De Pan

A beautiful image of canoe poling in Florida from the American Museum of Natural History Image Collection...

In the Maine Woods (1905 Edition) has a wonderful full-page vintage photo (p.92) of a guide and sport after a successful deer hunt...

The guide is using a paddle with a distinctly scalloped grip. Here is a closeup...



Unfortunately the blade isn't visible in the photo, but the grip area seems identical to a Guide's paddle found on this site's archive page originally advertised by Gould Auctions in Maine.

A 2007 exhibit entitled Wolastoqiyik - Portrait of A People  (sponsored by the Government of New Brunswick) has some great canoe related online images.  The online portal has a downloadable exhibit guide (*.pdf format) which features some better high resolution grayscale photos.

One such image is of Margarette Francis of Kingsclear. She is posing with traditional garb, a snowshoe in one hand and a lengthy paddle in the other.

I'm finding a bunch of different images of traditional native paddles on Archive.org. Page 222 of Material culture of the Menomini by Alanson Skinner has a photo of a "typical" straight sided blade design of this tribe.


Menomini Paddle
The blade design seems similar to the antique Chippewa (Ojibway) paddle from LiveAuctioneers.com posted about here. Since the territories and culture of the Chippewa and Menomini overlapped quite a bit, similarities in paddle and canoe design would be expected.

Chippewa Canoe Paddle
Length: 56 inches.
Early 20th century
Full Link
Further on in the book on page 339, Alanson depicts the decorative etchings found on a Menominee paddle in the collection of the American Museum of Natural History.


The excerpt from the text describing this paddle is below:

Floral designs and "war-clubs" or "lacrosse racquets" may be noted on the canoe paddle in fig. 63. This paddle, which is 31 in. long, is in the American Museum of Natural History.

This sounded familiar and sure enough, I had posted pics of these paddles in an earlier post on incised decorations. Difficult to make out the etching details in the pics, but they are there...

Catalog No: 50 / 9792
Culture: MENOMINEE
Locale: WI, MENOMINEE INDIAN RESERVATION
Dimensions: L:99.2 W:10.5 H:1.8 [in CM]
Accession No: 1910-44

From the Smithsonian Institution Research Information Service (SIRIS) comes this photo featuring a decorated Iroquois (Mohawk) ceremonial paddle dated circa 1891...




The paddle features a dual tone motif, sometimes seen in other artistic renditions or model samples. This earlier post featuring a painting by James Peachey dated to 1785 shows Iroquoian paddlers on Lake Ontario with similarly themed paddle decoration.....





New York's Metropolitan Museum of the Arts has a bark canoe model with similarly decorated paddles in their collection dated to pre-1845 (original post HERE) although of course the pigment has faded with time.

Here is a photo of an Ojibwe woman using a gripless pole paddle while attending to some ricing chores...

Continuing with some vintage pics of celebrities in canoes, here is a shot of Ginger Rogers using a giant looking beavertail.

Another historic paddle photo from the McCord Museum, this one exhibiting an Innu (Montagnais) family posing with slender, straight sided paddles. Clicking the image will send you to the McCord's site which has a zoom feature.

Innu group standing in front of a tent, QC, about 1881
Jules-Ernest Livernois
Silver salts on paper mounted on card - Gelatin silver process
MP-0000.1107.5