Yak

A painting by William Bent Berczy (1791 – 1873) entitled " Indian Encampment near Amherstburg" features a stylized shore scene. In the rear is a bark canoe and a set of decorated paddles lying on the ground.



A closeup of the paddles reveal simple decorative patterns...




One paddle looks to have a diagonal checkered pattern with red paint (similar to William Armstrong's art) and the other has half the blade painted in red. This is reminiscent of the bark canoe souvenir model at the MET museum and some of James Peachey's paintings.

Another historic painting from Lieut. Robert Petley (1809-1869) in the Archives & of Canada.


Indian of the Mic-Mac Tribe
Library and Archives Canada
The painting illustrates a hunter armed with his rifle. Slung over his shoulder is a long fishing spear and two slender paddles with flattened, elongated grips. Once again, faint etchings in the main paddle blade reveals some hash marks in a chevron motif. Given that Peltey was a Military artist, I think it is fair to assume that his work would've reflected a certain military precision and attention to detail. Certainly the paddle shape is consistent with what is found in museums of the area.


Closeup

August 2016 Update: Click here to see a higher resolution version of Petley's painting.

Found some more images of the artwork of Frederick Verner. Pevious posts here revealed that Verner illustrated some basic chevron style markings on his paintings of First Nation canoe paddles. This artwork below is entitled, Indians, Fog Bound and features some red markings on the ends of the canoe as well as the paddle blades.








A earlier piece -  Misty Morning, Indians Crossing a Lake  - dated to 1896 features a similar pose showing that Verner re-used his subject matter and paddle decorations. Turns out this piece of Canadian art also fetched over the estimate at a recent auction.

The  National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London has an historic illustration in its collection that might be relevant to those with an interest in traditional paddle designs.

Dated to 1750, it is thought to be the earliest accurate representation of a Mi'kmaq birchbark canoe. Included in the scale drawing is a pole gripped paddle with recurved shoulders and a pointed tip.




Additional information on the backstory of this remarkable illustration is provided by an excerpt from Adney & Chappelle.

"The early English settlers of New England and New York were acquainted with the canoe forms of eastern Indians such as the Micmac, Malecite, Abnaki, and the Iroquois. Surviving records, however, show no detailed description of these canoes by an English writer and no illustration until about 1750. At this time a bark canoe, apparently Micmac, was brought from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to England and delivered to Lord Anson who had it placed in the Boat House of the Chatham Dockyard. There it was measured and a scale drawing was made by Admiralty draftsmen; the drawing is now in the Admiralty Collection of Draughts, in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich. A redrawing of this plan appears opposite. It probably represents a war canoe, since a narrow, sharp-ended canoe is shown. The bottom, neither flat nor fully round, is a rounded V-shape; this may indicate a canoe intended for coastal waters. Other drawings, of a later date, showing crude plans of canoes, exist in Europe but none yet found appear as carefully drawn as the Admiralty plan, a scale drawing, which seems to be both the earliest and the most accurate 18th-century representation of a tribal type of American Indian bark canoe."

Adney documented that Mi'kmaq and other Wabanaki canoes were well known for their elaborate ornamentation of winter bark. Shame that that the original Admiralty draftsmen didn't document if any such decoration existed on the canoe or the paddle, but that's not surprising since their obvious purpose would've been documented the lines of the hull.

For anyone interested in recreating this unique paddle shape, offsets for this paddle design can be found in Graham Warren's 100 Canoe Paddle Designs book.

Here's another image of the paddle featured in The voyages and explorations of Samuel de Champlain, 1604-1616. It contains one of the earliest recorded images of a North American paddle. Figure B illustrates a woman holding onto a child with one hand while grasping chevron decorated paddle with the other.


As far as I can tell, it is one of the oldest images that features the chevron theme I've been consistently seeing in historic paddle art. One must wonder if future artists simply used Champlain's imagery to perpetuate this decorative feature or if it really was as abundant as it seems in art today. I'm still searching for surviving museum paddles with this theme but have yet to come across one.

For more editions of this image, including a colour version from another text, check out an earlier post on Champlain here.

Stand-up Paddling might be the new rage in watersports, but is certainly not a new phenomenon. From this EBay Link, a reproduction sketch originally featured in Harper's Weekly (1874).


INDIAN SKETCHES, INDIAN CANOE RACE
Harper's Weekly, June 1874.
Closeups reveal the natives using narrow-bladed, pole style grip paddles in the scene which I would assume would make gripping and controlling the paddles a additional challenge.


Paddle 1 Closeup


Paddle 2 closeup