Penobscot Birch Bark Canoe Model

[Benson Gray]

Someone saved me a lot of money yesterday, I was outbid at an auction for a Penobscot birch bark canoe model. This canoe has lots of interesting details which intrigued me. There are no nails and the pegs are square. There are no headboards or obvious indications that it ever had them originally. The planking pieces are unusually short and irregular. The thwarts are inserted in rail splits without any obvious morticing. Steve Cayard has indicated that this as a very early construction technique as described at the link below so it is not clear why they would show up on a model from the early 1900s. Can anyone here offer any other information? Thanks,

Benson

Thread 'Birchbark canoes and Carbon-14 dating'

Feb 27, 2023

Rob Stevens and I have been trading some emails recently about the canoe described at https://www.centralmaine.com/2017/09/02/museum-preserves-native-american-canoe-from-1700s/ which the Pejepscot Historical Society had restored and carbon dated in 2017. There are several bark canoes which have been described as the oldest. A few others include the Enys canoe at the Canadian Canoe Museum (https://canoemuseum.ca/2012-09-11-welcoming-a-canoe-back-to-canada-after-230-years/), the one at the Peabody Essex museum (https://wcha.org/catalogs/penobscot/), one at the Penobscot...

• Benson Gray
• Replies: 2
• Forum: Birchbarks, Dugouts and Indigenous Craft

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[Nick Dennis]

Well I am sure part of you is sad that you were not the winning bidder but another part nearer your wallet says "phew" as its easy to get carried away in an auction situation. I now pencil in my max bid with allowance for commission charges otherwise I would be poorer than I actually am!

Coincidentally, I had an hour long chat with Henri Vaillancourt today. He used to use square pegs in his full size canoes but moved on to using hand cut square forged nails as he found that with use of the canoe, the pegs shrank or worked loose and the canoe could lose shape. That wouldnt happen with a model. The downside with a full size canoe is that the nails will now not want to budge! Nice looking model.

Nick