Welcome to Camping Guide
Affordable And Camping Equipment Article
. For a permanent link to this article, or to bookmark it for further reading, click here.
You may also listen to this article by using the following controls.
History of Canoes
from: ForsgrensPeople today take many things for granted, from hot water and spacious living quarters to all-terrain vehicles and camping equipment. All the items we have in our lives did have a start somewhere, and most often, the history of objects is very interesting. One such history is that of the canoe. Today's canoes can be easily bought in many different stores and come in a wide range of colors and materials, but the canoe began with a very modest start to its life.
There is no single "starting point" for the canoe. Many different Native American tribes created boats of a similar nature used for very similar purposes. The Carib people of the Caribbean island, for example, created boats for moving from island to island. Many inland tribes of people would create boats for traveling rivers, carrying supplies or freshly-hunted food.
The North American Indians are the people that are credited with the most recognized version of the canoe. Their watercraft used a frame of wooden ribs and the covering of the boat was birch bark, a waterproof material that is also light and durable. Also, birch bar is smooth, which meant that the canoes of the Indians could slip through water easily. Birch trees were common in the area and the bark was easy to harvest, which helped make it a perfect material for construction. The joints of the Indian canoes were held with twists of white pine root and waterproofing came from the use of hot pine or spruce resin.
As the commerce of early North America grew, so did the need for canoes. Many of the canoes that fur traders used were capable of carrying a crew of up to 12 people and a cargo weighing around 2400 kilograms. In fact, the fur trade became so large that the French of Quebec set up the world's first known canoe factory at Trois-Rivières around the year 1750. Canoes were also the boat of choice for explorers. Many well-known explorers traveled through the country using canoes, marking new areas of the country on their maps. Lewis, Clark, and many other explorers of the west made huge use of the canoe in traveling up and down rivers or through the mountainous regions.
These days, of course, canoes bear only vague resemblance to the birch bark concoctions they once were. Nowadays, canoes are made of many different modern materials, from aluminum and fiberglass to Kevlar and plastics, but their basic design is still the same, proving that no matter how hard you try, you can't improve upon perfection.
Affordable And Camping Equipment News
No relevant info was found on this topic.