Birchbark Canoe

The birchbark canoe is a lightweight canoe built by Indigenous peoples of North America, particularly in the Great Lakes and northeastern woodland regions, using a wooden frame of cedar or similar wood covered with large sheets of birch bark sewn together with split spruce root and sealed at the seams with heated spruce or pine resin. Prized for being light enough for a small crew to carry, or portage, between separate waterways while still able to carry substantial loads over open water, the design was adopted by European fur traders in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as the primary long-distance transport craft of the Canadian and North American fur trade, and it remains an important cultural and technical achievement associated with the Indigenous peoples who developed it.