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Book Review - The Survival of the Bark Canoe

Book Review By Jim Harless

The Survival of the Bark Canoe by John McPhee

I have long been a fan of John McPhee, and this book is no exception. McPhee's essays roll right off the page; I can consume a McPhee book just like conversation. McPhee's essays bring insight and understanding to many subjects, though most concern the natural world. And what could be more natural than the bark canoe, the subject of this book.

The Survival of the Bark Canoe was written in 1975, though I just got around to buying it recently after seeing it in the Piragis catalog. In the West, we tend to think of native canoes as dugouts and cedar strips, or perhaps the wood and hide sea kayaks of the coastal tribes. In the East, the watercraft of choice was the bark canoe, wherever quality birch was available,. McPhee's approach was to find the best living master of the bark canoe craft. This led McPhee to the home of Henri Vaillancourt, in Greenville, New Hampshire. Per McPhee, Henri was the self-professed "most skillful of them all" referring to the then-living bark canoe builders, native and immigrants included. Henri's missions has been "to make a perfect bark canoe, and he says he will not rest until he has done so." Henri learned his craft mostly from the Howard Chappelle book "The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of America." Chappelle's book is a compilation of the text, drawings, diagrams and photographs of Edwin Tappan Adney (deceased 1950). Adney spent six decades studying, building and documenting the bark canoe. He learned much of the skill from the Malecite Indians of New Brunswick, generally considered the masters of bark canoe building. I was amazed to learn that these masters could build a bark canoe at stream side, virtually anywhere the bark exists, using only an ax and a 'crooked knife.' Henri's sole occupation was the construction and repair of bark boats.

McPhee's approach to documenting the bark canoe is to document Henri Vaillancourt, and to document a bark canoe trip they did in Maine, spiced with the history of the bark canoe tossed in. I will share a sample, which may entice you to try this book. Here is a section describing the preparation for their Maine canoe trip:

"How much equipment goes on a canoe trip is a reflection of the criteria that go along as well. Young Indians of the Maine woods, several centuries ago, went off alone for upward of a year -- to prove their skills and their ability to survive.They took a canoe, as spear, some bone tools, a crooked knife, snow shoes, and a blanket. Today, if someone's criterion is to play at being an Indian, that is how to do it. Henri knew too much about the Indians to pretend to be one. He was a craftsman - an artist, really - with a historical purpose, not a boy with a feather in his hair. His professed criteria were to take it easy, see some wildlife, and travel light with his bark canoes - nothing more - and one could not help but lean his way. I had known of people who took collapsible cots, down pillows, chain saws, outboard motors, cases of beer, and battery-powered portable refrigerators on canoe trips - even into deep wilderness. You set your own standards. Travel by canoe is not a necessity, and will nevermore be the most efficient way to get from one region to another, or even one lake to another - anywhere. A canoe trip has become simply a rite of oneness with certain terrain, a diversion of the field, an act performed not because it is necessary but because there is value in the act itself; and what you take along depends on what you can afford (Henri could not afford to buy beef jerked, so he had to make it) and on how you see yourself in the setting."

And another choice sample including McPhee's criticism, this from the groups' Maine canoe trip:

"Paddling silently, we move upstream - half, three-quarters of a mile. No moose. Henri is good at the silent paddle - the blade feathered on the recovery stroke and never coming out of the water. However, he is having difficulty traveling in the channel. The stream is only a few yards wide and has many bends. The canoes keep hitting the banks and sticking in the mud. With some trepidation, I suggest that there are bow strokes - draw, cross-draw, draw-stroke, pry, cross-pry - intended to help the canoe avoid the banks of the river. Trepidation because it is astonishing how people sometimes resent being told how to paddle a canoe. I have paddled on narrow twisting rivers in New Jersey with good friends - easygoing, even-tempered people - who got royally incensed when I suggested that if they would only learn to draw and cross-draw they would not continue to plow the riverbanks. The look in their eyes showed a sense of insult, resting on the implication that every human being is born knowing how to use a canoe. The canoe itself apparently inspires such attitudes, because in form it is the most beautifully simple of all vehicles. And the born paddlers keep hitting the banks of the rivers. Mike Blanchette, though, in the bow of our canoe, to my relief, is not offended. Nor is Warren. They quickly pick up the knack of the pry and the draw - ways of moving the bow suddenly to left or right. Henri shows interest, too, inadvertently revealing that he knows almost nothing about paddling the bow. His interest is genuine but academic. [Henri believes] the bow is the subordinate position in the canoe. The person in the stern sets the course, is the pilot, the captain. The Blanchettes and I regularly change positions in our canoe, but Henri never leaves the stern."

And the following poignant stretch, discussing how many neophytes got into trouble canoeing after tackling whitewater subsequent to watching the movie Deliverance (screenplay and book by James Dickey), the ultimate canoeing movie, except for what happened to 'Chubby' (Ned Beatty):

"Dickey is not responsible, of course. He did not create fool-hardiness. All he created was an imaginative book full of wildly impossible canoeing scenes - canoes diving at steep angles down breathtaking cataracts, and shooting like javelins through white torrents among blockading monoliths - and a film that was faithful to the book. A canoe trip is a society so small and isolated that its frictions - and everything else about it - can magnify to stunning size. When trouble comes on a canoe trip, it comes from the inside, from fast-growing hatreds among the friends who started. Perhaps Dickey delivered less than he might have when he brought trouble from the outside. Henri says that his reaction to Deliverance, while seeing the movie, was that he couldn't care less who was doing what to whom but that he was shocked and alarmed by what was happening to the canoes."

OK, that's my report. I hope you will also pick us this fine little book. It's a terrific read!!