Birchbark Canoe
The birchbark canoe, wiigwaasi-jiimaan in Ojibwe, is the light, silent and remarkably strong craft built of sheets of birchbark sewn over a cedar frame with spruce root and sealed with spruce gum, the great carrier of the Anishinaabe and other northern peoples. Light enough for one person to carry across a portage, a full canoe could still move families, furs and goods across hundreds of miles of lakes and rivers, which is why French traders and the voyageurs adopted it wholesale. Master builders selected a smooth-barked birch, stripped the bark in the right season, and shaped the craft with t