Wall Street Journal - Penobscots Make Birchbark Canoes

The Wall Street Journal today (8/29) has a front-page article about the
effort by the Penobscot Indians to re-acquire the skills for making
handcrafted birchbark canoes. They made the last one in 1920, and lost the
art when they adopted factory-made canoes. A white man, who taught himself
to make the canoes, is helping the tribe teach members the skills. It takes
a skilled worker about 400 hours of tough, often dirty work to make one
canoe.

The article is online at www.WSJ.com.

Alex

"Auerbach" (auerbach@_NO_SPAM_pacbell.net) writes:
 > The Wall Street Journal today (8/29) has a front-page article about the
 > effort by the Penobscot Indians to re-acquire the skills for making
 > handcrafted birchbark canoes. They made the last one in 1920, and lost the
 > art when they adopted factory-made canoes. A white man, who taught himself
 > to make the canoes, is helping the tribe teach members the skills. It takes
 > a skilled worker about 400 hours of tough, often dirty work to make one
 > canoe.

It takes a skilled bark canoe maker and one helper 2 weeks to make a bark
canoe. That's more like 100 hours. People are still making them here in
Canada. The Ottawa public library has a copy of the National Film Board
construction documentary "Cesar's Bark Canoe" on video. During the
depression in the 1930's one local bark canoe maker said he was selling
them for $2.50.

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