Champlain's Journal: Admiring native canoes

By Joel Banner Baird, Free Press Staff Writer • April 21, 2009

Among his contemporaries, Samuel de Champlain was considered an accomplished, if not gifted, sailor and navigator.

He also had an eye for canoe construction.

In his journals, he described the sort of craft that seemed to serve the native Indian people’s purposes for plying lakes as well as rivers:

“In this place were a number of savages who had come for traffic in furs, several of whom came to our vessel with their canoes, which are from eight to nine paces long, and about a pace or pace and a half broad in the middle, growing narrower towards the two ends.

“They are very apt to turn over, in case one does not understand managing them, and are made of birchbark, strengthened on the inside by little ribs of white cedar, very neatly arranged; they are so light that a man can easily carry one ... when they want to go overland to a river where they have business, they carry them with them.”

Beyond a quest on behalf of the French crown for the profitable North American fur trade, Champlain had his sights set on more ambitious commercial adventures to the northwest:

“This exploration would be desirable, in order to remove the doubts of many persons in regard to the existence of this sea on the north, where it is maintained that the English have gone in these latter years to find a way to China.”

(From the “Voyages of Samuel de Champlain,” translated by Charles Pomeroy Otis and published in Boston in 1878). The journals are in the public domain, and can be found online at www.gutenberg.org.

Contact Joel Banner Baird at 660-1843 or This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it . To have Free Press headlines delivered free to your e-mail, sign up at www.burlingtonfreepress.com.