Uses of Birchbark in the Northeast

Copyright, 1957,
by
The Robert Abbe Museum,
Bar Harbor, Maine
All rights to reproduce this book,
or portions thereof, reserved.
Printed by Seth Low Press, Rockland, Maine
CONTENTS
ILLUSTRATIONS
2
FOREWORD
3
USES OF BIRCH-BARK IN NEW ENGLAND
4
TABOOS
7
WINTER AND SUMMER BARK
8
SHELTER
8
UTENSILS
11
MAPLE SUGAR
18
COOKING IN BIRCH-BARK UTENSILS
19
BIRCH-BARK MATS
20
SPLINTS AND BANDAGES
21
LAND AND WATER TRANSPORTATION
22
OTHER USES OF CANOES
29
BIRCH-BARK TORCHES
30
BIRCH-BARK NOISEMAKERS
32
PICTURE-WRITING
33
DECORATION OF BIRCH-BARK
34
BITTEN BARK PATTERNS
48
THE BIRCH IN MYTH AND LEGEND
49
CONCLUSION
59
BIBLIOGRAPHY
60
ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATE I
a. Very old dish.
b. Pattern
PLATE II
Two views of a tall cylindrical box
14
PLATE III
Oval box with cover
15
PLATE IV
Round box made by Tomah Joseph
16
PLATE V
a. Bucket or water pail.
17
PLATE VI
Penobscot canoe
27
PLATE VII
Scale model of Penobscot canoe
28
PLATE VIII
Picture writing
35
PLATE IX
Porcupine-quill-decorated box
37
PLATE X
Round box decorated with porcupine quills
38
PLATE XI
Birch-bark box with anthropomorphic
design
40
PLATE XII
Patterns cut out of birch-bark
43
PLATE XIII
Box made by Sylvester Gabriel
44
PLATE XIV
Designs in relief, signature of Dr.
P. Polchies
45
PLATE XV
Drawing of fish spear
46
PLATE XVI
Designs from birch-bark containers
47
PLATE XVII
Illustrations for myths
57
PLATE XVIII
Woodbox made and decorated by Tomah
Joseph
58
b. Pattern
13
FOREWORD
In gathering together early historic and modern references, it is soon obvious
that much of the material is indefinite and terms and spellings used are not uniform.
Many apparent inconsistencies have been cleared up in the text, but an extra word
of explanation seems necessary for some modern names.
The name Algonkin, or Algonquin, is a noun used specifically for a single tribe
of Indians, composed of many small bands, who, according to John R. Swanton, [he
calls them Algonkin], “were the easternmost division of the Chippewa group of the
Algonquian linguistic stock.” They are located in Canada on the “Ottawa River but
particularly in its northern tributaries.”
Algonkian, or Algonquian, is the adjectival form, and is used to designate the
many tribes speaking some form of the Algonquian, or Algonkian, language. In
both the name of the specific tribe and the name for the many tribes that makeup the
language group, the significance lies not so much in the qu or the k, which are both
pronounced the same, but in the endings: -in for the noun and -ian for the adjectival
form.
As with the above, so also with place, tribal, personal, and mythological names authors disagree - Naskapi, Nascopi, Nascapee; Malecite, Maliseet; and so on, ad
infinitum. When quoted the words are spelled as given in the references; but when
used in the text, we have adopted the spelling favored by the authorities in the
particular field.
4
USES OF BIRCH-BARK
USES OF BIRCH-BARK IN NEW ENGLAND
AND THE MARITIME PROVINCES
The Indians of northern New England and the Maritime Provinces found in the
white birch [Betula papyrifera] a source of supply for many different needs. The
economic life of the Indians who lived within the range of distribution of this tree
was tremendously affected by their dependence on it. When the explorers and early
settlers first found these Indians they were living in what might well be termed a
Birch-bark Hunting Culture. Birch-bark was the predominant raw material used for
wigwam coverings, canoes, and household, camp, and trail utensils and implements.
In addition to helping determine the pattern of the material culture of the Indians,
the white birch also influenced their art forms and entered into their mythology.
White birch grows in abundance throughout Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont,
adjacent Canada, and westward along the Great Lakes. It also grows, but less
prolifically, as far south as Long Island, and north nearly to the limit of trees, even
to Alaska. The influence of the white birch extended well beyond its ecological
bounds through trade, plunder taken in war, gifts, and other forms of distribution.
Dr. Frank G. Speck said that the Indians of Maine believed that Gluskabe, their
culture hero, who endowed all things with life, commanded the white birch to take
care of the Indians. Certainly no other one tree played so important a part in their
lives. The white birch forest was their supermarket. They depended on it to furnish
material for all sorts of permanent and temporary equipment and supplies essential
to daily living from cradle to grave, inasmuch as the shapes into which properly
prepared birch-bark can be formed are almost limitless. An enumeration of articles
that were made of it in recent as well as early times would be unbelievably long.
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5
EARLY USES OF BIRCH-BARK
ANIMAL CALLS
GAMES
PIPES
ARMOR
GRINDING SHEETS
PORCUPINE QUILL WORK
BANDAGES
HANGINGS
PORRINGERS
BASKETS
HATS
POUCHES
BEDS
HOUSE COVERINGS
POWDER FLASKS
BEDDING
ILLUSTRATIONS
QUIVERS
BERRY BASKETS
INSULATION
RAINCOATS
BERRY BOXES
KETTLES
RATTLES
BIERS
KINDLING
RECEPTACLES
BOWLS
LADDERS
SAILS
BOXES
LEGENDS
SAP CONTAINERS
BUCKETS
LETTERS
SEED TESTERS
CACHE LININGS
LITTERS
SEWING
CANOES
MAGIC
SHIELDS
CANOPIES
MAPS
SIGNS
CASTS FOR BROKEN BONES
MAPLE SUGAR SPILES
SMOKE-HOLE FLAPS
CLOTHING
MAPLE SUGAR SAP
SMOKE-RACK COVERS
CONTAINERS
KETTLES
SPLINTS
COOKING UTENSILS
MAPLE SUGAR CONES
SPOONS
CRADLES
MATS
STENCILS
CUPS
MEAT BAGS
STONE BOILING
DESIGNS
MEDICINE
STORAGE CONTAINERS
DIPPERS
MESSAGES
STUFFING
DOLLS
MOOSE CALLS
TINDER
DOORS
MUSIC MAKERS
TOOLS
DRUMS
MUSKRAT CALLS
TORCHES
DYES
NOISE MAKERS
TRAYS
EMBROIDERY
PACK BASKETS
UTENSILS
FANS
PAILS
WATERPROOFING
FIGURES: TOTEMS, ETC.
PAINT
WIGWAMS
FIRE WOOD
PAINT HOLDERS
WINDING SHEETS
FLARES
PAPER
WORMING
FOOD FOR DEAD
PATTERNS
WRAPPERS
FUNNELS
PILLOWS
6
USES OF BIRCH-BARK
There are several major centers of birch-bark production. Studies made
by Densmore of the Chippewa, Speck of the Montaignais and River Desert
Algonquin, and Davidson for the Têtes de Boule, reveal considerable
underlying uniformity. There is variation, however, in shape of containers,
techniques of sewing and decoration, from tribe to tribe and among
individuals.
Although few antique birch-bark articles have survived we know from
Gookin, Josselyn, Williams, the Jesuit Relations, and other less important
contemporary sources that in early colonial times the Indians still made,
decorated, and used birch-bark articles extensively. The early influx of
French and English trade goods into the area undoubtedly had a profound
cumulative effect on the old Birch-bark Culture and slowly brought about a
diminution in dependence on birch-bark, so that we no longer have a
culture determined by it; but birch-bark is still used in camps and by
hunting and picnicking parties. The tourist interest in native crafts has also
created a revival in the making of art products of birch-bark.
For a number of reasons the Indians often continued to use old materials
despite gradual acculturation and the availability of “modern
improvements” which could slip in to take the place of utensils that had
been lost, worn out, or otherwise rendered useless. It seems as if in part that
many Indians were reluctant to depart from the ways of their forefathers
through fear of losing a spiritual potency. Roger Williams said specifically
that “some old and poore women” especially could not be weaned away
from their use of less efficient native implements, being “fearfull” of
leaving “the old tradition. “ The most important reasons of all, however, for
the retention of birch-bark long after trade articles were available perhaps
lay in the bark itself, which so adequately and inexpensively supplied their
needs; for Indians quickly gave up the bow and arrow, stone knives and
axes, and pottery vessels when they perceived the obvious superiority of
metal weapons, tools and utensils.
It is qualities inherent in birch-bark that made it an ideal medium for
both utilitarian and ceremonial objects in a variety of shapes and sizes.
Frequent attention has been called to some of its apparently inconsistent
attributes by Densmore, Speck, Eckstorm, and other authorities. Slabs of
birch-bark thick and rigid as a board can be cut from old trees, yet the bark
can be separated into sheets as thin as tissue and as soft and flexible as
paper. It is as tough as leather, yet thin sheets of it can be torn across the
grain almost as straight as a cloth. Birch-bark burns easily as tinder,
kindling, or a torch, and as firewood it makes an excellent blaze and a hot
fire; yet food can be cooked in green birch-bark containers. It is extremely
IN THE NORTHEAST
7
durable, tough, waterproof, odorless, tasteless, resistant to decay, and helps
that which is stored in it resist decay. Equally important was the fact that
enough birch-bark for the Indians’ needs was almost always just outside
their wigwams. With such qualities, we need not wonder that the Indians had
a special fondness for the birch tree and still find its bark indispensable.
In the Old Birch-bark Hunting Culture the women were the expert
craftsmen, although men had some specific jobs and always helped with the
heavy work. Birch-bark gave women the opportunity to provide efficient,
quickly-erected shelters, light-weight waterproof domestic utensils and
equipment, and coverings for easily portable canoes. These made removals
to new hunting grounds and the necessary portages less time-consuming and
burdensome, and released the hunter to pursue his arduous task of keeping
the family provided with a continuous supply of food.
An Indian family always sought a good hunter as a husband for their
marriageable daughter, but she was expected to be “educated to make
Monoodah (Indian bags), birch dishes, to lace snowshoes, make Indian
shoes, string wampum belts, sew birch canoes, and boil the kettle…” If an
Indian maid could fulfill these requirements, she was “esteemed a lady of
fine accomplishments,” according to John Gyles, a captive among the
Malecite Indians for many years.
TABOOS
Studies of Eastern tribes made so far have brought to light no early
references to ceremonies of propitiation or gratitude to the white birch,
similar to those recorded for the Chippewa by Densmore. There is evidence,
however, that certain taboos must be observed if one expected to get good
usable birch-bark.
Speck recorded a number of taboos observed by the Penobscot. He said
they believed that “bread must not be eaten in the morning by one who
intends to cut birch-bark for canoes or utensils.” If they did eat bread the
bark would “be “bad,’ that is, spoiled by hole’s, knots, or ‘crows’ as they call
them.”
Speck also said, “To eat the lumps in corn pudding for breakfast would
likewise beget ‘burls or lumps’ in the bark.” When a “modern” Indian was
questioned about these superstitions he said that perhaps the bread and the
corn pudding lumps would have no effect on the quality of the bark, but if he
were going out to get bark, he never took a chance.
8
USES OF BIRCH-BARK
WINTER AND SUMMER BARK
Wigwam coverings, canoes, and larger utensils were made of heavy
winter bark which, according to Sylvester Gabriel, a Passamaquoddy Indian,
is best if cut after the second freeze. Summer bark is thinner and can be
gathered during the spring, summer, or early fall. It is useful for paper, mats,
and lighter-weight utensils.
When large sheets of heavy winter bark were needed, the desired tree
was girdled as high up as could be reached, then girdled again down toward
the ground as far as the bark was good. A slit was then cut vertically from
the upper girdle to the lower, and the bark loosened and removed in one
piece. Numerous sheets of bark were often rolled together to make a backpack. Such packs, often weighing as much as forty pounds, were carried out
of the woods, in the early days at least, on the backs of the Indian women.
Winter bark especially is usually worked as soon after cutting as
possible. If not used while still green, winter bark must be soaked and
heated to make it pliable enough for use.
If the growing or cambium layer of the birch is uninjured when peeled,
the tree will live. New bark covers the scar made by the peeling; and
eventually another layer, or even more, can be removed. This second growth
of bark is rougher than first growth bark, having the appearance of grained
leather. There are two boxes in the Abbe Museum made of second-growth
bark.
SHELTER
One of the primary requirements of a people living in a climate as
variable as that of New England is adequate shelter to prevent them from
over-exposure to cold, rain, and snow.
The Indians throughout this area had wigwams of several different types
often covered with rush mats, skins, or spruce bark; but whenever it was
available they utilized sheets of birch-bark to cover the framework of their
houses. Birch-bark wigwam coverings are most frequently mentioned in the
early accounts for northern New England, but they were also used in other
places. Roger Williams wrote of the Narragansett Indians, “Wuchickapeuk:
Birching barke which they dress finely, and make a Summer covering for
their houses.” Williams also noted that usually for their door they had a
“hanging Mat, which being left up falls down of itself, “ but that even as
early as 1643, many of the Indians were getting “English boards and Nailes,”
to “make artificial doores and bolts themselves,” while others made “slighter
IN THE NORTHEAST
9
doores of Burch or Chestnut barke.”
Gookin said that the “best sort of their houses are covered neatly, tight
and warm, with barke of trees, slipped from their bodies at such seasons
when the sap is up; and made into great flakes with pressure of weighty
timber, when they are green; and so becoming dry, they retain a form
suitable for the use they prepare them for. “
Nicholas Deny s, who lived at Cape Breton and in New Brunswick from
1632 to 1650, described the aboriginal way of building the typical birchbark-covered, dome-shaped wigwam, including the cutting and preparation
of the bark with stone and bone tools and the traditional duties of the various
female members of the family. He also said that it was the size of the family
which determined whether the wigwam was of the round or long house type.
Denys wrote:
Having arrived at the place where they wish to remain, the
women must build the camp. Each one does that which is her
duty. One goes to find poles in the woods; another goes to
break off branches of fir, which the little girls carry. The
woman who is mistress, that is, she who has borne the first boy,
takes command, and does not go to the woods for anything.
Everything is brought to her. She fits the poles to make the
wigwam, and arranges the fir to make the place on which each
one disposes himself. This is their carpet and the feather s of
their bed. If the family is a large one they make it (the wigwam)
long enough for two fires; otherwise they make it round, just
like military tents, with only this difference, that in place of
canvas they use the bark of the birch. These are so well fitted
that it never rains into their wigwams. The round kind holds ten
or twelve persons, the long twice as many. The fires are made
in the middle of the round kind, and at the ends of the long sort.
Denys also describes the way the Indians secured their bark:
To obtain these barks, they select all the biggest birches they
are able to find, and these are the thickness of a hogshead. They
cut the bark all around the tree as high up as they can with their
stone axes; then they cut it low down, also all around; after that
they split it all around the tree, which ought to be in sap to
loosen readily. When they have enough of it they sew it edge to
edge, four pieces together or five together.
10
USES OF BIRCH-BARK
Their thread is made from roots of fir [black spruce] which
they split into three, the same as the osier with which the hoops
of barrels are tied. They make it as fine as they wish.
Their needles are of bone, and they make them pointed as
awls by dint of sharpening them. They pierce the barks, and
pass this root from hole to hole for the breadth of the barks.
This being finished they roll them as tightly as they can that
they may be the easier to carry. When they strip them off the
wigwam to carry them to another place, since they are dried
from the fires which have been made there, they heat them
again to make them supple. In proportion as they heat, they are
rolled up, otherwise they would break through, being too dry.
The conical bark-covered wigwam was a hunting, travel, or emergency
shelter which seems to have been used much more widely in northern than
southern New England. Dierville said that the conical wigwam was made
with from “15 to 18 poles, more or less according to size, all set up in a
circle two feet apart.” The poles, “a fathom or a fathom and a half in height,”
were “joined in a point and fastened together.” This framework was “covered
with branches of fir, and large pieces of bark from the same tree, or from
Birch, and sometimes skins.” A hole was “left at the bottom” that was “only
large enough to go in and out of on all fours.” Inside the wigwam a pole
stretched across the middle “at a height of four or five feet, and on it the
kettle” was hung over afire, which was “kept low and built in the center of
the rear part of the wigwam.”
Heavy winter bark frequently was used to cover the outside of wigwams,
and was laid on like huge overlapping shingles. Inside the wigwam thin
sheets of birch-bark, oftendecorated, made hangings that helped to keep in
the heat and shut out the cold. Chadwick mentioned the use of birch-bark
linings for large spruce -bark-covered wigwams which he saw at Oldtown in
1764. A wind or rain flap of birch-bark was placed over the smoke-hole of
the wigwam and turned in the proper direction to keep out the wind and rain.
The French and English both said that the wigwams of the Indians were as
warm as the early Colonial houses.
The Indians sometimes deserted their village or camp sites permanently
but habitually they moved in a seasonal cycle from winter homes to fishing
sites at the falls of the river; to the shore; to hunting grounds; or, in the
proper season, to their fields if they were agriculturalists. Lescarbot wrote,
IN THE NORTHEAST
11
“They took down their lodgings in a twinkling.” Returning travelers often
found little evidence of an encampment where they had stayed the day
before.
UTENSILS
Since household utensils in northern New England were made almost
exclusively of birch-bark at the time of European contact, this period is often
thought of as the heyday of the Old Birch-Bark Hunting Culture.
Birch-bark containers were made in many sizes depending on the purpose
for which they were intended. Birch-bark is an ideal medium for storing and
carrying food and water; for it imparts no taste to whatever it contains, is
waterproof, easy to transport, durable, and helps to preserve food from
decay. Watertight, seamless utensils for holding liquids, cooking, or storage,
were quickly made of a rectangular strip of green bark, shaped by bending
and folding at the ends. The overlapping parts were often pinned together
with a twig, or fastened with a stitch or two of split spruce-root or some other
fiber, to keep the utensil in the desired shape.
More permanent containers were cut according to traditional patterns,
then folded to the desired size and shape. They were reinforced at the rim
with a ring of pliable wood, and were carefully sewed with decorative
stitches which were of an uneven length to keep the bark from splitting along
the line where the stitches entered.
Birch-bark dishes were used primarily to hold food for eating. They early
attracted the attention of the settlers by their great usefulness and the ease
with which they could be made. Governor John Winthrop of Connecticut in
1664 sent “a small Indian dish or porringer of the barke of birch or such like
tree” as a curiosity to be placed in the “repository” of the Royal Society.
John Josselyn, who spent many years among the Indians of southern
Maine, was much impressed with the beauty of birch-bark dishes. Josselyn
wrote, “Delicate sweet dishes too they make of Birch-bark, sewed with
threads drawn from Spruce or white Cedar-roots…” in “all sizes from a dram
cup to a dish containing a pottle.” [One-eighth ounce to two quarts].
Doubtless many other references to birch-bark utensils allude to “dishes” but
their phraseology is so indefinite that they must be discarded.
Dishes had sloping sides, and were fairly shallow. The fact that they were
also used as porringer s indicates that at least some of them were waterproof.
The dish shown in Plate I is believed to have been made in the latter part of
12
USES OF BIRCH-BARK
the eighteenth century. It was used many years for holding meat, fish, and
other cooked food.
Josselyn tells the tale of a magic birch-bark dish, the use of which reveals
the credulity of the English as well as that of the Indians. Josselyn said that
worms frequently were very destructive to the gardens and that the “English
have learnt of the Indians” to “go out into a field or garden with a Birchendish, and spudling the earth about the roots…gather their dish full, which
may contain a quart or three pints, then they carrie the dish to the Seaside
when it is ebbing water and set it a swimming, the water carrieth the dish
into the sea and within a day or two if you go into your field you may look
your eyes out sooner than find any of them.” It is obvious that the Indians,
Josselyn, and other superstitious, credulous colonists were ignorant of the
life cycle and habits of this early maize pest.
Baskets and boxes of birch-bark were used for gathering fruit and berries
and for storage of clothing, maple sugar, and other articles, as well as for
carrying possessions from one place to another. Gookin said that, using
birch-bark, the Indians made “several sorts of baskets, great and small. Some
will hold four bushels, others more, and so downward to a pint. In their
baskets they put their provisions.” Josselyn also mentioned “large baskets of
the same materials.”
James Rosier wrote in 1605 that some of the Maine Indians came to him
with “great cups made very wittily of barke, in forms almost square, full of a
red berry about the bigness of bullis [wild plums], which they eat, and gave
us by handfuls.” The English ate, too, being fearful that a refusal would
offend those who offered the present. It was about the middle of June,
according to modern dating, when the Indians offered their gift to Rosier. At
this time the June berry, also called wild pear, sugar plum, shad, service or
sarvice berry, (Amelanchier canadensis), is beginning to ripen, and some
think these were the berries offered to Rosier and his men.
Birch-bark pails or buckets were common household utensils. Winthrop
sent “a small paile” of bark, and some other Indian articles “put in only to
shew the manner” of making their “family implements” to the Royal
Society.
Their “pails to fetch water in, “ according to Gookin, were “made of
birche bark, artificially doubled up” so that they had “four corners, and a
handle in the midst. “ Some of these pails, which he said they made “in an
hour’s time” would “hold two or three gallons. “
The Robert Abbe Museum has a fine example of an old covered
PLATE I
a). A very old dish made of a single piece of winter bark with gores at the ends,
sewed with split spruce roots and reinforced with a hoop on the outside of the rim.
Given to the Robert Abbe Museum by Isaac W. Kingsbury, M. D. , of Perry, Maine
and Hartford, Connecticut.
b). The patterns for dishes, bowls, pans, and cups were similar. The slope of the
sides and the depth of the container is determined by the size of the gores. No. 1 is
slightly lapped over la and sewed with a running stitch, 2 over 2a, etc.
PLATE II
Two views of a tall cylindrical covered box. Decorated with double-curved designs.
Believed to have been made by a Passamaquoddy Indian between 1850 and 1860.
Given to the Robert Abbe Museum by Isaac W. Kingsbury, M. D.
PLATE III
Very old oval covered birch-bark box with double-curve designs. Given to the
Robert Abbe Museum by Isaac W. Kingsbury, M. D.
PLATE IV
Round box of thin birch-bark, made and signed by Tomah Joseph. Four
scenes of Indian life are “etched” on the body of the box:
One Indian with a pack on his back and another carrying a canoe;
Two Indian hunters in a canoe paddling after a swimming deer;
An Indian dragging a dead deer toward a conical hunting wigwam, where
a woman waits outside;
An Indian woman standing beside a large kettle over an outside fire,
while a man sits and waits for the food to be cooked.
The cover of the box is decorated in the center with a five-pointed star. Other
pictures on the cover include a lynx, a rabbit, a muskrat, and an owl.
Given to the Robert Abbe Museum by Mary C. Wheelwright.
PLATE V
a). Covered bucket or water pail. Presented to the Robert Abbe Museum by Curtis
A. Perry, Bridgeton, Maine, in 1929. The bucket was given to Mr. Perry’s
grandfather, John Perry, about 1835.
b). Patterns for buckets vary according to the height of the sides and the size of the
base desired.
18
USES OF BIRCH-BARK
water-tight bucket or pail made of a single piece of heavy winter-bark about
three feet long and eighteen inches wide, sewed with split spruce roots. The
bark, cut in the traditional pattern for this type of bucket, overlaps slightly at
the seams, which are sewed with widely spaced stitches over the joint, short
and horizontal on the outside and long on the inside. The bottom is nearly
square with sides tapering to form an almost round opening. A wooden hoop is
bound around the rim with over-and-over stitches, elongated gradually to
come to points at the seams. The handle is a tanned moosehide thong.
The cover of the bucket is made of two circles of birch-bark for the top and
an inch wide strip of bark, slightly more than twice as long as the
circumference of the circles, for the rim. The rim is sewed to only one circle,
the other circle is joined to it and held in position by two stitches in the form of
a cross. An over-and-over stitch around the edge finishes the cover. (Plate V)
MAPLE SUGAR
Josselyn also mentioned the making of “buckets to carry water or the
like.” The “like” may sometimes have been maple sap which the Indians
collected in bark pails in the spring. Little cones of bark were made to hold
small amounts of maple sugar. Larger quantities were stored in larger birchbark containers. At Passadumkeag, Chadwick found “in Sundre
Wiegwoms…2 or 400 wat” of maple sugar which the Indians told him was
“only a Stock of one year for there famelys.”
Dierville in 1708 mentioned that “a hole fairly deep and in shape like a
trough” was made in a maple tree and that “a frame of bark” was “joined to
this reservoir, so that the sap as it flows, may drip into it.” Rasles, in 1717,
said, “There is no lack of sugar in these forests. In the spring the maple trees
contain a fluid somewhat resembling that which the canes of the islands
contain. The women busy themselves in receiving it into vessels of bark,
when it trickles from the trees…”
Lafiteau wrote in 1724, “In the month of March, when the sun has
acquired a little force and the trees commence to contain sap, they make
transverse incisions with the hatchet on the trunks of these trees, from which
there flows in abundance a liquid which they receive in large vessels of bark;
they then boil the liquid over the fire which consumes all the phlegm and
causes the remainder to thicken to the consistency of sirup or even of a loaf
of sugar…The French prepare it better than the Indian women from whom
IN THE NORTHEAST
19
they learned to make it…”
It is obvious from these old accounts that containers which imparted no
taste to the contents were important for the gathering of sap and making and
storing of maple sugar. Speck said “bark receptacles are linked inseparably
with the maple sap-gathering occupation of the eastern woodlands, in which
industry they were indeed quite indispensable as containers, carriers, and
storage vessels.”
Penobscot Indians occasionally still make small amounts of maple sugar
for their own use. According to Speck, the “bark vessels and stirrers” used in
maple sugar making were the “ordinary home articles. “ The cone-shaped
molds, called topetci’gan, were made especially for holding small quantities
of maple sugar. Speck said, “When the boiling process is done, the hardening
sugar is poured into birch-bark cones about nine inches long, tied about with
a splint or bark cord. In such molds, topetci’gan, the sweet substance, is kept
for transportation and storage…The birch-bark cones, filled with maple
sugar, often serve as presents among friends.”
Stories of maple sugar making have found their way into the legends of
the Maine Indians as mentioned by Leland, Parsons, Mechling, and others.
Speck collected a water pail and other birch-bark utensils from the River
Desert Indians of Quebec, decorated with scenes of Indians engaged in
“tapping sugar maple and collecting sap” and other activities of the sugarbush. These articles are all beautiful examples of what Speck called “a
natural inclination toward the art tradition in decorating utensils in common
use.”
The French used birch-bark sap kettles or “casse” in their maple sugar
industry down to a recent date. Heaps of water-worn pebbles of quartz and
felsite, which in many cases have been carried long distances for use as
weights to keep the bark kettles from being blown about by the wind, are still
to be seen in places where the sugar-bush has long since disappeared.
COOKING IN BIRCH-BARK UTENSILS
Not only did the Indians carry, store food in, and eat from birch-bark
containers, but they also cooked in them.
It has been demonstrated many times that food can be cooked over a low
fire, in green birch-bark vessels filled with water. A utensil of this type is
generally serviceable only once, as it is difficult to keep the fastenings from
being charred or the vessel dried out too much for further use.
20
USES OF BIRCH-BARK
There are also references to “stone boiling” with birch-bark kettles. To
cook in this way, the food is placed in the utensil and covered with water.
The boiling is done by dropping heated stones into the container. Cool stones
were removed and replaced by hot ones lifted out of the fire with green
sticks.
Gyles refers to “stone boiling” in one sentence, but tells the story fairly
completely. “If they have lost or left their kettle, it is but putting their
victuals into a birch dish, leaving a vacancy in the middle, filling it with hot
water, and putting in hot stones alternately, they will thus thoroughly boil the
toughest neck of beef.”
Gyles was writing about the latter part of the seventeenth century at a
time when European kettles had displaced those of birch-bark for cooking,
but he maintained that the Indians still were familiar enough with the old
way of cooking to revive it if necessity demanded it.
BIRCH-BARK MATS
Mats made of sheets of birch-bark were used in many ways. In summer
the Indians frequently slept outside their wigwams on mats in the open
fields. If it rained or was damp they often lay on a sheet or mat of birch-bark
and covered themselves with a blanket of the same material. A mat was also
often spread on the beds in their houses. In an emergency the bark was
obtained near the spot where it was to be used, but rolls of “dressed” birchbark were often preserved and carried about from place to place.
The Indians also used their mats to sit upon for ceremonial occasions and
at times when the ground was wet or damp. When an Indian died he was
often placed on his mat, wrapped up in a winding sheet of birch-bark, and
laid in a bark-lined hole in the earth.
Sheets of bark, or mats, have been and are still used shawl–fashion over
the head or shoulders to protect the wearer from the elements. Speck records
that an Indian caught out in a rainstorm in the woods will get a large sheet of
birch-bark and after cutting a hole in the center, pull his head through and let
the bark hang down serape fashion. He also saw Indians make and use
conical shaped birch-bark hats which they sewed or pinned together with
fiber or a twig.
Sheets or mats of birch-bark were placed under mealing or grinding
stones to catch the flour as it fell. When enough meal had been ground,
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21
the stones were lifted off, the meal collected on the bark and poured into a
container for immediate use or for storage.
Sheets of birch-bark were spread on the ground for the drying of fruits,
berries, and corn. Gyles tells how the Indians dried ripe corn. He wrote, “To
dry corn when in the milk, they gather it in large kettles and boil it on the
ears, till it is pretty hard, then shell it from the cob with clam-shells, and dry
it on bark in the sun. When it is thoroughly dry, a kernel is no bigger than a
pea, and would keep years, and when it is boiled again it swells as large as
whenon the ear, and tastes incomparably sweeter than other corn.”
Gyles said further, “When we had gathered our corn and dried it in the
way already described, we put some into Indian barns, that is, into holes in
the ground, lined and covered with bark, and then with dirt. “
The Passamaquoddy Indians used to “put up berries” every year in the
“old way,” but now they preserve them in jars. In blueberry time they took
birch-bark and peeled off thin sheets which they laid out flat. After cooking
the berries they would take “a spoon and slap them on the bark right thin,
and then spread them thinner and then let them dry in the sun.” When the
berries were “thoroughly dry” they put them away, in birch-bark baskets
with covers, for the winter. Some berries were sun dried like raisins. When
they wanted to use the berries, “they would soak them over night, sweeten
them and stew about five minutes.” According to one Passamaquoddy
Indian, looking back on the “good old days, “ stewed dried berries “sure
were good.”
SPLINTS AND BANDAGES
Broken bones were wrapped in a cast of birch-bark after they had been
covered with pads of moss and treated. They were further protected by
splints and bandages of bark.
Dierville wrote:
They injure themselves very frequently but Nature has under
the bark of the Balsam-fir trees, which are very common in all
parts of Acadia, a marvelous remedy for all their wounds; it is a
Turpentine, finer in quality and more balsamic than that obtained
from Venice, and it is found wherever it might be needed for a
dressing. If the Indians break their Arms or Legs, the bones are
22
USES OF BIRCH-BARK
reset evenly, and large pads of soft fine moss are made, which
are saturated with their Turpentine, and wrapped around the
broken limb; outside of that is placed a piece of Birch-bark,
which readily conforms to the shape of the part; splints are not
forgotten and to hold this secure, they use long strips of thinner
bark which make suitable bandages.
Gookin does not mention the kind of splints or covering used by the
Indians, but he said that in addition to exorcisms of the Powwows by which
“broken bones have been set, wounds healed, sick recovered” they did
“sometimes use external applications of herbs, roots, splintering, and binding
up of wounds.”
LAND AND WATER TRANSPORTATION
Birch-bark was used in land transportation as containers or wrappers to
haul supplies and other possessions from place to place; as cradle boards for
carrying the babies; as litters for transporting the sick and wounded; or as
biers to convey the dead to their graves; but its most important use was in
connection with water transportation.
In 1605 James Rosier, who wrote the account of Captain George
Waymouth’s discoveries in Virginia, by which he meant coastal New
England, said of the trees, “Birch, very tall and great; of whose barks they
make their canoes.”
Seaworthy, birch-bark-covered canoes were light in weight, yet sturdilybuilt masterpieces of design and construction. They were indispensable alike
to traveling Indians, colonists, and fur traders.
The birch-bark canoe was almost the sole vehicle for water transportation
in the northern part of the Northeast. It was used most extensively in the nor
them part of New England, but by trade found its way occasionally to
southern New England, where the dug-out canoe was typical.
The Indians used the birch-bark canoe in shallow and in white water.
They used it for hunting and fishing and even for whaling in the open sea. It
was easily propelled by those skilled in its use, and in it they could travel
with the swiftness of an arrow.
Though birch-bark canoes were fragile in appearance, they could stand
much hard usage. The larger canoes held tenor twelve persons, or “three or
four men and a considerable freight.” The fact that birch-bark canoes we re
portable made it possible to save considerable time; for often “to shorten
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23
their voyage” when heavier boats would have had “to double a Cape,” the
Indians would “put to shore, and two of them taking up the canoe, carry it
across the Cape or neck of land to the other side,” where they would put it in
the water again and resume their voyage. They also had regular portages or
carries between lakes or rivers and around waterfalls.
The early travelers and explorers marveled at the excellence of birch-bark
canoes, and eagerly sought them for their own use or to take to Europe to show
the ingenuity of the Indians.
In 1603 Martin Pring wrote, “Their Boats, whereof we brought one to
Bristoll, were in proportion like a Wheerie of the River Thames, seventeen
foot long and foure foot broad, and made of the Barke of a Birch-tree, farr
exceeding in bignesse those of England; it was sowed together with strong and
tough Oziers or twigs, and the seames covered over with Rosen or Turpentine
little inferior in sweetnesse to Frankincense, as we made triall by burning a
little thereof on the coales at sundry times after our coming home: it was also
open like a Wheerie, and sharpe at both ends, saving that the beake was a little
bending roundly upward. And though it carried nine men standing upright, yet
it weighed not at the most above sixtie pounds in weight, a thing almost
incredible in regard of the largenesse and capacitie thereof.”
They were astonished that such excellent boats could be “made without
any iron, of the bark of a birch tree, strengthened within with ribs and hoops of
wood, in so good fashion, with such excellent ingenious art, as they were able
to beare seven or eight persons…” Rosier claimed that they far exceeded
“anything in the Indies.”
Rosier and his company sought to “entice” some of the Indians on
shipboard to take them to England and finally captured and “shipped five
Salvages, two Canoas, with all their bows and arrowes.”
Anxious to keep the canoes undamaged, for they expected to exhibit them
in England along with the Indians, they spent the sixth of June “in bestowing
the Canoas upon the orlap” to keep them “safe from hurt, because they were
subject to breaking,”and this the “Captaine was careful to prevent.”
Waymouth’s ship was at this time anchored near what is now Rockland,
Maine. It is evident that the Indians he met spoke the Abnaki dialect, as Rosier
noted that they called their boats aquiden; and aquiden is the word the Abnakispeaking Indians used for canoe.
The following year Sir Ferdinando Gorges arrived in Maine bringing back
the Indian Skidwarres, who had been captured by Waymouth’s men. Near the
mouth of the Sagadehocke, later called the Kennebec, they started to “mak
24
USES OF BIRCH-BARK
Choise” of land to build a “plantation. “ They frequently had Indian visitors
who came from near and far in their birch-bark canoes.
Nicholas Denys’ account of birch-bark canoe-making is one of the most
detailed that we have. It is quoted by Hadlock and Dodge in their article on
the description of and methods used to restore one of the earliest birch-bark
canoes known to be from the Penobscot area. (Plate VI)
For making their canoes they sought the largest birch trees
they could find. They removed the bark the length of the canoe,
which was three or four fathoms and a half (in length). The
breadth was about two feet in the middle, and always
diminished towards the two ends, falling away to nothing. The
depth was such that for a man seated it came up to his armpits.
The lining inside the canoe for strengthening it was of slats, of
the length of the canoe and some four inches broad, lessening
toward the ends in order that they might match together. On the
inside the canoe was lined with them completely, as well as
along it, from one end to the other. These slats were made of
cedar, which is light, and which they split in as great lengths as
they wished, and also as thin as they pleased. They also made
from the same wood half-circles to form ribs, and gave them
their form in the fire.
For sewing the canoe, they took roots of fir the thickness of
the little finger, and even smaller; they were very long. They
split these into three or four parts, that is the largest ones. These
split more easily than the Osiers used in making baskets. They
made these into packages, which they placed in the water for
fear lest they might dry up. There were also necessary two
sticks of the length of the canoe, entirely round, and of the
thickness of a large cane, and four other shorter sticks of beech.
All these things being ready, they took their bark and bent and
fixed it in the form the canoe should have; then they placed the
two long pieces all along and sewed them to the rim inside with
these roots.
To sew they pierced the bark with a punch of pointed bone
and passed through the hole an end of the wicker, drawing and
tightening the stick as closely as they could against the bark,
and always enrapping the stick with the wicker so that they
were in contact with one another. The sticks being well sewed
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25
on all along, they placed also the smaller pieces of beech
crosswise, one in the middle, entering at its two ends into holes
made in the pieces with which the canoe is rimmed, and three
others in front of it, distant a half fathom from one another,
which lessened in length with the shape of the canoe. Three
others also were placed backward at the same distances. All
these pieces entered also at their ends into holes which were
made in the pieces sewed all along the canoe, to which they
were so firmly attached on both sides that the canoe could
neither enlarge nor narrow.
Then are placed in position those big slats with which they
lined all the interior of the canoe from top to bottom, and they
were all made to touch one another. To hold them in place, they
put over them those half-circles, the ends of which were
brought to join on both sides below those pieces which were
sewn all around on the top. They drove these in with force, and
they lined all the canoe with them from one end to the other.
This made the canoe stiff to such a degree that it did not yield at
any point.
There were seams in it, for in order to narrow it at the two
ends, they split the bark from above downwards; they then
overlapped the two ends one over the other, and sewed them.
But to prevent the seams from admitting water, the women and
girls chewed the gum of fir every day until it became a salve
which they applied with the aid of fire all along the seams, and
this tightened them better than pitch. All this being done, the
canoe was finished, and it was so light that a man could carry it
on his head.
The birch-bark canoes of the northern periphery of southern New
England are also mentioned, with some account of their use and
construction, by Pring, Champlain, Thomas Morton, William Wood, Edward
Johnson, John Josselyn, Daniel Gookin, and other early settlers and
explorers.
Champlain described the canoe from this area as being “eight to nine
paces long, and about a pace or pace and a half broad in the middle, growing
narrower towards the two ends…made of birch-bark strengthened on the
inside by little ribs of white cedar, very neatly arranged. “
Champlain commented on the fact that birch-bark canoes were “very apt
26 USES OF BIRCH-BARK
to turn over in case one does not understand managing them. “ He also
favorably noticed their portability, saying they were so “light that a man can
easily carry one,” and that when the Indians “want to go overland to a river
where they have business, they carry them with them.”
Josselyn said that the canoes could “indure an incredible great Sea,
mounting upon the working billowes like a piece of Corke;” but he admitted
that they did “require skilful hands to guide them in rough weather” and said
that “none but the Indians scarce dare to undertake it.”
Gookin also said that the birch-bark-canoe was “much more ticklish and
apt to overset” than the dug out, but he claimed the “Indians are so used to
them, and sit so steady, that they seldom overturn with them; and if they
should, they can swim well and save their lives, though sometimes they may
lose their peltry, arms and provisions.”
Wood described the Indian paddles as “being much like battle –doores…”
as used in the game of shuttlecock. Pring said they were “flat at the end like
an Oven peele, made of Ash or Maple very light and strong, about two yards
long,” and that with these paddles the Indians “row very swiftly.” Rosier said
with admiration, “This we noted as we went along:” that some Indians “in
their canoe with three oares, would at their will go ahead of us, and about us,
when we rowed with eight oares strong; such was their swiftnesse, by reason
of the lightnesse and artificial composition of their Canoa and oares.”
According to Hadlock and Dodge, “the materials and workmanship of a
canoe in the Peabody Museum, Salem, indicate “it to be one of the oldest
known Penobscot birch bark canoes.” (Plate VI). It first appears listed in
1826. The canoe and its construction is described completely by Hadlock and
Dodge and the following notes are taken from their account. This “canoe is
nineteen feet, seven and three-quarters inches overall length, by three feet,
one inch greatest beam and is, like most canoes of similar dimensions, made
from one piece of bark” gored to fit a rail to which it is fastened by “means
of wooden pegs” which passed through an “outer protective siding” made of
cedar, the birch-bark, and into the rail itself.
The lacings used throughout most of the canoe were about ten feet in
length and were made from spruce roots approximately three-eighths of an
inch in diameter, split in half. Smaller lacings were used towards the “ends of
the craft,” where the bark overlapped, completely decking over “the bow and
stern.”
The canoe has a “lining or sheathing of very thin strips of rifted cedar” held
PLATE VI
a) Penobscot Canoe (Catalogue E 14268) in the Peabody Museum of Salem.
b) Section in the middle of the Penobscot Canoe (Catalogue E 14268) on the
starboard side.
Shows side reinforced by piece of birch bark with scalloped edge as a paddle
guard and the decorated insert.
PLATE VII
Scale model of Penobscot canoe with curvilinear and leaf designs. Model of
fish spear in canoe. Maker unknown.
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in place by long ribs “fitted tightly into notches cut into the rail.” Bulkheads
were forced into the bow and stern. As “an additional protection against
leakage, particularly rough water, flaps of birch bark were placed on the bow
and stern. They were installed over the outer bark of the canoe and under the
outer protective side rails. Each extended from the bulkhead to the extreme
end of the canoe.” As a final step in preparing the canoe for the water, the
seams were pitched.
This canoe “appears to have been in use for some time before being
presented to the East India Marine Society Museum.”
OTHER USES OF CANOES
Canoes had other uses besides ordinary water transportation. There are
frequent references to their being turned upside down and used as shelters
from storms or for the night. They were used in hunting and fishing and in
the gathering of food and supplies throughout the area. Rosier said the
Indians even went whaling in them. He wrote:
One especiall thing is their maner of killing the Whale, which
they call Powdawe; and will describe his forme; how he bloweth
up the water, and that he is twelve fathoms long; and that they go
in company of their King with a multitude of their boats, and strike
him with a bone made in fashion of a harping iron fastened to a
rope, which they make great and strong of the barke of trees,
which they veare out after him; then all their boats come about
him, and as he riseth above water, with their arrowes they shoot
him to death; when they have killed him and dragged him to shore,
they call all their chiefe lords together, and sing a song of joy: and
those chiefe lords, whom they call Sagamos, divide the spoile, and
give to every man a share, which pieces so distributed they hang
up about their houses for provision: and when they boile them,
they blow off the fat, and put to their pease, maiz, and other pulse,
which they eat.
There are numerous references to the taking of cormorants from the
islands off shore. The English did not care for the “ranke” taste of cormorant
meat and apparently had little success when they tried to shoot them, for the
birds, “seeing the fire in the panne” of the gun, were gone long before the
30
USES OF BIRCH-BARK
shot reached the spot where they had been seen. The Indians in their birch
canoes went out after the cormorants at night, using no weapon, as Josselyn,
in his graphic description of how they “gathered” these birds, makes clear.
We must not forget the cormorant, Shape or Sharke; though I
cannot commend them to our curious palates, the Indians will eat
them when they are fley’d. They take them prettily. They roost in
the night upon some rock that lyes out in the Sea. Thither the Indian
goes in his Birch-Canow when the moon shines clear, and when he
is come just under the cormorant’s watchman, the rest being asleep,
and so soundly do they sleep that they will snore like so many
Piggs; the Indian thrusts up his hand of a sudden, grasping the
watchman so hard round about his neck that he cannot cry out; as
soon as he hath him in his Canow fast, he clambreth to the top of
the Rock, where walking softly he takes them up as he pleaseth,
still wringing off their heads, when he hath slain as many as his
Canoe can carry, he gives a shout which awakens the surviving
Cormorants, which are gone in an instant.
BIRCH-BARK TORCHES
Torches or flares were made by putting pieces of birch-bark in a cleft
stick or by lighting a small roll of dried birch-bark. These torches, or flares,
were used much as we would use a flash-light and for supplementary lighting
in the wigwams. Their chief use, however, was for “jacklighting” or night
hunting of animals and birds, or in fishing at night for sturgeon, salmon, and
other night-feeding fish.
Sturgeon were much desired for food. They are large fish, having their
backs covered with hard, almost impenetrable bony plates. This makes them
vulnerable only on the under side. Not having spears or harpoons capable of
penetrating the bony structure, the Indians used their ingenuity to overcome
the difficulty. Two men usually went after sturgeon in a birch canoe, one
sitting in front with a harpoon or lance, the other sitting in the back to guide
the canoe and take care of a flare. The canoe was allowed to drift with the
current to the places where sturgeon were feeding. When sturgeon were
sighted the Indian “lighting a blazing torch of burtchen rindes,” waved it
over
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the side of the canoe, and “the sturgeon much delighted” with the light would
come to the canoe “tumbling and playing, turning up his white belly.” The
harpooner would then throw his weapon, which was attached to “a forty
fathom line” into the belly of the sturgeon, who after a few frantic struggles
to escape was soon worn down and towed ashore.
Nicholas Denys’ description of sturgeon and sturgeon-fishing describes
the sturgeon, the catch, and the harpoon. He says, “There are some” sturgeon
“of eight, ten, eleven, and twelve feet in length, and as thick in the body as a
Sheep. The body is covered with scales, of the size of the circumference of a
plate, a little oval in form. They are besprinkled with a sort of Fleur de lys.
Their flesh is as good as beef, and like beef it is carved into slices; and its fat
is yellow. It is necessary to boil it four or five hours in order to cook it. That
fish comes to the entrances of the river. It throws itself in a leap its height
above the water. It is taken with a harpoon, which is made like a barbed rod
of eight or ten inches long, pointed at one end, with a hole at the other in
which is attached a line. Then it is fastened at the end of a pole, so that it
may be used as a dart. The fishing is made in the night. Two Indians place
themselves in a canoe; the one in front is upright, with a harpoon in his hand,
the other is behind to steer, and he holds a torch of birch-bark, and allows the
canoe to float with the current of the tide. When the Sturgeon perceives the
fire, he comes and circles all around, turning from one side to the other. So
soon as the harpooner sees his belly, he spears it below the scales. The fish,
feeling himself struck, swims with great fury. The line is attached to the bow
of the canoe, which he drags along with the speed of an arrow. It is necessary
that the one in the stern shall stear as exactly as the Sturgeon goes, or
otherwise it will overturn the canoe, as sometimes happens. It can swim well,
but with all its strength it does not go with fury more than a hundred and fifty
or two hundred paces. That being over, the line drawn in, and it is brought
dead against the side of the canoe. They then pass a cord with a slip-knot
over the tail, and they draw it thus to land, not being able to take it into the
canoe because it is too heavy.”
According to Denys the Indians used canoes and “torches also for fishing
for Salmon and the Salmon trout, which is as powerful as the Salmon.” The
Indians would go to the pools where the salmon would rest “at night.” They
carried their canoes through the woods where necessary, “launched” them in
the pools and “light a torch.” “The Salmon or Trout, seeing the fire which
shines upon the water, come wheeling around the canoe.” The Indian who is
32
USES OF BIRCH-BARK
“standing up has in his hand a harpoon, which is the same as that used for
Beaver, and like-wise fixed in the end of a long shaft. So soon as he saw a
fish passing, he speared it, and rarely missed. But sometimes the spear did
not take hold, for want of catching on some bone; thus they lost their fish.”
This misfortune, however, “did not prevent them from taking a hundred and
fifty to two hundred in a night.” (Plate XVII)
The Indians also went to the haunts of ducks, geese, and other waterfowl
“two or three in a canoe, with torches which they made of Birch-bark.”
Denys claimed that the birch-bark torches burned “more brightly than
torches of wax.”
Speck mentioned that the Indians in the past often caught deer by
“Torching” or luring them within the range of a gun by a torch or flare in the
bow of the canoe. The hunter, behind the flare, being concealed by the glare,
found the deer being blinded by the torch was an easy prey for his weapon.
This practice, called awa’s.ana by the Penobscot is now forbidden by Maine
law.
BIRCH-BARK NOISEMAKERS
In the fall the Indians sought to capture moose by using a moose-call, a
cone or megaphone-shaped trumpet made of birch-bark. With the moose-call
the hunter imitated the tremulous love-call of the female moose, to lure a bull
within range of the guns.
Usually the moose-calling instruments were undecorated, but some of
them are made of winter bark with etched designs. A moose-call collected at
River Desert, Quebec, for the Heye Foundation, is ten inches in length and is
of the type made for tourists, being covered with “cookie hearts,” patchwork
quilt flowers, and mounted mooseheads. It is a beautiful piece of modern
workmanship.
A muskrat-call is made of two small pieces of wood with a strand of
birch-bark fastened between them. Blowing the breath across the bark
produces a sound that brings the unsuspecting and curious muskrat within
range of a paddle or other death-dealing instrument,
Children often made whistles or music-makers by holding a thin strip of
birch-bark between the lips and blowing across it.
Rattles were sometimes simply folded pieces of birch-bark with pebbles
or grains of corn inside to make a rattling sound.
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PICTURE-WRITING
Another important use of birch-bark was in the form of paper. Leland’s
illustrations for his Algonquin Legends of New England were made on birchbark by Tomah Joseph, Passamaquoddy Indian governor. In 1887 and 1888,
Garrick Mallery, while working for the Bureau of American Ethnology on
his Picture-Writing of the American Indians, obtained “a valuable collection
of birch-bark pictographs” which he said had been “immemorially” and were
then “still made by the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot tribes.” Mallery also
“learned that the same art was common to the less known Montagnais and
Nascapees in the wooded regions north of the St. Lawrence.”
Through his collection of picture-writing and studies made at this time,
Mallery was able to prove “a similarity in the use of picture-writing between
the members of the wide spread Algonquin stock in the regions west of the
great lakes and those on the northeastern seaboard.” Before Mallery’s
investigation, bringing “into direct comparison the pictography of the Ojibwa
with the Micmacs and the Abnaki,” this “correlation of the pictographic
practice, in manner and extent,” had been “inferentially asserted, but no
satisfactory evidence of it had been furnished.” Mallery’s collection includes
records, tribal emblems, illustrations for stories, messages or wikhegans, and
traders’ accounts.
Mallery secured drawings of many tribal emblems, a few of which are
shown on Plate VIII. The Micmac tribal emblem has two Indians in a canoe,
built high in the middle [humpback], following a deer. The Passamaquoddy
tribal emblem has two Indians in a canoe, both with paddles, following a
fish, the pollock. The Penobscot tribal emblem has two Indians in a canoe,
one with a paddle, the other a pole, following an otter. Mallery was told that
the poles were used when the water was sluggish or shallow. He found that
the “animals figured are in all cases repeated consistently,” and that in all
cases there appeared “some device to show a difference” between the canoes
“either in their structure or in their mode of propulsion.” The devices to
differentiate the canoes, however, were “not always consistent,” leading
Mallery to conclude; “It is therefore probable that the several animals
designated constitute the true and ancient totemic emblems, and that the
accompaniment of the canoes is a modern differentiation.”
One purported war record shows a giant-sized Indian man armed with a
bow and arrow, followed by a tiny Indian also armed in the same way, but
with xxx drawn behind him. (Plate VIII). Mallery said this record signified
“a chief with 300 braves.” The relative magnitude of the leading human
34
USES OF BIRCH-BARK
figure” indicates “his rank.” In the shop accounts the letter, x, is used to
represent the number ten; one dollar is represented by a circle or ring with a
stem. From the known size of local war parties, it would seem more likely
that the great chief had thirty warriors instead of three hundred.
Traders used various devices for keeping accounts with Indians who
knew little or no English. Several pictorial account books recording
transactions with the Passamaquoddy Indians were collected by Mallery in
1888. One account is that of a man who sold basket wood to the trader. (Plate
VIII). He is shown with “basket wood” on his shoulder and is given a credit
of one dollar and fifteen cents for this material. He was paid in pork,
represented by the outline of a pig.
The debits and credits of an old woman of the “Owl” family shows that
she bought one plug of smoking tobacco and two quarts of kerosene oil for
her lamp. She was charged twenty cents for her purchases and gave the
trader a basket with a handle to square the account.
The wikhegan shown in Plate VIII was obtained from Miss Abby L.
Algar of Boston in 1887 for the Bureau of Ethnology. This account of winter
hunting was made by Nicholas Frances, aPenobscot Indian of Oldtown,
Maine, who was over seventy years of age at the time. Frances went trapping
for beaver with his nephew, Noel Lion in 1885. They left a supply tent at (e)
near Moosehead Lake, (h), made a permanent camp at (d), then set traps at
(f, a) and (f, b). Nicholas Frances, who did not know how to write, made the
wikhegan to let his nephew know that he had gone on from their camp to
pond, (c), to see if there were any beaver there. One line “drawn between two
arrows pointing in opposite directions,” (g) indicated that he expected to be
away one night “going and returning on the same trail.” This wikhegan is
remarkable in that it shows geographic features, departure, intent, direction,
and duration.
Mallery included illustrations of numerous petroglyphs in his book. He
stated that many of the birch-bark drawings then being made contained
elements found on the rocks throughout the area and that some Indians could
interpret their meanings.
DECORATIONS OF BIRCH-BARK
Many of the early writers commented favorably when theyfound the
utilitarian objects of the Indians decorated beautifully and artistically.
PLATE VIII
Picture-writing as shown in tribal emblems, shop accounts and other records.
From Mallery.
36
USES OF BIRCH-BARK
Gookin said of the birch-bark baskets that “many of them” were “very neat
and artificial, with portraitures of birds, beasts, fishes and flowers, upon them
in colours.” Josselyn wrote, “Delicate sweet dishes too they make of Birchbark…garnished on the outside with flourisht works, and on the brims with
glistering quills taken from the porcupine, and died, some black, others
red…white are natural…”
Gookin seemed to refer to naturalistic designs etched on the bark itself;
Josselyn to porcupine-quill decoration. The Abbe Museum also has specimens
decorated with moose-hair, horsehair, and split roots of “pumpkin” pine.
Very few specimens of birch-bark that are known to have been made in the
distant past have been preserved. As Dr. Speck so aptly said, “Birch-bark
containers, if not broken in three or four years, became brittle; and, after all,
there is no place for preserving heirlooms in a tent inhabited by a family of six
or eight periodically on the move.” In addition to the natural wear and tear of
use and moving, the early Indians buried many of the owner’s possessions
with him, having no desire to use that which was meant for another, or to keep
him from using things which they believed he would need in the other world.
Some old, perhaps unlabeled specimens may turn up in foreign or local
museums. We know that many such specimens were collected and sent abroad
in colonial times to be exhibited as curiosities. Some few articles of fine
workmanship found their way into the homes of the early settlers, where they
may be hidden away in attics. Occasionally some such authenticated early
specimen has been recovered. Grease, handling, and smoke all rapidly “aged”
the utensils used by the Indians, making containers actually fabricated in
recent times appear antique.
Gookin saw many utensils with “portraitures” in “Colours.” Josselyn spoke
of the use of porcupine quills dyed red, black, yellow and blue, being used “to
adorn the edges of their birchen dishes.” Neither man gave any clue as to the
type of paints or dyes used. Birch-bark itself was one of the ingredients of a
red dye made by the Chippewa. The inner bark of white birch and oak, and the
outer and inner bark of red osier dogwood, were boiled together in sufficient
quantity to make about two gallons of liquid dye at a time. To this mixture was
added about two cupfuls of red cedar ash, made by burning about two armfuls
of cedar bark. According to Densmore, this dye was used for dyeing porcupine
quills. The quills, which had been previously soaked in hot water, were boiled
in the dye in a covered kettle for about a half-hour, and were then allowed to
stand in the dye several hours more.
PLATE IX
Rectangular box of thin, whittled pine, covered with birch-bark decorated
with porcupine quills, and fitted over the box. The cover has no wood in it
and is unlined, with the ends of the quills showing where they are stuck
through the bark. Collected by Dr. Sheehan of Dennysville, who died in
1890.
PLATE X
Round birch-bark box, six and one-half inches in diameter; four inches deep;
decorated with porcupine quills in natural color, green, red, yellow, and blue.
The rim is wound with black and red spruce root. The box is believed to be
more than a century old and is said to have been made by a Penobscot
Indian.
Obtained for the Robert Abbe Museum from Mrs. W. Alexander, Ellsworth.
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39
If utensils were to be decorated, the bark was turned so that the inside of
the bark became the outside of the container. It is easy to decorate the inner
layer of freshly cut winter bark by scraping until a lighter under-layer shows
through. Such scraping or scratching, often called “etching,” is found in both
realistic (Plates: IV, VIII, XI, XIII, XVII) and geometric — such as triangles,
dots, lines, curves, and double-curves — (Plates: I, II, III, VI, VII, XVI)
patterns on old and modern specimens.
Plate XI is that of a small, round birch-bark box with an anthropomorphic
design. It is believed to be very old. The box, which is about four inches high
and four inches in diameter, is made of winter bark, sewed with split spruce
root. The sides of the box are decorated with alternating wigwams and
diamond-shape designs, the latter cross-hatched in the center. Etched on the
cover is a figure said by E. Tapan Adney to be “perhaps a medicine dancer”
—a “medeulin whose familiar was Partridge. The old Medeulins could turn
themselves into po-higun(s).” The squarish object held in the right hand may
have been made to represent an old style rattle. The skirt swirling backward
and the placing of one foot in front of the other seem to indicate forward,
dancing movement.
If possible, the designs were etched with a bone, knife, or some other
sharp instrument, soon after the bark was cut; otherwise the bark had to be
heated and soaked until it was soft. The technique most frequently used was
to scrape the design in outline. Many early specimens have the design
entirely scraped out leaving a raised background; others have the background
entirely scraped away leaving the design in relief.
Speck said that “a rich dark color is given to the bark by applying a hot
rag saturated with dye made by boiling alder bark, “ and that when the work
was finished it was greased to improve its appearance.
Rim decorations are common, with considerable variation in materials
used, stitching, and techniques. Moosehair, porcupine quills, split pumpkin
pine, and spruce roots all are found embellishing or reinforcing the rims of
many of the finer old specimens in the Robert Abbe and other museums.
Hadlock and Dodge discuss the decorations found on canoes in the
Penobscot River area and describe the painting and decoration of an early
canoe now in the Peabody Museum at Salem. (Plate VI) They say,
Birch bark canoes in the Penobscot River area are usually
decorated either by bark engravings or painted designs. Another
PLATE XL
Birch-bark box with anthropomorphic design, “perhaps a Medicine Dancer.”
Found in an old desk at Leighton Point, Cobscook Bay, and given to the
Robert Abbe Museum by Isaac W. Kingsbury, M. D.
IN THE NORTHEAST
form of decorative art less commonly used, the cutting of
geometrical patterns in the lower edges of the stem flaps and
paddle guards, has been found on a few canoes of this area.
Except for one incident—the zigzag cutout on the lower edge of
the paddle guard (Plate VI b) —the entire decoration of the canoe
under discussion is executed with black and red paint. The flaps
on the bow and stern are painted black on the top and the lower
portion of each side is outlined in red, thus forming a panel
containing a single row of red dots. The bow flap has eight dots
on the starboard side and nine dots on the port, and the stern flap
has seven dots on the starboard side and eight dots on the port.
On both the port and starboard side of the bow and stern are
painted zigzag lines extending for about eighteen inches from the
apron. The upper portion of this line is in black and immediately
below and parallel with it is a red line. The inserts amidship are
also decorated. The starboard insert is divided into seven sections
of diagonal red and black lines, the red being always above and
the black below. Each section, except one, contains a single
black and red circle, the red forming the outer circumference of
the circle. The bark insert on the port side has similar
decorations, but is divided into five sections, which is
undoubtedly due to this insert being much shorter than that of the
other side.
All the elements in the simple decoration used on this canoe
can be considered old and without doubt, aboriginal. The straight
incised zigzag lines of similar decorative pattern have been found
archaeologically on pottery and bone work in the Penobscot
River region. The dot decoration, as evidenced on the aprons and
side panels, is very old and widely distributed in North America.
It is commonly found in the general northeastern area on Eskimo
bone work, Naskapi caribou-skin painting, and in all the various
art techniques used by the Wabanaki and Iroquois tribes. The
simple decorative art used on this canoe is in sharp contrast to
some of the later, more complex art which may contain many
European elements.
Many canoes of the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy Indians
have a narrow strip of birch bark amid ship, which is usually
highly decorated, either with painted designs, carvings, or
41
42
USES OF BIRCH-BARK
etchings. This may have the dual purpose of being a reinforced
panel inserted insert over the gores amid ship and as a panel for
decorative purposes. The inserts on the canoe under discussion
are six feet long and five inches wide on the starboard side, and
three feet, ten inches long and five inches high on the port side.
The inserts amidship are not a distinctive feature for canoes of
this region. The Penobscot canoe also has an overlay of birch
bark forward of the position taken by the stern paddler. This
overlay is decorated with a triangular edge and was
undoubtedly a protection and reinforcement to the sides of the
canoe against the sweep of the paddle.
Speck, in Penobscot Man, shows a canoe with brown and white triangular
decorations along the bark insert at the waist and double-curve ornaments
etched on the bark flaps at the peaks.
Although the raw material, birch-bark, is aboriginal, and the forms of
vessels and utensils, with a few exceptions, are a continuation of types dating
back to aboriginal times, designs obviously have been changed by the
changed emphasis on things of importance in the culture; and we find a trend
away from the imaginative to the imitative. While there were early contacts
with several European cultures, and culture is never static, the breakdown
has come about much more rapidly in recent years.
We know little of how the native artists worked in early historic times.
Today they frequently use patterns, albeit imaginative ones, which they
usually create, place, and space to make the design fit the container. The use
of patterns is probably a recent innovation. The untaught native artist in the
Southwest, even today, has such a perfect sense of feeling for the design
which she plans to put on a piece of pottery that she works with no
previously-drawn plans, sketches, or patterns, but, with a deftness and sureness that seems never to fail, paints the design without hesitation.
The naturalistic and geometric designs, incised, etched, or bitten on birchbark, all bespeak a love of beauty and artistic workmanship. The better
examples of this craft that have been preserved, compare favorably with
some of the best examples of prehistoric design found painted on the
prehistoric pottery of the Southwest.
PLATE XII
Patterns of moose, bear and beaver cut out of birch-bark by Sylvester Gabriel
of Pleasant Point.
PLATE XIII
Round box with cover, made in the old style by Sylvester Gabriel,
Passamaquoddy, 1948. The birch-bark cut out patterns shown in Plate XII
were used for making the drawings.
PLATE XIV
Designs in relief. Signed by Dr. P. Polchies, a noted “Medicine man.”
PLATE XV
Birch-bark relief design, showing head of fish spear. Signed Noel Polchies.
PLATE XVI
Double-curve and other decorations from birch-bark containers in the Robert
Abbe Museum.
48
USES OF BIRCH-BARK
BITTEN BARK PATTERNS
We have reason to believe from early references that designs bitten into
birch-bark are an old and primitive form of art. On October 16, 1697, Rev. P.
Thierry Bechefer, in a letter to M. Cabart de Villermont, mentions sending
specimens of birch-bark dishes and also “Pieces of bark, on which figures
have been marked by the teeth.”
Dr. Leslie Spier discussed this form of art as a possible “source of origin
of Algonkian designs.”
As Dr. Speck said, “It seems, in short, to constitute a real creative art
impulse and technique,” a product of the “soul-spirit…which enables the
individual to produce conceptions of beauty…not only with the hand and
eye, but the hand and teeth as well.”
Dr. Speck found the making of bitten bark designs was, among the recent
Montagnais at least, indulged in chiefly as a pastime, and said, “Whether the
connection between the biting technique and bark container decoration is
early or late we do not know definitely.” Though Speck believed that “while
the biting of outlines forms a branch of art expression in itself, the practice is
understood to belong somewhere in the series that ultimately ends in the
finished ornamentations upon the surfaces of bark utensils.”
Soft inner layers of birch-bark are pliable, and can be easily bitten, but the
Indians often made them more pliable by heating. Groups of Indians, women
and children especially, when they were sitting around the fire in the spring,
often folded pieces of soft bark so that there were two, and up to twelve,
thicknesses, in a piece. Using their eye teeth and back teeth, with a slight
twisting motion, they bit through the thin layers of bark to make designs in
this fascinating art form.
Schoolcraft wrote in 1857 that “amongst the Chippewas of Lake Superior
there exists a very ingenious art of dental pictography, or a mode of biting
figures on the soft and fine inner layers of the bark of Betula papyracea…”
He included illustrations of some examples which he collected at that time.
Kohl found this technique among the Chippewa in 1860, and Densmore
collected hundreds of specimens from the same groups in the early nineteenhundreds.
Howley, in 1866, collected bitten bark designs from an old Indian woman
who knew Shanawdithit, alias Nancy, the last known Beothuk survivor.
Shanawdithit, who died in 1829, was said to have been adept at making
bitten bark designs. Howley has illustrations of the birch-bark articles
decorated by Shanawdithit.
IN THE NORTHEAST
49
THE BIRCH IN MYTH AND LEGEND
There are frequent references to the birch tree and the use of birch-bark in
Indian myths and legends. As stated earlier, Gluskabe, in naming the birch
tree, is said to have asked it to take care of the Indians. A Wawenock myth,
gathered by Speck, tells how Gluskabe once found a straight birch tree which
he wanted to make into a canoe. When Gluskabe cut the tree down it fell in
such a way that he was almost killed. In addition to being angered by this
narrow escape, Gluskabe was further provoked because he had an
exceedingly difficult time in extricating himself from its branches. Being
extremely enraged, Gluskabe took up a stick and beat the birch as hard as he
could from one end of it to the other. He then commanded the marks which
he had made to remain as “eyes” so that the birch would never again kill, or
almost kill, anyone. The Indians still call the lenticles in the bark of the birch
tree, “eyes;” some they call “long eyes” and others “short eyes.”
References to birch-bark canoes being used by supernatural beings are
numerous. Some of these are said to have been turned to stone for various
reasons, and as evidence of this the Indians still point out one of these stone
canoes in the vicinity of Castine.
Some tales claim that the partridge was the canoe-builder of the birds,
thus explaining that its drumming sounds like a canoe-builder in the far
distance tapping his canoe.
It is said that a hunter, camped in the woods with his family while
“shouldering his canoe,” fell down with the canoe upon him. He was
wounded by a branch of a dry spruce-log piercing his breast, and died; but
his spirit came back as a ghost and finished the wigwam he had started to
build. The spirit of the ghost hunter stayed around all winter, speaking not a
word, but in the spring told his wife to “take the canoe, pitch it so that it
would not leak, and, with provisions enough for three days journey, start
homeward with the children.”
In many of the myths and legends we find supernatural beings using
articles in the same way as the Indians themselves used them.
Snowy Owl was brought up by his grandmother. Being afraid that she
was about to die, she “took from a birch-bark basket some pieces of ivory”
which she fastened together. They were Snowy Owl’s grandfather’s magic
bow and arrows. These magic arrows would fly to whatever mark they were
told to reach by Snowy Owl.
50
USES OF BIRCH-BARK
The “Cannibal Sorceress” carried in “her pack a big bark basket,” which
was seen by a deserted boy she planned to eat.
Mikamwessu kept a pair of magic moccasins hidden “in a bark vessel.”
These magic moccasins he gave to another deserted youth, White Weasal,
who while wearing them was able to wrestle with and defeat an evil
magician, and perform numerous other miraculous feats.
Raccoon once found a family of young sables alone, and getting angry
with them, killed all but the youngest, who escaped and “hid beneath a
vessel…” When his parents returned this young sable identified the culprit as
the raccoon by taking a burnt stick, and using a piece of birch-bark drew, “a
black line around each eye and from the corners of his mouth across his
cheeks like the spots on the raccoon’s face.”
A hunter named Partridge had such bad luck securing game that, to satisfy
the hunger of his wife, he cut great chunks from his thigh and brought them
back as meat for the family. As time went on and his luck continued bad, he
cut away more and more until one day he had cut away so much flesh that he
was reduced to the extremity of stuffing his legs with birch-bark to prevent
his deception from being discovered.
Gluskabe once found a number of dancers cavorting about “a big bark
dish which contained summer like a kind of jelly.” The dancers were
“guarding the summer so that no one could touch it.” By trickery Gluskabe
stole summer and carried “it” north to the home of the “Old Ice Man.” He
kept summer there until the Old Ice Man melted.
The old tale of the fox and the stork feeding each other comes up with the
fox giving a heron soft food on “a piece of birch-bark” and the heron
offering the fox “food in a long, deep, birch-bark thing, a kind of bottle.”
In the Cinderella-like tale of little Burnt Face, when she went looking for
the eligible bachelor in the per son of an invisible young man, she was
clothed in “a few sheets of birch bark, of which she made a dress, putting
some figures on the bark…”
Another old story is that of an ancient Indian who sought to make a young
unwilling witch become his bride. When he took her to his bed, she called
the tempests to her rescue and all night long, “the old black Indian was outof-doors, working with all his power to keep the lodge from being blown
away. As soon as he had pinned one sheet of bark into its place another blew
away,” and all the while the fair bride slept in peace.
Algar tells what purports to be a “true story” of a shamen whose wife,
being with child, had “a terrible longing for green corn,” when it was out of
IN THE NORTHEAST
51
season. Her husband being equal to the occasion, simply “went to the
fireplace, rolled up some strips of bark, laid them in the ashes, and began to
sing…after awhile he told her to go and get her corn, and there lay the ears
all nicely roasted too.”
Many of the myths relate the adventures of “Gloosecap, the Hero-God of
the Abnaki.” In the Myth of Pokinsquss (Plate XVII) Gluskabe tangles with
a powerful witch called by Mr. Leland, “Pook-jin-skwess, or the Evil
Pitcher,” and by Mrs. W. Wallace Brown, “Pokinsquss, the Jug Woman.”
Pokinsquss often appears in male form to fight Gluskabe who had “disdained
her love proferred as a female.” Gluskabe also often transformed himself into
other forms. Mallery said that:
Glooscap was at one time a Pogumk, or the small animal of
the weasel family commonly called Fisher (Mustela
Canadensis), also translated as Black Cat, and was the son of
the chief of a village of Indians who were all Black Cats, his
mother being a bear…Pokinsquss was also of the Black Cat
village, and hated the chief and contrived long how she could
kill him and take his place. Now, one day when the camp had
packed up to travel, the witch asked the chief Pogumk to go
with her to gather gull’s eggs; and they went far away in a
canoe to an island where the gulls were breeding and landed
there, and when she hid herself to spy, and having found out
that the Pogumk was Glooscap, ran to the canoe and paddled
away singing:
Nikhed-ha Pogumk min nekuk,
Netswil sagamawin! .
Which being translated from the Passamaquoddy language
means—
I have left the Black Cat on an island, I shall be
chief of the Fishers now!
The continuation of the story is found in many variant
shapes. In one of them Glooscap’s friend the Fox came to his
rescue, as through Glooscap’s m’toulin or magic power he
heard the song of appeal though miles away beyond forests and
mountains. In others the Sea Serpent appears in answer to the
Hero God’s call, and the latter, mounting the serpent’s back,
takes a load of stones as his cargo to throw at the serpent’s
horns when the latter did not swim fast enough. In the figure
the island is shown at the lower right hand as a roundish outline
52
USES OF BIRCH-BARK
with Glooscap inside. The small round objects to the left are
probably the gull’s eggs but may be the stimulating stones
above mentioned. Pokinsquss stands rejoicing in the stern of a
canoe, which points in the wavy water away from the island.
The device to the left of the witch may be the dismantled camp
of the Black Cats, and the one to her right is perhaps where the
Fox “beyond forests and mountains” heard Glooscap’s song of
distress.
The drawing showing “simply a crane, and a woman who bears in her
hand two branches” (Plate XVII) illustrates the
tale of the Weasel girls, who had come down from Star-land by
means of a diminishing hemlock tree, and flying from Lox had
come to a broad river which they could not cross. But in the
edge of the water stood motionless a large crane, or the
Tumgwo-lig-unach, who was the ferryman. Now, truly, this is
esteemed to be the least beautiful of all the birds, for which
cause he is greedy of good words and fondest of flattery. And
of all beings there were none who had more bear’s oil ready to
annoint everyone’s hair with—that is to say, more compliments
ready for everybody—than the Weasels. So, seeing the Crane,
they sang:
Wa wela quis kip pat kasqu!,
Wa wela quis kip pat kasqu!.
The Crane has a very beautiful long neck,
The Crane has a very beautiful long neck.
This charmed the old ferryman very much, and when they
said: ‘Please, grandfather, hurry along,’ he came quickly.
Seeing this, they began to chant in chorus sweetly as the Seven
Stars themselves:
Wa wela quig nat kasqu!,
Wa wela quig nat kasqu!.
The Crane has very beautiful long legs,
The Crane has very beautiful long legs.
Hearing this the good crane wanted more; so when they asked
IN THE NORTHEAST
53
him to give them a lift across he answered, slowly, that to do so
he must be well paid, but that good praise would answer as
well. Now they who had abundance of this and to spare for
everybody were these very girls. ‘Have I not a beautiful form?’
he inquired; and they both cried aloud: ‘Oh, uncle, it is indeed
beautiful!’ ‘And my feathers?’ ‘Ah, pegeakop-chu.’ ‘Beautiful
and straight feathers, indeed!’ ‘And have I not a charming long,
straight, neck?’ ‘Truly our uncle has it straight and long.’ ‘And
will ye not acknowledge, oh maidens, that my legs are fine?’
‘Fine! oh, uncle, they are perfection. Never in this life did we
see such legs!’ So, being well pleased, the crane put them
across, and then the two little weasels scampered like mice into
the bush.”
Though but one woman figure is drawn, the two boughs
borne by her suggest the two weasel girls, who had come down
the hemlock tree and had also been water fairies until their
garments were stolen by the marten, and thereupon they had
lost their fairy powers and become women in a manner at once
reminding of the Old World swan-maiden myth.
Mallery describes an especially interesting drawing on a birch-bark jewelbox made by a Passamaquoddy Indian for Mrs. W. Wallace Brown, the wife
of the Indian agent. Mrs. Brown for many years collected myths and other
valuable information from these Indians.
The decoration on Mrs. Brown’s jewel-box (Plate XVII) tells the story of
Sable and Black Cat desiring maple sugar and going to the sugar-bush to get
it. They separated so that each could search for the right trail alone, but were
to keep in touch with each other by m’toulin, or magic power. Sable
wandered about until he came to a wigwam where Snake tended a large
kettle of water boiling over a great fire. Snake said that he was hungry and
intended to eat Sable. In preparation for the expected feast, Snake politely
thanked Sable for coming to him and said that he would make the operation
as painless as possible. Snake then told Sable to go into the woods to get a
straight stick so that when he pierced him his entrails would not be torn.
Sable went off and sang a m’toulin song for Black Cat to hear.
When Black Cat learned how Snake planned to kill Sable, he said that he
would lie down behind the trunk of a fallen hemlock tree and attack Snake.
Black Cat then told Sable to hunt until he found as crooked a stick as
54
USES OF BIRCH-BARK
possible and to then carry it to Snake, who would complain that the stick was
not straight enough. Black Cat then told Sable to say that he could straighten
it in the fire, where he would hold it until the steam came out of the end.
While Snake was watching this new mode of straightening a stick, Sable was
to watch for the chance to suddenly hit him with the stick right between the
eyes, thus blinding him with the burning branch. Sable did as Black Cat
suggested and then ran away over the fallen tree trunk. The enraged Snake
followed after Sable; but as he passed over the dead tree, Black Cat, who was
really Gluskabe, reached up and killed him, and cut him up into small pieces
which he tossed in all directions.
In his interpretation of this illustration (Plate VIII), Mallery said,
The two human figures on the left show the animals under
the forest trees inhuman form bidding good-bye before they
parted in search of the right trail. Their diminutive size gives
the suggestion of distance from the main scene. Next comes the
great Snake’s Wigwam, the stars outside showing that night had
come, and inside the kettle hung over a fire, and on its right
appear the wide-open jaws, an indication of the head of the
great Snake. The very crooked stick is on the other side. Farther
on is the Black Cat and the Sable, who is in human form, near
the hemlock tree. The fact that the tree is fallen is suggested,
without any attempt at perspective, by the broken-off branches
and the thick part of the trunk being upturned. The illustration
ends with the Black Cat sitting upon the Snake, clawing and
throwing around pieces of it.
As Mallery said, this illustration “gives an excellent example of the art of
the Passamaquoddy in producing pictures by the simple scraping of birchbark.”
Mallery, Wallace, Algar, Leland, and Speck in particular have gathered
and preserved myths and legends that otherwise would be unknown to the
younger generation of Indians. Tomah Joseph made them live with the
pictures which he drew on birch-bark for Leland’s Algonquin Legends of
New England and various containers that he decorated.
The following illustrations by Tomah Joseph are a fitting ending for the
Old Birch-bark Hunting Culture story, for they are a happy blend of the real
and the unreal as the Indian saw it.
IN THE NORTHEAST
55
The originals of the eight drawings in Plate XVIII are on a birch-bark
woodbox owned by Isaac M. Kingsbury, M. D., and are believed to have
been made by Tomah Joseph between 1880 and 1885. The four scenes on
one side of the box depict hunting, fishing, and the normal camp life of the
old-time Indians; the four scenes on the other side perhaps illustrate
mythological tales. E. Tapan Adney interpreted them as follows:
1. The drawing of two deer, one on each side of an evergreen
tree, exhibits the decorative sense of the Indian in creating
bilateral symmetry - one principle of design the Indian
understood and practiced,
2. The drawing of the bear and squirrel was made to illustrate
the myth of Gluskap making the squirrel smaller and the bear
larger because of their dispositions - the squirrel being too
destructive, the bear too much of a coward. Gluskap is shown
with hatchet and spear.
3. The owl and the moon simply represent a night scene. The
doglike figure may rep re sent another night prowler, the wolf.
Nothing of esoteric significance.
4. The two rabbits smoking pipes under evergreen trees, show
bilateral treatment. The Rabbit is said at Passamaquoddy to be
the mark of the ‘Malecite’ people.
5. An old time Indian with a moose skinned and roasting,
perhaps just hung up, on a spit between two forked sticks. The
Indian carries a hatchet and spear.
6. Two Indians night-fishing for salmon from a birch-bark
canoe. A birch-bark torch in the front of the canoe lures the
fish closer. The Indian is using a salmon spear (Ni-gah-kwul:
forked wings) as in the olden days.
7. Two Indians in a canoe chase a swimming deer. While one
man paddles the other gets ready to shoot an arrow.
8. Camp scene: a conical hunting wigwam, a squaw with
56
USES OF BIRCH-BARK
pointed old-time cap holding a fire stick; camp-fire with pot
hung on a pole, supported by two forked stakes; Indian man
with gun(?) on shoulder, evergreen tree. A camp scene very
much like Tomah Joseph’s drawings on a canoe formerly used
by James Roosevelt’s children at Campobello, canoe built by
him. I think Tomah drew all.
The life of the Indian was a happy one, and in these pictures he
lives again that free happy life. It was not a ‘hard life.’
PLATE XVII
Illustrations for myths, taken from Mallery.
PLATE XVIII
Drawings on birch-bark woodbox, believed to have been made by Tomah
Joseph between 1880 and 1885. They depict hunting, fishing, and
mythological scenes. From photographs furnished by Isaac W. Kingsbury,
M. D.
IN THE NORTHEAST
59
CONCLUSION
In a paper of this sort it is obviously impossible to summarize all the
information about a subject so wide in scope as that of the old Birch-bark
Hunting Culture. It can readily be seen, however, that birch-bark was almost
indispensable. It is safe to say that if a blight had carried off the white birch
in colonial times, as it did the chestnut tree three centuries later, the Indians
would have felt that the angry hand of their God of Misfortune was raised
against them, and by means of propitiation and magic, undoubtedly would
have sought to prevent such a disaster. The loss of the white birch would
have been devastating to the old Birch-bark Hunting Culture, where quicklybuilt shelters and travel with speed and light equipment were essential. Not
only would the material culture of the Indians have suffered impoverishment
by such a blight, but the loss of the birch would have had an equally
destructive effect on their art and mythology.
60
USES OF BIRCH-BARK
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adney, E. Tapan, “The Building of a Birch Canoe,” Outing, 1900.
Manuscripts in possession of The Robert Abbe Museum.
Algar, Abby L., In Indian Tents, Boston, 1897.
Bechefer, Rev. P. Thierry, “Letter,” Jesuit Relations, Vol. LXIII.
Begot, J., “Journal,” 1683-84, Jesuit Relations, Vol. LXIII.
Boas, Franz, “Migrations of Asiatic Races and Cultures to North America,”
Scientific Monthly, Vol. XXVI, February 1929.
Primitive Art, Oslo, 1927.
Race, Language, and Culture, New York, 1940.
Brown, A. W., “Some Indoor and Outdoor Games of the Wabanaki Indians,”
Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, Vol. VI, Sec.
2, Montreal, 1889.
Butler, Eva L., and Speck, Frank G., “Eastern Algonkian Block-Stamp
Decoration: A New World Original or an Acculturated Art,”
Research Series, No. 1, Trenton, 1947.
Butler, Eva L., and Hadlock, Wendell S., “Some Uses of Birch-Bark in
Northern New England,” Massachusetts Archaeological
Association Bulletin, Vol. XVIII, No. 4, July, 1957.
Chadwick Survey, Manuscript map and journal, State Archives,
Massachusetts State Library, Boston.
Champlain, Samuel de, Voyages of Sieur de Champlain, 2 vols., Prince
Society, Boston, 1878.
Davidson, D. S., “Decorative Art of the Tetes de Boule of Quebec,” Indian
Notes and Monographs, Museum of the American Indian,
Heye Foundation, Vol. X, No. 9, New York, 1928.
Densmore, Frances, “Uses of Plants of the Chippewa Indians,” Forty-fourth
Annual Report, Bureau of American Ethnology,
Washington, 1928.
“Chippewa Customs,” Bulletin Eighty-six, Bureau of
American Ethnology, Washington, 1929.
Denys, Nicholas, The Description and Natural History of the Coasts of
North America, ed., W. F. Ganong, Champlain Society
Publications, Vol. II, Toronto, 1908.
Dierville, “Relation du Voyages du Port Royal de 1’Acadie,” La Nouvelle
France, Amsterdam, 1910; ed., Dr. J.C. Webster,
Champlain Society, Toronto, 1924.
IN THE NORTHEAST
61
Dodge, Ernest S., “An Early Nineteenth Century Passamaquoddy Bark Box
with an Anthropomorphic Decoration,” Massachusetts
Archaeological Association Bulletin, Vol. XIV, No. 2,
January, 1953.
Dodge, Ernest S., and Hadlock, Wendell S., “A Canoe from the Penobscot
River,” The American Neptune, Salem, Massachusetts.
Eckstorm, Fannie H., “The Handicrafts of the Modern Indians of Maine,”
Bulletin III, The Robert Abbe Museum, Bar Harbor, Maine,
1932.
“Katahdin Legends,” Appalachia, December, 1924.
Gookin, Daniel, “Historical Collections of the Indians of New England,”
1674; Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, Vol. I,
reprinted 1806.
Gyles, John, “Captivity of John Gyles,” Tragedies of the Wilderness, ed., S.
G. Drake, Boston, 1844.
Hadlock, Wendell S., and Dodge, Ernest S., “A Canoe from the Penobscot
River,” The American Neptune, Salem, Massachusetts.
Hadlock, Wendell S., and Butler, Eva L., “Some Uses of Birch-Bark in
Northern New England,” Massachusetts Archaeological
Association Bulletin, Vol. XVIII, No. 4, July, 1957.
Howley, J. P., The Beothucks or Red Indians, Cambridge, England, 1915.
Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, ed., R. G. Thwaites, Cleveland,
1897.
Josselyn, John, “An Account of Two Voyages to New England, 1638-1663”
London, 1675; Massachusetts Historical Society
Collections, Ser. 3, Vol. Ill, Cambridge, 1833.
New England’s Rarities, London, 1672; Boston, 1865.
Kendall, Edward A., Travels Through the Northern Parts of the United
States in the Years 1807and 1808, New York, 1809.
Kohl, J. G., Kitchi-gami, London, 1860.
Lafiteau, Joseph Francis, Moeurs des Sauvages Ameriquains, Comparees
aux Moeurs des Premiers Temps, Tomes I-II, Paris, 1724.
Le Clercq, C., New Relations of Gaspesia, with the Customs and Religion of
the Gaspesians Indians, ed., W. F. Ganong, Champlain
Society, 1910.
62
USES OF BIRCH-BARK
L,eland, Charles G., The Algonquin Legends of New England, Boston,
1884.
Lescarbot, M., History of New France, ed., W. L. Grant, Champlain Society,
1907, 1911, and 1914.
Mallery, Garrick, “Picture Writing of the American Indians,” Tenth Annual
Report, Bureau of American Ethnology, Washington, 1893.
Mechling, W. H., “Malecite Tales,” Canada Department of Mines,
Geological Survey Memoirs 49. Anthropological Series,
No. 4, 1914.
“Malisect Tales,” Journal of American Folklore, Vol.
XXVI, 1913.
Morton, Thomas, New English Canaan, Amsterdam, 1637; Boston, 1883.
Orchard, William C., “The Technique of Porcupine-quill Decoration Among
the North American Indians,” Contributions from the
Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, Vol. IV,
No. 1, New York, 1916.
Parsons, Elsie C., “Micmac Folk Lore,” Journal of American Folklore. Vol.
XXXVIII, No. 13, 1925.
Petrullo, V. M., “Decorative Art on Birch-bark Containers from the
Algonquin River de Lievre Band,” Indian Notes and
Monographs, Museum of the American Indian, Heye
Foundation, New York, July, 1929.
Prince, J. D., “Passamaquoddy Wampum Records,” Proceedings of the
American Philosophical Society, Vol, XXXVI, No. 156,
1897.
Pring, Martin, “A Voyage Set Out from the Citie of Bristoll, 1603,” Early
English and French Voyages, New York, 1930.
Rasles, Sebastien, “Lettre du Pere Sebastien Rasles, Missionnaire de la
Campagnie de Jesus dans la Nouvelle France, a M. son
neveu,” Jesuit Relations, Vol. LXVII, 1722.
Rosier, James, “A True Relation of the Voyage of Captaine George
Waymouth, 1605,” Early English and French Voyages, New
York, 1930.
Schoolcraft, Henry R., History of the Indian Tribes in the United States, Vol.
VI, p. 631, Philadelphia, 1857.
Skinner, Alanson, “Recently Acquired Mohegan Articles,” Indian Notes and
Monographs, Museum of the American Indian, Heye
Foundation, Vol. II, New York, 1925.
Speck, Frank G., “Art of the Penobscot Indians,” Museum Journal, Vol. II,
Philadelphia, 1911.
IN THE NORTHEAST
63
Speck, Frank G., “Huron Moose Hair Embroidery,” American
Anthropologist, N.S. Vol. XIII, No. 1 , 1911.
“The Double-Curve Motive in Northeastern Algonkian Art,”
Memoire 42, Anthropological Series, No. 1, Geological
Survey of Canada, 1914.
“Penobscot Tales,” Journal of American Folklore, Vol.
XXVIII, No. 107, 1915.
“Symbolism in Penobscot Art,” Anthropological Papers,
American Museum of Natural History, Vol. XXIX, Part 2,
New York, 1927.
“Wawenock Myth Texts from Maine,” Forty-third Annual
Report, Bureau of American Ethnology, Washington, 1928.
“Penobscot Tales and Religious Beliefs,” Journal of American
Folklore, Vol. 48, No. 187, 1935.
“Montagnais Art in Birch-Bark, a Circumpolar Trait,” Indian
Notes and Monographs, Museum of the American Indian,
Heye Foundation, Vol. XI, No. 2, New York, 1937.
Penobscot Man, the Life History of a Forest Tribe in Maine,
Philadelphia, 1940.
Speck, Frank G., and Butler, Eva L., “Eastern Algonkian Block-Stamp
Decoration: A New World Original or an Acculturated Art,”
Research Series, No. 1, Trenton, 1947.
Spier, Leslie, “Review of Speck’s ‘Double-Curve Motive’, American
Anthropologist, N.S. Vol. XVII, 1917.
Swanton, John R., “Indian Tribes of North America,” Bureau of American
Ethnology Bulletin, 145, p. 544, Washington, 1953.
Williams, Roger, “A Key into the Language of America,” London, 1643;
Publications of the Narraganset Club, Vol. I, Providence,
1866.
Winthrop, John, Jr., Manuscript copy of letter, Winthrop Papers, Vol. V, p.
88, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
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Boston, N.D.
NOTES AND REFERENCES
Page 3.
Swanton, p. 544.
Page 6.
Densmore (1929), Speck (1927), (1937), Davidson (1928),
Eckstorm (1932), and other authorities listed on this page are all
quoted later.
Page 7.
Gyles, p. 97. Speck (1935), p. 32.
Page 8.
Williams, pp. 48, 51.
Page 9.
Gookin, pp. 149, 150. Denys, pp. 405-406.
Page 10.
Dierville, p. 177. The Chadwick Journal is numbered page 85 in
Massachusetts Archives, Vol. 243. This reference to wigwams is
found on page 7 of the Journal.
Page 11.
Lescarbot, p. 137. Roger Williams, pp. 56-57, and other early
writers comment on the ability of the Indians to break camp
quickly.
Governor John Winthrop of Connecticut while in England in
1662, seeking a new Charter for the Colony, became a member
of the newly founded Royal Philosophical Society. He
corresponded with different members of the Society thereafter,
and frequently sent observations and native products to the
Society.
Josselyn (1675), pp. 251, 258, 307. An especially interesting
reference of his is (p. 307) to the use of a birch-bark dish in the
puberty ceremony.
Page 12.
Josselyn (1675), p. 289. Gookin, p. 151. Josselyn (1675) p. 307.
Rosier, p. 376. Winthrop, Vol. V, p. 88. Gookin, p. 151.
Page 18.
Josselyn (1675), p. 307. Chadwick, p. 8. Dierville, p. 118. Rasle,
p. 95. Lafiteau, pp. 72-73.
Page 19.
Denys, pp. 380-381, 419. Speck (1940), p. 105. Speck (1937), pp.
54-55.
Page 20.
Gyles, p. 99. Stone boiling is also mentioned by others, including
Denys, pp. 402, 422 and Lescarbot, p. 222. Speck (1940), p. 76.
Page 21.
Gyles, p. 83. Dierville, pp. 176-177.
Page 22.
Gookin, p. 154. Rosier, p. 393.
Page 23.
Pring, pp. 348-349. Rosier, pp. 378-379. Gorges, pp. 411, 418.
Page 24.
Denys, p. 420.
Page 25.
Pring, pp. 348-349. Champlain, p. 239. Morton, pp. 65, 80, 186.
Wood, p. 96. Johnson, p. 39. Josselyn (1675), p. 307. Gookin, p.
152. Champlain, p. 239.
Page 26.
Josselyn (1675), pp. 307-308. Gookin, p. 152. Wood, p. 96.
Rosier, pp. 376-377. Hadlock and Dodge, pp. 3, 7, 10, 11.
Page 29.
Hadlock and Dodge, p. 15. Rosier, p. 392. Williams, p. 86.
Wood, p. 31, also describes cormorant hunting.
Page 30.
Josselyn (1675), pp. 279-280, 305-306. Wood, pp. 94-95.
Page 31.
Denys, pp. 353-354, 436.
Page 32.
Denys, p. 435. Speck (1940), pp. 43, 46. Petrullo, p. 239. The
Passamaquoddy Indians sometimes made rattles in the form of a
ball-on-a-stick. Dr. King s bury has a decorated rattle of this type
in his collection.
Page 33.
Leland’s book gains considerably from Tomah Joseph’s
illustrations. Mallery, p. 201, picture-writing; p. 379, tribal
emblems; p. 652, chief and braves.
Page 34.
Mallery, p. 260, account of the Indian with basket wood; p. 261,
account of the basket seller. These “Traders accounts,” and
Mallery, includes many others, throw considerable light on the
period in which they were kept.
Page 36.
Gookin, p. 151. Josselyn (1675), p. 307. Speck (1937), pp.
95,106. Josselyn (1672), p. 17. Densmore (1928), p. 320.
Page 39.
This exceedingly interesting old box has been carefully described
by Dodge (1953).
Dr. Kingsbury in “M’teoulin and Two Versions of a
Passamaquoddy Legend,’ Massachusetts Archaeological
Society Bulletin, Vol. XVII, No. I, pp. 1-3, quotes various
authorities’ interpretation of m’teolin. E. Tap-pan Adney, as
quoted by Dr. Kingsbury, conceived of medeulin, as he spelled it,
as “a special word which corresponds to our hypnotism, by which
the mind of the adept was put into the mind of another (ma-ta,
med-e) controlling it.”
Speck (1940), p. 163. Hadlock and Dodge, pp. 13-15.
Page 42.
Speck (1940), pp. 58, 6l .
Page 48.
Bechefer, p. 291. Spier, p. 344. Speck (1937), pp. 78,79.
Schoolcraft, p. 631 . Kohl, pp. 412-413. Dens-more (1929), Note
6. Howley, pp. 175-176.
Page 49.
Speck (1928), p. 185; (1935), pp. 34, 86, 50.
Page 50.
Speck (1935), pp. 66, 71-72, 98, 83, 46-47, 104, 105. Leland, pp.
306-307. Algar, p. 82.
Page 51. Mallery, pp. 469-470.
Page 52. Mallery, pp. 471-472.
Page 53. Mallery, pp. 473-474.
Page 54. Mallery, p. 474.
Page 55.
Dr. and Mrs. Kingsbury have collected many unusually fine old
birch-bark articles. They have given most of their collection to the
Robert Abbe Museum.