Klukwan villagers recently launched a 36-foot, sea-going canoe, the first of its kind to ply local waters in about 200 years.
About 20 carvers and villagers gathered at Chilkat State Park a few weeks ago to see the “head” or “longtail” canoe’s maiden voyage. The boat is distinguished by its thin, long ends, with a large surface area for a painted design. It seats 15 comfortably.
“It’s fun. We need to take it out more,” village carver Daniel Klanott said this week.
Jim Heaton, who helped organize the project, said he was impressed with how the vessel handled. “We actually tried to tip it right there at the dock. We would have really had to work hard to get it to capsize. It’s stable.”
Three years in the making, the red cedar vessel has a bow design different from more recent ones associated with the Pacific Northwest. Those have a notched bow, which allows for greater maneuverability, an especially useful trait in warfare.
“This one is more of a long-distance canoe, but it turns pretty quick,” Heaton said. “These were the canoes that were used when the Europeans showed up (in Southeast).”
As warfare increased, the long-tail design fell out of favor. It was gone when the first cameras showed up in the region in the 1860s. Only drawings, paintings and scale models of the U-keeled craft survived.
Klanott said the challenge of building a boat no one has made for years was part of the allure of the project. “The village may be trying to find a log to build another one. We probably should do it while it’s fresh in our heads.”
With no similar vessels to draw from, Heaton used the “blueprint” employed by the historic Tlingit carvers – he created a scale model. He took a three-foot-long cedar stick, carved it out and poured steaming water inside to expand its cavity to a width of five inches.
For the most part, the same technique worked to create the full-sized canoe. Starting with a log from Prince of Wales Island 37 feet long and three feet in diameter, the carvers used adzes and scorps – a type of bent drawknife – to hollow out the log, until its sidewalls were just an inch thick.
That job consumed most of the five months of labor on the project, Heaton said. “The log was 4,000 pounds. The canoe’s about 350 pounds now. A lot of (cedar chips) came out of it. It was a lot of firestarter.”
Next came the “steaming” process, when vessels typically were half filled with water, then filled with hot rocks until the walls became pliable enough to force outward using a series of longer sticks.
But when rocks were added to the full-size canoe, a split opened on the bottom of it, leaking the water out. Carvers instead put steel drums in the log cavity, and by trapping the steam with tarps, were able to create the same effect.
Using steam to bend the walls is preferable to carving a tapered vessel, Heaton explained. “When you bend the sides, you keep the grain of the wood in the curve instead of through the curve. It makes it incredibly strong.”
The vessel under construction spent two winters in Klukwan, where dry, cold air caused as many as 75 cracks requiring repair with marine adhesive or a carved “butterfly” patch. Sea-going canoes typically didn’t see that kind of weather and also were often used for rendering eulachon or seal oil, which would have also prevented cracking, Heaton said.
As in traditional vessels, the seven plank seats were sewn in. Seats helped canoes keep their shape but were sewn in because the canoe flexes in the water. “You need that give,” Heaton said.
Final painting on the vessel was done this summer, using a “water spirit” design instead of a clan symbol, attesting to the cooperative nature of the venture. Five half-faces painted on each side represent the 10 carvers who made it. Painting inside and out should prevent most major cracking, Heaton said.
“They used to be stored in trenches, covered with cedar matts, to keep them from drying out.”
The vessel was unveiled on a trailer during the state fair parade, and the first launching a few weeks later was a quiet affair that included rowing the vessel for two hours around the spit at the park road’s end.
“We haven’t done a ceremonial launch. We didn’t want to have a big ceremony and have it go belly up in the water,” Heaton explained. “You never know if it’s really going to work until you launch it.”
Now, he said, it’s just a matter of rowing practice to develop a cadence and synchronicity. Heaton said he’d like to see the vessel enter canoe demonstrations and races in Sitka, Juneau and the Puget Sound area, where there’s been a renaissance in Native-style canoe building.
“Personally, I’d like to put it on a barge to Hawaii and race it against their (indigenous) canoes,” Heaton said, recalling that a Polynesian canoe shipped to Seattle was rowed up the Inside Passage about 10 years ago. “If they brought theirs up here, we should be able to take ours down there… but that’s after we learn how to use it.”
Large Tlingit canoes would typically also feature a woven, cedar-bark or fabric sail, Heaton said. The design, he said, was typical of ocean-going vessels created by indigenous people all around the Pacific.
“A guy I knew watched them make one of these in New Zealand. It was essentially, exactly the same. The technique is the same,” Heaton said.
Such vessels sailed from Southeast as far as Southern California, and some were up to 100 feet long, Heaton said. “This one’s a medium. Size was an advantage on these long voyages because you could take a lot of stuff with you and a lot of people. The more people you have, the less work you have to do making it go.”
Carvers included Andrew Hotch, Andre Stevens, Jeffrey and Daniel Klanott, Jones Hotch Jr., Joe King Jr., Al Burratin, Mary Jane Valentine and Johnny Gamble. They were assisted by Seattle carver Steve Brown, who made 11 canoes previously, but never one of this design.
Carvers in Klukwan, who recently created eight carved panels for the village’s new Hospitality House, are talking of another canoe, possibly hewn from a spruce. “Maybe we’ll stick with the same kind of design and make a fleet of them,” Heaton said.
Led by Wayne Price of Haines, villagers in 2002 built an 18-foot cottonwood canoe.