Showing posts with label Dugouts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dugouts. Show all posts
Monday, 10 April 2017
Carving Dugouts as Cultural Education
We're written before about Voyages of Rediscovery, an educational organization that builds and uses canoes "as a medium for education and exploration," initially confined to the Columbia River, but more recently in other areas of North America. The organization's primary focus has been birchbark canoes and fiberglass replicas thereof, but they've lately gotten into dugouts as well.
Tyee, above, is a 33-foot western red cedar canoe completed early this month at Kettle Falls on the Columbia. VOR's Adam Wicks-Arshak reports that 11 main participants and hundreds of community members carved it over 11 days with guidance from John Ruskey of the Quapaw Canoe Company.
There are plenty of photos of the building process on Flickr in these three sets:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/79648967@N08/sets/72157631165653752/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/79648967@N08/sets/72157631455709838/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/79648967@N08/sets/72157631468488298/
Facebook members can view more photos of the finished boat here:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3771677772549.2135995.1294900839&type=3
And here's one of Quapaw's other projects, recently completed at the KIPP Delta Collegiate Middle School in Helena, Arkansas, and being paddled on the lower Mississippi River:
For Facebook users, more photos of the same boat:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3855893517890.2137966.1294900839&type=3
I love the carvings on both canoes, which look like mythic aquatic beasts swimming on their respective rivers. I don't think these carvings have solid cultural background, but it's hard to argue with the boats' appearance or the overall value of the projects.
Tyee, above, is a 33-foot western red cedar canoe completed early this month at Kettle Falls on the Columbia. VOR's Adam Wicks-Arshak reports that 11 main participants and hundreds of community members carved it over 11 days with guidance from John Ruskey of the Quapaw Canoe Company.
There are plenty of photos of the building process on Flickr in these three sets:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/79648967@N08/sets/72157631165653752/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/79648967@N08/sets/72157631455709838/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/79648967@N08/sets/72157631468488298/
Facebook members can view more photos of the finished boat here:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3771677772549.2135995.1294900839&type=3
And here's one of Quapaw's other projects, recently completed at the KIPP Delta Collegiate Middle School in Helena, Arkansas, and being paddled on the lower Mississippi River:
For Facebook users, more photos of the same boat:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3855893517890.2137966.1294900839&type=3
I love the carvings on both canoes, which look like mythic aquatic beasts swimming on their respective rivers. I don't think these carvings have solid cultural background, but it's hard to argue with the boats' appearance or the overall value of the projects.
Thursday, 16 March 2017
Brazilian Dugouts Again
It will come as no surprise that the traditional Brazilian dugout is fading in popularity – like most indigenous boats (indeed, like much indigenous culture) around the world. According to materials provided by my source, Silvio Antunha, forest protection laws enacted in the 1970s have made it difficult to obtain trees suitable for the construction of traditional dugouts in Brazil, and the knowledge and skills are on the wane as older builders leave the scene without an opportunity to pass that knowledge on to a new generation. The boats are sometimes called vogue canoes (or bogue in Caiçara pronunciation), vogue being the term for paddling, the stroke or rhythm of paddling, or the paddler who calls the stroke. Smaller caiçara canoes, like those shown in my previous post, are usually built from softwoods like guaperuvu (Schizolodium parahybum), while larger ones – up to 40 feet long! – make use of more rot-resistant woods like jequitibá , and oars (paddles?) and other components are made of jacatirão (Tibouchina pulchra), massaranduba (Mimusops brasiliensis) and caixeta (Tabebuia cassinoides).
It appears that larger boats have added strakes and built-up bows and sterns for higher freeboard, and these may be referred to as “sewn” boats. (The rather rough, machine-translated document I’m relying on uses the term “embroidered.” It also uses the term “rowing” which, I believe, implies for paddling. For the original, see here.) I’ll quote at length:
The rowing canoes of this size are propelled by a team of several paddlers, using even sailing gears, when it has a mast fixed on the front of the vessel. As the vogue canoe has no keel, the sails (which could reach the number three) are used only with winds from the stern of the vessel.
People could spend a week to go and return to Santos, depending on the conditions of the ocean and the winds. Most of the farming production and the cachaça (sugar cane
rum) of the northern coast was shipped by this type of vessel.
From the 1920s, the vogue canoes began to be moved by motors.
It's interesting that these boats, which are reportedly very unstable, were used for coastal freight carrying, and under sail. The strikingly colorful paint schemes, as shown above and in the previous post, seem to be characteristic of the craft. For more nice photos like the one above, and text in Portuguese, see this page from the Oceanographic Institute of the University of São Paulo.
Correction to previous post: The phrase “to pull,” meaning to build a canoe (by “pulling it” out of the tree trunk) comes from a Caiçara term, not Portuguese.
Addition to previous post: photos were taken by Fernando Costa
Addition to previous post: photos were taken by Fernando Costa
Tuesday, 7 March 2017
New Bronze Age Dugouts Uncovered
According to this article on BBC News, an important Bronze Age archaeological site is being excavated at a quarry in Whittlesey, England. The village, located along the old course of the River Nene, burned about 800 B.C., and was subsequently buried by 3 meters of peat and silt, which preserved a great many artifacts, including six (count 'em!) oak dugout canoes, along with other items such as ropes, buckets, swords, spoons, and a pot of nettle stew. (We don't wonder why that was left uneaten.)
There's the usual nonsense about the artifacts being "perfectly preserved," when it's clear from the photos that the canoes, at least, did of course suffer deterioration: but that's not to imply that they were not sufficiently well preserved to be of potentially great archaeological value Unfortunately, the article includes no details about the canoes, but if you learn anything elsewhere, please leave a comment.
Thanks again to Marian for this tip.
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