. The blade is long, oval [pitkänsuikea], very thin, especially at the edges, and decorated with grooves in the same manner as, for example, on skis.” Besides these specimens, several other Stone Age paddles have been found in Sodankylä, in the center of Kemi Lappmark.

Paddle finds have also been made in Kuusamo and Pyhäntä, south of Kemi Lappmark, and at Inari Lake. Archaeologist Mika Sarkkinen provided information about the Pyhäntä paddle when he delivered it to the Northern Österbotten Museum (Pohjois-Pohjanmaan Museo), saying: “The find site is in Tavastkenkä, Pyhäntä, from the bottom of the Pyhännän River. Total length 147 centimeters, blade 17 centimeters wide; the shaft is oval and about 2 by 3 centimeters. The blade is straight, not bent, as is typical of most finds. The surface is waterworn and is not as handsome as other paddles found in Pyhäntä. No information on the age (but likely Stone Age)."

The Finnish National Museum in Helsinki recovered two paddles dated between roughly 1500 and 1700, one from Rovaniemi and the other from Sodankylä. The later limit of this period overlaps with Chydenius’s travels, which may indicate that people in Kemi Lappmark still used bark canoes or skin boats while he was there. This was a typical taiga territory, and we may assume that at least in its southern parts, birch-bark canoes similar to those found in Vilhelmina parish in Swedish Lapland existed. It is therefore likely that Chydenius had some knowledge of Kemi Saami bark canoes, and he might even have seen them. This personal experience might have inspired him to undertake his dissertation on North American bark canoes, especially as his tutor, Kalm, had firsthand information from North America.

Read more in The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of Northern Eurasia, which is available from Smithsonian Books. Visit Smithsonian Books’ website to learn more about its publications and a full list of titles. 

Excerpt from The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of Northern Eurasia © 2020 Harri Luukkanen and Smithsonian Institution