Carving Dugouts as Cultural Education

We're written before about Voyages of Rediscovery, an educational organization that builds and uses canoes "as a medium for education and exploration," initially confined to the Columbia River, but more recently in other areas of North America. The organization's primary focus has been birchbark canoes and fiberglass replicas thereof, but they've lately gotten into dugouts as well.

Tyee, above, is a 33-foot western red cedar canoe completed early this month at Kettle Falls on the Columbia. VOR's Adam Wicks-Arshak reports that 11 main participants and hundreds of community members carved it over 11 days with guidance from John Ruskey of the Quapaw Canoe Company.

There are plenty of photos of the building process on Flickr in these three sets:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/79648967@N08/sets/72157631165653752/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/79648967@N08/sets/72157631455709838/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/79648967@N08/sets/72157631468488298/

Facebook members can view more photos of the finished boat here: 
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3771677772549.2135995.1294900839&type=3

And here's one of Quapaw's other projects, recently completed at the KIPP Delta Collegiate Middle School in Helena, Arkansas, and being paddled on the lower Mississippi River:

For Facebook users, more photos of the same boat:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3855893517890.2137966.1294900839&type=3

I love the carvings on both canoes, which look like mythic aquatic beasts swimming on their respective rivers. I don't think these carvings have solid cultural background, but it's hard to argue with the boats' appearance or the overall value of the projects.

Traveling the World to Build Canoes

I envy Will Meadows.

Will is a senior at Lawrence University (Appleton, WI), and with a $25,000 grant from the Thomas J. Watson Foundation, he's spending a year traveling, building and studying the construction of canoes with indigenous people around the world. 

I'm envious because a few years ago I was a finalist for a grant for a very similar project, but didn't make the final cut. But soon after Will was awarded the grant, he contacted me for advice and we had some productive (I hope) communications. His project was written up in the June 2012 issue of Wooden Canoe (published by the Wooden Canoe Heritage Association), and he plans to provide updates to that magazine during the coming year.

Meadows (right) and the native Uros men with whom he built the reed boat on Lake Titicaca.

Will's building and travel plans include:

• Lake Titicaca: reed boat
• Solomon Islands: Polynesian canoe
• Zanzibar: outrigger dugout
• Canada: bark canoe (working with Rick Nash and Pinnock Smith of the Algonquin First nation)
• Norway: canvas skin-on-frame kayak (working with Anders Thygesen)

Will is documenting his progress in a well-written blog, which indicates that his boat- and canoe-related activities are by no means limited to the list above. For example, his latest post describes the construction and repair of expanded dugout boats on Bolivia's Rio Beni, a tributary of the Amazon River.

More on Mtepes

If yesterday's post on the Kenyan sewn vessel the mtepe wasn't long enough, here's a bit more, gleaned from a source brought to my attention by a reader who wishes to remain anonymous but whose input is much appreciated.

First off, I was incorrect in using the plural form mtepes. It should be mitepe, according to this source ("The Mtepe: regional trade and the late survival of sewn ships in east African waters," Erik Gilbert, in International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, 1998).

Next, there's this wonderful photo from the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts:

The mtepe shown appears to combine the beak-like stempost terminal of a mtepe proper with the sharply angled stem and long bow overhang of a dau la mtepe. Perhaps this c.1890 photo caught the mtepe during its transition period to the new style. As Gilbert notes, it's a graceful vessel, much finer in appearance than the extant chunky-looking models of mitepe proper, and more like photos of other dau la mitepe, but with the advantage of the lovely terminal head.

Gilbert's argument is that the mtepe's survival into the 20th century was not some weird conservative holdover, but due to the fact that its shallow draft, seagoing ability, and substantial capacity made it uniquely suitable to a couple of niche activities. 

After the Royal Navy began suppressing the slave trade in 1860, the mtepe found a role as an excellent slaver (please excuse the expression), able to avoid British patrols by sailing near inshore, but capacious enough to carry substantial human cargoes and fast enough to dash across the short deep-water sections necessary to reach its markets. Likewise, shallow draft and good capacity worked to its advantage in the mangrove pole trade, as it could be poled deep into mangrove swamps, where its strong but flexible hull had to take the ground twice daily, while its seagoing ability allowed it to travel regularly between its home in the Lamu archipelago and Zanzibar, where the mangrove forests and markets were.

Although the hull does not appear so particularly shallow in draft (see lines), that characteristic was frequently cited by contemporary Western observers. Gilbert cites the large mtepe upon which the replica Shangwaya was based which, when measured  in 1877, had a length of 97 feet, breadth of 24 feet, girth of 40 feet, depth of 9.5 feet and tonnage of186 (tonnage measurement type unknown). From this, Gilbert estimates a draft of 7 feet maximum, which is not bad for a vessel of that capacity.

It was only after the death of both the slave and the mangrove pole trades that the sewn-plank mtepe fell out of use. The jahazi, a dhow style of nailed construction, was already in wide use in the same region, and it did not force the mtepe out, but it filled any remaining niches that the mtepe left vacant.