Native American Water Craft in North America, Part I                

                 By John Nass, Jr.

Editor, President Mon-Yough Chapter #3

Introduction

     This edition of the journal will focus on water craft used by Native Americans. Part one of this issue will consider the kayak and the birch bark canoe, while Part II will consider the dugout canoe. Of the three, the kayak and the canoe have become recreational water craft in the Americas. While the canoe has not substantially changed except for the manufacturing components, there are numerous versions of the kayak, each form designed with a specific purpose in mind. 

     Canoes, by definition, are open-air crafts propelled through the water using paddles. In North America, Native Americans built three types of water craft: the kayak, the birch bark, and the dugout. While the dugout has a long history of usage both in Europe and the Americas, the antiquity of the kayak and the birchbark canoe is unknown, mostly due to its perishable nature. 

     While kayaks are paddled, these are not open-air shells. Kayaks consist of either a wooden and/or a bone frame across which is stretched shewn together animal skins, usually seal or walrus. The skins of these two aquatic mammals are ideal for making the covering for the kayak. One to three reinforced openings exist for the occupant(s) to sit within the craft. These crafts were used extensively for hunting seals and other small aquatic mammals and for fishing. For hunting larger game such whales and walrus and for moving supplies and people, the open-air skin boat known as the umiak was used (Bonvillain 2001). This craft was the product of a community coordinated project because of its size (16 to 30 feet in length) and the required labor to assemble the craft (the frame and the skin covering)(www.achp.gov ; www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca).

     While the umiak was designed for open, coastal sea hunting and transportation, the Kayak was designed for hunting and fishing inland lakes, rivers, and coastal waters of theArctic Ocean, the North Atlantic, and the Bering Sea ((Bonvillain 2001; Oswath 2008). In Inuktituk, the language of the Inuit people, the word kayak means “man’s boat” or “hunter’s boat.

Above: an Inuit in a one-person kayak c. 1920file:///C:/Users/John/Desktop/MP-1976.24.64%20_%20Inuit%20in%20kayak,%20about%201920_files/a328ce5649e910db2f9d75d4df3a779b.jpg

          As bands of people spread across the Artic region and eventually to Greenland, these skin-covered craft were essential in the movement of people, dogs, and supplies (Oswalth 2008). The age of the kayak and the umiak is difficult to estimate (Oswalth 2008). Artic scholars believe the umiak dates to early Inuit (Thule) times (1000 CE) in the central Arctic and appeared in Greenland, Baffin Island, Labrador, the Mackenzie Delta, Alaska and eastern Siberia. The Kayak is believed to be older, c. 2000 BCE. 

     Unlike the skin covered water craft of the artic region, the birchbark canoe was limited in its distribution to the upper Midwest, southern Canada, and the Northeast – including the St Lawrence Valley – due to the distribution of birch trees (Oswalth 2008). Again, the age of birchbark canoes is uncertain. European explorers of the St. Lawrence region encountered Native Americans in canoes in the 16^th century. Presumably the origins of canoes dates to sometime in the Woodland Period, c. 700 CE, if not earlier.

     The skills required to build birchbark canoes were passed on through generations of master builders. The frames were usually of cedar, soaked in water and bent to the shape of the canoe. The seams were waterproofed with hot spruce or pine. The shape of each canoe differed according to its intended use, as well as the traditions of the people who made it. Smaller canoes were used for hunting and for fishing in the lakes and rivers across the Northeast, while larger canoes were used by war parties

     The types of birchbark canoes used by Indigenous peoples and voyageurs differed according to its intended route and how  such cargo it was intended to carry. The famous canot du maître, on which the fur trade depended, was up to 12 m long, carried a crew of six to 12 and a load of 2,300 kg of cargo on the route from Montreal to 

Above: Building a canoe. Artwork by Lewis Parker (The Canadian Encyclopedia).   

Lake Superior in the interior of the Great Lakes region. The smaller version, the canot du hord, carried a crew of five or six and a cargo of 1,360 kg over the smaller lakes, rivers, and streams of the upperGreat Lakes region. Successful navigation of the interior rivers was not always successful. Rapids on some rivers could not be negotiated, requiring transportation canoes and cargo overland to a safer location on the river. Other times, traders took chances which did not always have a desired outcome. In the 1960s, a coordinated investigation of rivers and streams along the Ontario and Minnesota border recovered numerous brass and iron artifacts from over turned canoes in areas of rapids (Woolworth et al. 1975).

     According to Prindle 1994), bark canoes could be stored in two ways: either kept from excessive light and moisture (elevated upside-down in the shade under a cover), or completely submerged in a lake or pond with rocks used as weights.

Above: 18^th century birchbark canoe on display by the Pejepscot Historical Society, Maine.  (www.mainepubic.org) 

      One or both types of bark canoes were used in the famous Joliet and Marquette venture from St. Ignace, Michigan, to the explore the western Great Lakes region and the  upper   Mississippian River in the 1670s (Wisconsin Historical Society digital collection, 2003). 

 

Above: Shooting the rapids. Painting of the fur trade canot du maître canoe. (www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca)

    

 Listed below are some short videos of making birchbark canoes.

  https://youtu.be/46LoBsZZwok?si=nMsaFI_kKKNg9TJp

 http://youtu.be/k2leKfPyBbU 

https://youtu.be/PQnM3YawP-Y?si=VVNKoNlKNjEASQGo

References

Bonvillain, Nancy
2001 Native Nations: Cultures and Histories of Native North America. Prentice Hall, Publishers.
 

Oswalth, Wendell H.
2008  This Land Was Theirs: A study of Native North American. Oxford University Press.
 

Prindle, Tara
1994  NativeTech: Native American Technology and Art.(http://www.nativetech.org)
 

Woolworth, Alan R., Douglas A. Birk, Robert C. Wheeler, and Walter A. Kenyon
1975  Voices from the Rapids: An Underwater Search for Fur Trade Artifacts, 1960-1973.
           Minnesota Historical Archaeological Series No. 3., Publications of the Minnesota
           Historical Society, Saint Paul.

 THE VALUE OF RECOGNITION, Part II

John Nass, Jr. Editor,  President Mon-Yough Chapter #3 and 

Judy Durista, Treasurer, Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology

  Introduction

     The society grants four awards that recognize individual achievement. These many or may not be presented at the annual meeting. Three of these, the Life-Time Achievement, J. Alden Mason, and the Archey emphasize longevity of service, while the Shrader/George Youth Award, recognizes the achievements of young adults under the age of 18 years in age. 

     As mentioned in the previous issue of the Journal, this instalment answers the question why do these awards exist and why they are named for individual?  To help answer these two questions, Judy Durista has graciously agreed to discuss the Frances Dorrance Award and why it was created to acknowledge her legacy. I in turn will tackle the Mason and Witthoft Awards.

      The Mason Award recognizes the career of Dr. John Alden Mason (1885-1967). He received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1907 and his doctorate from the University of California, Berkley in 1911. His dissertation was about the Salinan Amerindian group in California. Between 1911 and 1922 he conducted ethnographic and linguistic studies of California Native American groups and the Puerto Ricab in Puerto Rico. In 1922, he conducted his first archaeological research, a site survey in Columbia, South America. From c. 1923 until 1926 John was an assistant curator at the Field Museum of Natural History, New York City (Means 2023). Between 1911 and 1926, he had the opportunity to study with Alfred Krober (Berkley) and scholarly interactions with Franz Boas (Columbia) while at the Field Museum (Kidder and Satterthwaite 1968). 

     In 1926 he accepted a curator position with the University Museum, the University of Pennsylvania. While at Penn, John conducted extensive archaeological research in Mexico and South America, especially Peru (Means 2023; Kidder and Satterthwaite 1968). In 1928/29, together with Frances Dorrance and other like mined individuals, they founded the Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology. John served as its first president (1929-1930).

         John was highly respected by students and his colleagues at Penn. He was a member of numerous professional societies, local, state, national, and foreign, and at one time or another was an officer in most of the, including the presidency of the Society for American Archaeology. In the 1940s, he was the editor of the American Anthropologist (Schwartz 2017). He retired from that position in 1958, but continued to stay active at the museum and in local organizations (Kidder and Satterthwaite 1968; Schwartz 2017). When the officers of the SPA created an award to recognize a professional archaeologist and her/his career as an educator and contributor to the vitality of the society, naming the award for J. Alden Mason was an easy choice.  

    The Witthoft Award recognizes the career of John  Gerard Witthoft (1921-1993), former professor ofAnthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, who passed in 1993 after teaching for 20 years. John’s areas of expertise were Native American Ethnology, pre-contact archaeology, and colonial archaeology. He received his undergraduate in Biology and English from the State University of New York at Albany in 1944, and he earned a M.A. in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1946 (Cotter 1996). 

     Starting in 1948, John worked at the Pennsylvania State Museum in Harrisburg as chief curator and state anthropologist, a post he held until 1966. During this same period, John also served as the state archaeologist for Pennsylvania, as well as serving as the president of the SPA in 1962.

      During his tenure at the state museum, John was a one-man-band/cheerleader, assisting chapters with excavations, visiting chapter meetings, speaking at whatever group meeting that asked for him, and encouraging advocationlists to do careful field work and keep reliable records. According to Cotter, he never asked for, nor accepted a fee for speaking.

      Significant excavations supervised by John included excavation at the Sheep Rock Shelter in Huntington County and at the 18^th /early 19^th century historic Ephrata Cloister in Ephrata, Pennsylvania. He also studied the Paleoindian materials from the Shoop site in Dauphin County.

      John continued his ethnographic/ethnohistoric research of Native Americans while at Penn, especially his work with the Eastern Cherokee, the Delaware, the Cataba, and member nations of the New York Iroquois. His interests also included the colonial fur trade (Cotter 1996).  

      John’s career was summarized by John Cotter, a friend and colleague. These quotes are taken from Mason’s obituary published in American Antiquity in 1996. Cotter states “To be singularly admired by nonprofessional archaeologists, extraordinarily popular with university students as a gifted and generous teacher, and accepted by his peers in archaeology as a scholar and authority, were achievements uniquely associated with John Witthoft. . . His pony tail, graying hair, snuff, indifferent dress, and grand disdain of fashion never interfered with is willingness to share what he knew in order to help others. ” (1996:279).

     The Frances Dorrance Award is given to the Chapter of the SPA that has recorded the most new sites with the Pennsylvania Archaeology Site Survey at the State Museum, Harrisburg, PA, for each calendar year. While the description is simple and straightforward, the woman it is named for was anything but. For her time, 1877 to 1973, Miss Dorrance’s accomplishments produced significant milestones and for a woman of her time, she was quite remarkable.

      She was a descendent of one of the oldest and distinguished families of the Wyoming Valley and of Col. George Dorrance who died during the Battle of Wyoming during the American Revolutionary War.

      She distinguished herself throughout her lifetime with this partial list of accomplishments:

·                Graduate of Vassar College Class of 1900, Phi Beta Kappa

·                Graduate in Library Sciences, New York School of Library Sciences, Albany

·                Noted Scholar at the University of Berlin, Columbia University and the Marine Biological                       Laboratory in Massachusetts

·                Library positions at Trenton, NJ, Osterhout Library in Wilkes-Barre, PA

·                Director of the Wyoming Historical Society (1922)

           Head librarian of the Hoyt Library (1938-1952)

·               Head of the Wilkes College Library circulation department

·               Member and Secretary of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission

·               Served on boards of the Pennsylvania Folklore Society, Back Mountain Library, and others

·               Made local historic preservation and archaeology her life’s work through the programs                            she helped create under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration to put academics              to work during the Depression.

·               Named a Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania

     The Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology came into being by way of her efforts and collaboration with others who realized that Native American presence in Pennsylvania was being lost without note or history with site destruction amid development and settlement progress. She initiated the Indian Survey sending out 13,000 survey letters to all factions of the public from her position as executive director of the Luzerne County Historical Society. This was the first statewide archaeological survey in Pennsylvania.

      The Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology came into being by way of her efforts and collaboration with others who realized that Native American presence in Pennsylvania was being lost without note or history with site destruction amid development and settlement progress. She initiated the Indian Survey sending out 13,000 survey letters to all factions of the public from her position as executive director of the Luzerne County Historical Society. This was the first statewide archaeological survey in Pennsylvania.  In March 1924 the survey was sent to museums, historical 

Above: Frances Dorrance with her J. Alden Mason Award from the Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology, awarded in 1970.

societies, the boy  scouts, and local authorities throughout Eastern Pennsylvania. The purpose was to research written records of Native Americans, preserve and arrange collections for future generations, and to make an initial effort to preserve the surviving remains of Native Americans and scientifically organize and study them.

      In 1926, the Indian Survey expanded to include western Pennsylvania, and became the first statewide survey in Pennsylvania. (Note the partners in Volume 1 of the Pennsylvania Archaeologist). In 1927 Miss Dorrance asked the state government to form an archaeological commission. That didn’t happen. Instead, she was appointed to the State Historic Commission (PHC)(now PHMC), which formed an archaeology committee to complete the survey.

Over 1,900 sites were documented across the state (see below).

     The start of the Pennsylvanian Archaeological Site Survey (PASS) came into being as a solution to the massive job of compiling and maintaining the data from the survey. Frances Dorrance, along with J. Alden Mason, organized the Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology to keep the survey going into the future. The SPA chapter #11 is named after Frances Dorrance. J. Alden Mason served as the Society’s first President with Frances Dorrance as Secretary. She later served as SPA President in 1934-1935.

      The information about Frances Dorrance came from a number of sources including, Frances Dorrance’s obituary and Wyoming Historical and Geological Society which has become the Luzerne County Historical Society as well as the PHMC blogs and online reporting and ,of course, early issues of the Pennsylvania Archaeologist. The names on the SPA awards and scholarships were real people who devoted their lives to the mission of the SPA giving their time and talents to a purpose outside of themselves and were immortalized with their names on awards that outlived them. We need to remind ourselves that they were people like us and perhaps be inspired.

 References 

Cotter JL. John Gerard Witthoft 1921–1993. American Antiquity. 1996;61(2):279-284. doi:10.1017/S0002731600051908

 II, Alfred Kidder, and Satterthwaite, Linton. "J. Alden Mason." Expedition Magazine 10, no. 2 (January, 1968): -. Accessed May 13, 2025. https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/j-alden-mason/

 

Means, Bernard K.
2023  Start the Presses? John Alden Mason as Mesoamericanist and a Reluctant New Deal                                Archaeologist in the 1930s. In Sins of Our Ancestors (and of Ourselves): Confronting                              Archaeological Legacies, edited by April Beisaw, David E. Witt, Katie Kirakosian, and Ryan                    Wheeler, pp. 81-91. Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association:                        Volume 34, Issue 1. American Anthropological Association.

 Schwartz, David A.. "John Alden Mason." Expedition Magazine 59, no. 1 (April, 2017): -. Accessed May 13, 2025. https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/john-alden-mason/