Chapter 1 – Birch Bark Canoe
Fig. 1-1: Birch Bark (B.B.) Canoe
You will need to look up to see the Birch Bark (B.B.) Canoe in the Museum of Ojibwa Culture in Saint Ignace, Michigan. You’ll see many other fascinating artifacts there, too.
The great sturgeon slides swiftly and gracefully through the water. Ojibwa legends say that it inspired the shape of their canoes. Using a canoe is much faster than walking, so that’s how the Ojibwa liked to travel. Lakes and rivers were their highways because forest paths were hard to walk on and went up and down mountains.
To ensure they would last many years, canoes were carefully built and looked after.
One winter, the wind howled and blew the trees, day after day. The old birch tree had swayed and stood tall through many such blizzards, but she was old and weak now. A mighty gust struck her, and she fell flat between two trees in the forest behind her. She hoped she would turn into soil to feed new birch seedlings, even though she knew that would take many years. She had seen Ojibwa women carry baskets made of birch bark when they came to pick berries in summer, so she knew they might come to strip her bark. Birch Bark, or B. B. as she liked to call herself, knew that birch bark, was good for many things, including stopping fungus from spoiling food stored in such a basket.
When the snow melted, she was exposed and awoken by the cut of a stone axe. It hurt as it split B.B. down the length of her trunk, but the wedges prying B.B. away from the rest of the log seemed to free her to a new life.
The men walked heel to toe, counting. When they reached eighteen, they nodded. One said, “Good. We can make this new canoe from a single log.” One of them picked up the long curl of bark and carried her away.
B.B. managed to whisper, “Goodbye” to the rest of the tree as the man carried her across the meadow and into the forest on the other side. She wondered what a canoe was. Not long after, she found herself on the ground in the middle of an Ojibwa village. Since it was getting dark, the man who carried her entered his wigwam, which was what they called their houses.
A crow landed on B.B. She knew him because he had often landed on her branches in the forest. “What’s a canoe?” she asked him.
“People sit in it and travel over water,” Crow said. “This village is close to where the waters of two Great Lakes come together. You will see it in the morning.”
Then, he went on to explain that many Native Peoples often got together where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron joined up with narrow strips of water called “straits.” Mackinac Island, St. Ignace, and Mackinaw City were all there.
The Ojibwa from the Lake Superior area, the Ottawa from the Lake Michigan region and the Huron People shared many customs. Their languages were also similar, since all three were part of a greater group known as theAnishnaabe, or “first man.”
They lived from the land, hunting many types of animals. They used tree roots, bark and leaves for medicine, baskets and many other things. In the meadows and marshes, they gathered berries, wild rice and other plants for food, and caught fish in the lakes and rivers. Nothing was wasted, since nearly every part of the animals and plants provided something of use.
“I’ve watched these people for many years,” Crow said. “They are almost as smart as I am. They do some clever things, such as making the birch bark canoes like you will be.”
The next morning, two men lay B.B. in a long, narrow trench in the ground. They poured hot water over her to soften her so she could be formed into the shape they wanted. It felt lovely. She was no longer afraid and let herself relax and enjoy this bath. As she soaked, Crow told her that if the water had been cold, she would have had to soak from one full moon until the next.
Here is how they heated water: They made bags from the stomachs of animals they had hunted and filled these with water. They heated stones in a fire, then put th
