Woles

I've been searching old books for artist prints documenting some of their paddle shapes and decoration. As Gidmark writes in Canoe Paddles: A Complete Guide to Making Your Own early native paddles are frustratingly difficult to research given that many have not survived through the centuries. Most documentation has been in the form of European explorers who often crudely represented the paddles in out-of-scale drawings and sketches.

One fascinating historical document with such imagery is the the Codex canadiensis, a 79-page document written circa 1700. It is believed to have been written by Louis Nicolas , a French missionary in Canada in the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth century. The codex is illustrated with 180 drawings of First Nations peoples, plants, mammals, birds and fish of Canada

Collections Canada has a site setup to view all the illustrations in this piece of Canadian heritage. Here are some shots below that show some of the paddle forms and decorations encountered by Nicholas. I'll be posting more on other historic paddle illustrations soon.

From this Ebay Link is an engraving of entitled "SKETCHES AT THE INTERNATIONAL FISHERIES EXHIBITION" published in The Illustrated London News June 2nd, 1883.



A closeup of sketch 9, "Indians fishing, (model from Canada)" showcases the classic Mi'kmaq humped canoe with a stern paddler and the bowman preparing to spear some Salmon)





Figure 11 has a different canoe and is labelled as a "Milicete Indian in his fishing canoe"



The International Fisheries Exhibition of 1883 seems to have been quite a global affair. Another author, Frederick Whymper, documented some of the Canadian representatives in his book  Fisheries of the World : an Illustrated and Descriptive Record of the International Fisheries Exhibition, 1883. The sketch below is believed to be that of famed Maliseet Guide, Gabe Tomah.

An Ebay seller claims to have a silver gelatin original photograph dated to 1887 which features a couple in an elegant canoe. To my eyes it looks to be a very old birchbark canoe since some pitched gores are just visible in the grainy zoomed picture.





The gentleman in the rear looks to be using a graceful paddle with an elongated grip...



Another photo dated to same time and place is a group shot of paddlers. The seller describes it as "Visiting Neighbors by canoe, Riverside, MA c.1887"



The closeup shot reveals some lovely elegant paddles as well as fancy paddling clothes for the ladies...




If I'm not mistaken, Riverside Massachusetts is near the famed Charles River, where a thriving canoe building industry once existed. Archive.org has a nice little booklet entitled online entitled  Souvenir of the Charles River (1904). While published much later than this purported photo, it shows just how popular recreational canoeing was at the turn of the 20th century. Lots of great vintage photos and ads of early canoe builders as well.

Found some paintings by Lieut. Robert Petley (1809-1869) in the Archives & National Gallery of Canada. Petley was a military artist and an officer with the 50th Regiment who spent the majority of his tour of duty in the Maritime provinces, serving at Fredericton in 1831 and with the 71st Regiment in Halifax from 1832 to 1836. He officially documented military sites in Nova Scotia but also produced personal works with an emphasis on Mi'kmaq (Micmac) subjects.

This seems to be echoed in a work of his entitled "Interior of a Wigwam" in which there are two versions of a similar scene. In the foreground of each painting is a slender, elongated canoe paddle resting on baskets. Once again, we see a long, extended grip which seems consistent with the paddles of this region, like the ones found in the New Brunswick Museum.


Interior of a Wigwam c. 1834
watercolour on wove paper
14.7 x 20.7 cm
National Gallery of Canada (no. 26987)


Paddle Closeup




Interior of a Wigwam
Library and Archives Canada


Paddle Closeup