enlarge John Ewing/Staff Photographer

John Ewing/Staff PhotographerDavid Moses Bridges holds a piece of bark used in the making of his traditional canoes. Bridges is a Passamaquoddy tribal member from Pleasant Point.

enlarge John Patriquin/Staff Photographer

John Patriquin/Staff PhotographerSteve Cayard positions a 16-foot canoe for finishing at his shop in Wellington. The canoes were embraced by trappers and woodsmen long after Native Americans made them popular.

enlarge John Patriquin/Staff Photographer

Steve Cayard, a birch bark canoe maker in Wellington, checks the cedar ribs of a 16-foot vessel at his shop. He pays careful attention to detail, finishing canoes with traditional carvings. Cayard said Maine’s canoe history is a rich one, noting that the boats used by the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy and Maliseet tribes were considered among the finest on the continent. Photos by John Patriquin/Staff Photographer

enlarge John Patriquin/Staff Photographer

Steve Cayard, a birch bark canoe maker in Wellington, checks the cedar ribs of a 16-foot vessel at his shop. He pays careful attention to detail, finishing canoes with traditional carvings. Cayard said Maine’s canoe history is a rich one, noting that the boats used by the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy and Maliseet tribes were considered among the finest on the continent. Photos by John Patriquin/Staff Photographer

enlarge Courtesy of Abbe Museum, Bar Harbor

Courtesy of Abbe Museum, Bar HarborMaine Indians gather on the shore around their birch bark canoes in the 1890s.

enlarge Courtesy of Johnson Outdoors Inc.

Courtesy of Johnson Outdoors Inc.A red war canoe advertisement targeting sales to summer camps appears in the 1920 Old Town Canoe catalog.

enlarge Courtesy of Abbe Museum, Bar Harbor

Courtesy of Abbe Museum, Bar HarborA postcard shows two Indians paddling a birch bark canoe, circa 1910.

enlarge Courtesy of David Moses Bridges

Courtesy of David Moses BridgesThe crooked knife is a tool of necessity, as David Moses Bridges shows while working on a strip of wood.

enlarge Courtesy of Darel Bridges

Courtesy of Darel BridgesDavid Moses Bridges reaps the reward of his labor, taking one of his canoes out on the water.

Click here to view some basics about making a birch bark canoe

A LEGACY OF SHIPS

Today's story is the 10th in a 15-part series that will appear in the Maine Sunday Telegram every Sunday throughout the summer. Shipbuilding is one of Maine's original and defining industries, deeply embedded in the state's history and still flourishing today.

NEXT SUNDAY

A look at the future of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. Two years after supporters rallied to save the U.S. Navy's oldest operating shipyard from closure, the facility is refurbishing five submarines and has hired several hundred new employees. Still, many say the long-term future of the site is far from secure.

ALL ABOUT CANOES

The Portland Public Library recommends the following books:

"The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America," by Edwin Tappan Adney and Howard I. Chapelle.

"Woods and Lakes of Maine," by Lucius L. Hubbard (A trip from Moosehead Lake to New Brunswick in a birch bark canoe, to which are added some Indian names of places and their meanings).

"A Canoeist's Sketchbook," by Robert Kimber.

"The Woods and the Sea," by Dudley Cammett Lunt.

"The Survival of the Bark Canoe," by John McPhee.

"Canoes and Kayaks for the Backyard Builder," by Skip Snaith.

"Building the Maine Guide Canoe Revisited," by Jerry Stelmok.

This is the first known description of the canoe in the English language, and it's fitting that it should be set in Maine. Both before and after European contact, the people who lived in this forested corner of the world have had a central role in the development of the canoe. Today, Maine remains a dominant player in the industry, a position it has held for more than a century.

The relationship between Maine and the canoe is multifaceted, and it began before there was written history. It continues today, with both the development of new materials and the revival of ancient methods.

It all started with the birch bark canoe, the most important invention in prehistoric North America.

Although boats fashioned from different kinds of bark were built by various cultures around the world, only the birch bark canoe in North America was developed to such perfection that it survived European contact and endures in essentially the same shape and form.

The birch bark canoes used by the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy and Maliseet tribes were considered among the finest on the continent, said Steve Cayard, a birch bark canoe maker in Wellington who has studied the history of native canoes.

For more than a thousand years prior to contact with Europeans, the tribes had used canoes to travel long distances along the coast and into the forested interior, where a web of rivers and lakes was equivalent to today's highway system. They used their canoes to travel the open ocean as well as rivers and lakes, and their canoes were noted for their sturdiness, their high degree of development and the attention to decorative detail, Cayard said.

Maine tribes used canoes to access the rich and predictable supply of food available on the coast, he said. Because of that food supply, he believes, they had more time to work on their canoes than tribes in the interior.

Long after the arrival of the Europeans, Maine natives continued to manufacture birch bark canoes, working at home and later in small factory shops. White trappers and woodsmen embraced the birch bark canoe, which remained the only kind used in Maine until the late 1800s.

But it became increasingly difficult to find birch suitable for canoes, and it was difficult for individual Indian builders to meet demand, according to Rollin Thurlow, who makes traditional wood and canvas canoes in his shop in Atkinson.

Several small manufacturers in Bangor -- then a bustling lumber capital and major supply hub for trappers -- began producing a new kind of canoe, using canvas instead of birch.

The form, however, remained essentially the same as the birch bark canoes built by Maine tribes.

At the time, the affluent members of recreational canoeing clubs around the country looked down at the "rag" canoes because they were based on Indian designs and used as a tool by woodsmen, Thurlow said. They preferred canoes made in the English way: planks of wood nailed to ribs.

But Mainers, he said, particularly those in the logging industry, embraced the new canoes because they were inexpensive and sturdy.

In 1900, there were 15 companies in the Bangor area building canvas canoes, making Maine the "epicenter" for production of the canvas canoes, said Chris Jacobs, the director of marketing for one of those companies, Old Town Canoe.

Old Town Canoe, which began as a shop behind a hardware store, eventually emerged as the dominant company. By 1931, it was manufacturing about 1,600 canoes a year, about half of Maine's total. By 2003, it had produced its millionth boat. Today, Old Town's factory...