Rushton Canoe drawing

[Kanu]

HI Folks - In the WCHA Journal issue 163 , Feb 2011 there is an article titled " The Rushton Mystique "
at the top of the article is a drawing of a canoe .

Is that an Indian Girl canoe 16 ft long ?

How does it differ from the Rushton IGO ?

 

[Dan Miller]

Hi Kanu,

The drawing at the top of the "Mystique" is the Arkansaw Traveler, designed by Will Kip and introduced at the 1893 Columbian Exposition. It would soon be accompanied by the Ugo and Igo designs. These were all-wood canoes, typically built using feather-lapped planking. The Arkansaw Traveler was the skinniest and fastest of the three, the Ugo in-between, and the Igo was fairly wide and flat-bottomed.

None of these three are very similar to the Indian Girl at all, which was designed for an entirely different method of construction, and by a different designer.

 

[Kanu]

Thanks Dan , very nice drawing . Were all of Rushton's canoes made with seats ? I realize that might seem like an unusual question but who started the idea of putting elevated permanent seats in a canoe ?

Is there a book or other source of Rushton canoe scale drawings ?

 

[Dan Miller]

Rushton's lines drawings were often published in his catalogs. The 1903 catalog has a number and is available as a reprint from WCHA. Others are in digital format on the Historic Manufacturers Catalog Collection, also available from WCHA.

Atwood Manley's book Rushton and His Times in American Canoeing has some lines drawings in the back, but they are mediocre.

Good scale drawings are available from the Adirondack Museum for a few Rushton canoes.

Regarding seats, many of Rushton's canoes had seats, but not all. His earliest hunting canoes from the early 1880s had seats.