The Survival Of The Bark Canoe

In Greenville, New Hampshire, Henri Vaillancourt makes birch-bark canoes in the same manner and with the same tools that the Indians used. He sews the bark and lashes it to the gunwales with the split roots of spruce or white pine. No nails. No screws. No rivets. The Survival of the Bark Canoe is the story of the building of birch-bark canoes and of a 150-mile trip through the Maine woods in those graceful survivors of Native American technology. As McPhee describes the eventful expedition he made with Vaillancourt, he also traces the evolution of the craft, from its beginnings through the development of the huge canoes used by the fur traders of the Canadian North Woods, where the bark canoe played the key role in opening up the wilderness.