The Birch canoe builder

Oh, I enjoy living up here in the woods, I believe, more than anything. because uh I got a lot of kick out of just walking in the woods and and on the trap line why I could see things happening all the time, you know, watch what the game was doing, what they were thinking, timber wos and that, you know, now if I get into a a big city or something I can't wait till I get out of there. And I don't see no fun in a in a big place. Uh because it uh it's well it just seems that people are in a hurry and they're worried about they go to work in the morning by the whistle and come home with a whistle and and uh it's free here. You you've got a lot of freedom. [Applause] If I want to go fishing, I go fishing. or if I want to hunt, I'll go hunting. And uh I like the things around here. So, uh I I never want to get out of here. Further I can get back into the woods and find new stuff, I'd like it. And when I come up here in the woods, I was looking for wild country. And why I couldn't find a birch bark canoe, I thought, I'll make one. There was so much birch here and big ones, any size you wanted. And they wasn't even buying it then. I I thought this would be the place to make one, but I wanted to see one on the water. Nice yellow canoe like that poem. I'd read that poem of he walk so many times. Thus, the birch canoe was builded. [Music] The first thing making a birch bark canoe, I go in the woods, get a cedar for the frame. I look for a straight grain cedar and I cut it and split it into quarters so I can pack it out. Oh, we first come here in 1921 and we stayed with my wife's uncle and uh he was one of the first settlers up here. He had bookskin clothes and long black hair and a black mustache and they'd haul in moose. It was really wild country then. [Applause] We just got married and didn't have much money and we moved into an old empty homestead shack and and the floor needed fixing. So I patched that up where the porcupines had chewed and made some furniture made out of green popppel. That stuff started sprouting. It was so damp in the in the summer that it would grow like a green piece of wood and got a big sprouts on it. That was the first piece of land I bought. That was 40 acres. I had enough money saved up for all the woods from trapping and that so I could buy a piece of land and then I traded that for an 80 acres on the river and that was an awful nice place and u we had that for a while and it got into the depression there was no chance to earn any money and they wouldn't buy no furs or anything so uh I lost Then I waited a year or so and uh I bought another place. Then the neighbors had come together and in one day we built a a log shack on it and we had our own place. I paid $100 for seven acres and my tax was uh 99 on on seven acres. Well, after we built this now, we lived here ever since. After I get the cedar home, I if it's dry, I soak it and then I split it into planking and gun whales and ribs have to be shaved. When we first come here, we'd we'd shoot our meat, you know, we shot our venison even out of season didn't make no difference, but we never wasted it. And then we had a one of these stone crocs sunk in the swamp. Sometime there's ice in there all summer, you know, under them spruce bogs. You put your venison in there to age till it was Well, you put it in there till it's almost slippery, you know. Boy, then it's really good. You can cut it with a fork. And then after I had the cedar split into thinner stuff for planking and and then uh and you steam them or soak them in there. We'd we'd start out in the spring as a rule and make maple syrup for pancakes. And uh then uh a little later on the rough fish would be running in the creeks. Well, we get a lot of rough fish and uh smoke them and can some of them of course. Then the berries started coming. Strawberries would come out, wild strawberries, and we'd get them. And then the raspberries come on right after that. Then the blueberries. After the blueberries are over with as well, then it was uh about duck season. Then it was time to get venison, of course. Then a little later on then the trapping began again in the fall after after it got cold enough why the birds were good. We eat trap and um then the hunters would come and we generally would uh guide the hunters and um make a little money that way. after I get the planking and the ribs made and then uh and you steam them or soak them in there [Applause] [Music] after I steam them. And so I then I bend them over a form because it's so much easier than the way the Indians did to stand on them and pull them up or bend them around a tree. That's the way I shape them. Well, after I get the planking and the ribs made, then it's time to get the bark. In June and July, it peels the best. And then it's important to get a straight tree, no burls or low limbs. And has to be the right thickness and the right diameter. [Music] You can also get the spruce roots at the same time you get the bark. You know, man has really destroyed a lot of this wildlife. The moose was never killed off in this country. They were drove out by the loggers. A moose will freeze to death in a popple brush where they got to have green timber. That's why they're moving back. They they won't live here. You see the all these governors like the the wolf and the and the northern uh the fish, you know, they keep the sick ones out. Now you can take and fish right in a bunch of shiners and put them on your hook and throw him right back in that bunch of shiners and you'll only be a few minutes till you see the silver flying when there's a northern come in and grabs that shiner. He sees he don't swim right. He don't swim right and there's something wrong with him. So he grabs him. He thinks that's easy mark. I'll catch him. So they take the sick ones. If the chain, that nature chain ain't broken too bad that the timber will come back enough, if they'll quit logging and make paper out of something else, we might bring it back. They could bring it back maybe. [Applause] Then I would get the bark and and tack it on a uh I call it a platform that table there and cut it into sheets. You have to put the yellow side out. That's the inside of the bar as it grows. The inside of it goes out because that's smooth and the white side is all so rough and and uh moss growing on it and all that. So I used it has to be that way. It's always been all the canoes that I've seen that Indians made were always that way. When you get ready to uh do the sewing and the binding way, then you get the roots, put them in water to keep them soft and strip the bark off. The right name for the for the roots is Watup. They'd always carry some along with them, those those voyagers. And then you split them half round. Then you're ready to start binding. When I couldn't build boats in the summer or in the winter, I trapped all them years. There was I don't know. I trapped for years. You know, had had uh about seven lines. So I was busy every day walking about seven or eight miles a day. I think the walking was healthy too because uh right now I both of us is in good enough shape we could well we walked to town not very long ago. This coming September I'll be 70 then. I used to make canoes with nails but that didn't have any meaning until I met Mlan a neighbor of mine. He'd seen the Indians make them and uh what he told me and what I'd figured out for myself. I finally got so I could make them without nails and glue or anything like that. After the bark is sewed, then we put a form or pattern in the middle. The form is propped down from the ceiling with posts. Then we bend up the bark around this form and put our jigs on the sides of it to hold the bark upright. Then we put the gun wheels on and uh clamp them there. The boughs are separate. You see, you've sewed them separate. And then we uh shove the boughs on each end and uh put the bark between the inside and the outside gun whale. After they're in, then you try to bind them gun whales up on the bow there or on a on a two bow pieces or points. I trapped a lot of wolves myself, but I I see now it was time to quit and I'm just as well satisfied they took the boundaries off. Like one time I had a snare set under a log and uh it was in February when the wolves are mating, you know, and uh I had a female in this snare and there had been five males there and they would dug all the snow away. They wouldn't get up close to her because the the snare was on her neck. The snow was about 2 ft deep. They dug all that snow away clear around her thinking it would help her to get out. When I come where I could see all their tracks running away where they'd taken off and run. Well, I come pitner letting her out. If I could have got her out of the snare, I was petting her on the head with a little short stick about a foot long. If I could have got her out without her biting me, I'd let her go. Then after the after the bindings are on then uh the next thing is to put planking the ribs in. Planking is uh another name would be shakes or splints. The French uh they call them splints. Shove the planking into the bow and start in the point. Put the first rib in. Oh, we got here. Thoughts, of course, you got to bind down. You put four tharts on them. They're just uh split out of a piece of cedar or say uh 5/8 thick and then shaved a little bit thicker in the middle and on the ends. The Indians, as a rule, they made their gun thinner. You see, that's why they had so many thoughts. But I didn't never like too many thrs. I soon to make the gunner a little heavier and have more room in the boat instead of being jumping over them thrs all the time. But your pitch is asphalt, of course. If you can get spruce pitch and know how to temper it with lard and pound charcoal in it, charcoal helps to keep it from running and also to make it black. But generally, if you put a teaspoon full of lard or bear grease or in it, uh that's in two quarts, that would make it pretty good. I put a thin coat on first on the bark just uh get it hot enough so that it'll spread. The Indians just take a stick, an oak stick, and make it like a little paddle and use that to smear on thicker stuff so that they have enough on there so they can round it off and cover all the seam. You see? Because where she's lapped there, you got to put a little more on one side than on the other to make an oval. All right. Then uh then after you get that much pitch on and then holes filled and your bow filled, why that's just about it. [Music] There's a lot of things in the modern that uh it seems they work better in some ways, but still the old things looks to be good to me too. And then I thought that the birch bar canoe was pretty and uh the Indians had practically lost it. They couldn't do it anymore. So I thought somebody ought to keep this thing going and and keep them uh so people could see how they were made and and u so that was one reason. And I always thought they were pretty. I had a hobby that they that I like to see them on the water. They belonged in this woods country. I always thought. So that was uh kind of why I like to build them. [Music]