Bark Canoe
date: label: Collection Date
content: 1876
name: label: Donor Name
content: Accession Number Unknown
notes: label: Notes
content: Catalogue ledger book lists this as "South American bark canoe, South America, 1876." No collector or donor or accession number is listed, but the (possible) 1876 date implies it was collected for, or possibly displayed at, the Centennial Exposition of 1876 in Philadelphia. Catalogue card notes that this canoe is described in Collins Ms., p. 970 (Vol. 4). Information in Collins Ms. is virtually identical to the information below published in USNM Bulletin No. 127. Anthropology catalogue card lists canoe as having previously been in the U.S. National Museum Division of Engineering & Industries and indicates it was transferred to the Division of Ethnology September 10, 1935. Described on p. 224 of U.S. National Museum Bulletin No. 127: "South American bark canoe. A type of canoe used by the Indians on the rivers of northern South America. It is made of thick bark from the trunk of a large tree, the bark being brought together at the ends and kept apart in the middle with wooden spreaders. The bark is rolled or folded together at the ends while green and is held by lashings. This gives shape to the canoe, making the ends sharp and raising them sufficiently to be above the water when the boat is afloat. After the bark dries the lashings are removed. If necessary, the openings at the ends are filled with mud, which is allowed to bake in the sun. Dimensions of canoe. - Length, 18 feet; width, 2 feet; depth, 9 inches. ... Canoes of similar construction and form are used by the native Australians."
label: Notes
content: Speculatively, based on the fact that Smithsonian watercraft were often transferred between different divisions of the U. S. National Museum, and catalogued and recatalogued, sometimes losing documentation along the way, it is possible that this canoe might once have been Catalogue No. E43147, a bark canoe from Guyana, catalogued as a "woodskin" type, which has not been located in the collections, though one paddle for it, # E43148, is still in the collections.
label: Notes
content: Illustrated, Fig. 64 and 65, p. 36 in Arnold, Béat, 2017. Les canoës en écorce d'Amérique du Sud : de l'Amazonie à la Terre de Feu (Bark-canoes of South America: from Amazonia to Tierra del Fuego). Le Locle, Editions G d'Encre (Le tour du monde en 80 pirogues, fascicule 3). It is listed in the section on woodskin type canoes, which Arnold says (on p. 31) "... were located in the Guiana Highlands and more particularly in Guyana, formerly British Guiana, and in the area upstream of the Orinoco and rio Branco." Arnold identifies E160359 as: Large open-ended woodskin collected around 1876, or a little earlier (Guyana): length 6.39 m, width 0.70-0.76 m; depth 0.30 m; bark thickness 12 mm. Scale 1:40. The canoe is characterized by its open ends, which are only slightly raised. Here, all of the ropes in organic material have disappeared, both the tensioners and those holding the gunwale poles in place. The ropes once ran through small mortises of square section. Those located on either side of the slits are rectangular and considerably larger in order to enable the additional insertion of the tensioners. The slits pierce the entire thickness of the bark, and have a V shaped profile, with opposing bevelled edges. The lips display a substantial overlap, and thus no triangle of material has been removed.The disappearance of the tensioners has led to sagging of the ends. On the longitudinal view in Fig. 64, the torsion inherent in the canoe structure has been removed from the diagram (the dotted lines probably correspond to a minimum situation, with a horizontal gunwale). See also Appendix 2, p. 101, # 12.
label: Record Last Modified
content: 7 Jul 2021
label: Specimen Count
content: 1
place: label: Place
content: North, Guyana (not certain), South America
topic: label: Topic
content: Ethnology
culture: label: Culture
content: Indian
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 000000
label: USNM Number
content: E160359-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Canoe
physicalDescription: label: Height - Object
content: 33 cm
label: Depth - Object
content: 76 cm
label: Width - Object
content: 6 m