Bark Canoes

by Jennings, John; Pemberton, John

• ISBN13: 9781770851580
• ISBN10: 1770851585
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-08-30
• Publisher: Firefly Books Ltd

Summary

The definitive reference to indigenous peoples' watercraft around the world. Tappan Adney (1868-1950) was an artist, writer, ethnographer, historian and modelmaker of unparalleled ability. He tirelessly documented the cultures and languages of vanishing native cultures. His most enduring legacy is the extraordinary 110 birchbark canoe models he handbuilt to exacting standards. The models, now held at The Mariners' Museum in Newport News, Virginia, were built to ensure future canoe builders had exact reproductions for reference. These historically accurate, 1:5 scale models were meticulously researched, and traditionally constructed using the identical materials of the originals. Many are based on canoes that were the last example of their type. Before such a canoe disintegrated, Adney measured and recorded its dimensions, consulted with native builders and studied historical photographs and paintings. The canoe models are organized into eight distinct groups: Maritimes Eastern Woodland Northwest Lower British Columbia Fur Trade Amur Valley Asia South America. Each canoe model is beautifully photographed and accompanied by captions that outline the craft's origins, uses and technical details. Adney's amazing technical drawings for the models are also included. An extensive introduction covers Adney's life and provides information about native model builders, canoe decoration and fur trade heraldry. Bark Canoes is the definitive reference to indigenous -- and ingenious -- watercraft used around the world.

Excerpts

<p><i>Opening introduction to the chapter on the life of</i><h3>Edwin Tappan Adney</h3></p><p>The canoe models of Edwin Tappan Adney, universally recognized as the foremost scholar of the North American bark canoe, represent the distillation of a lifetime of research into the Native canoeing cultures of northern North America. Adney originally intended his collection of models to illustrate a major book on the subject. Sadly, he never completed that work, and his extraordinary models have remained in storage at the Mariners' Museum in Newport News, Virginia, for more than half a century, known only to a relative few. It is estimated that Adney constructed about 150 models of Native canoes during his lifetime. This volume presents the complete collection of Adney models at the Mariners' Museum -- 110 in all -- representing all major Native groups of North America who built bark canoes.</p><p>Tappan Adney was unquestionably the most important scholar the canoe world has known. Fortunately, his passion for Native canoes culture came at a time when it was still possible to gather information from elderly Native canoe builders and retired fur traders of the birchbark era. As a result, his research yielded an extraordinarily diverse and voluminous written record in addition to his models.</p><p>For Adney, building models was not a hobby or an appendage to some other enterprise. He believed that Native bark canoes, and knowledge about their construction, were fast disappearing. Therefore a collection of exact replicas at a consistent scale of 1 to 5 would be crucial for the preservation of this aspect of Native heritage.</p><p>When Adney began building, he was the only one in the world doing so, and even he was almost too late. During his 63 years of intermittent research, from 1887 to his death in 1950, much of the first-hand knowledge of bark canoes disappeared. Without Adney's vast collection of papers and models he left as his legacy, a vital part of North American Native heritage might well have been irretrievably lost.</p><p>In a way, Tappan Adney was a tragic figure. He would probably be largely unknown today if someone else -- Howard Chapelle -- had not completed his great book for him, because he never quite around to the task. While the study of canoes was undoubtedly his great passion, he was all to easily distracted by his many other obsessions, including Native languages and ethnology, photography, painting and music. Adney read Greek, Latin, French and Maliseet, and spoke the latter fluently. The 10 boxes of his Native canoe material at the Mariners' Museum and the 88 boxes of his research records at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, mostly on the subject of Native linguistics, attest to the depth of his scholarship. They also include material on Native culture, botany, astronomy and heraldry -- a subject on which Adney would become one of North America's leading experts. He developed an abiding interest in birds as well, and was a charter member of the Explorers Club. His illustrations were used in museum publications, in Frank M. Chapman's Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America (first published in 1895) and in Theodore Roosevelt's Good Hunting. Combining the roles of journalist, artist and photographer, he wrote and illustrated The Klondike Stampede, about the Klondike gold rush. Appalled by the cruelty to horses he witnessed in the Klondike, he became a strong advocate for animal rights and lectured for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Yet Adney's first love always remained the Native bark canoes, and their linguistic and cultural content.</p>