Canoes: A Natural History in North America

Tappan Adney, Calling Moose with the “Moose Horn,” ca. 1896

John Enys

This Penobscot canoe, held by the Peabody Essex Museum, is one of the oldest birch barks in existence and the oldest canoe in one piece.

Frances Anne Hopkins, The Red River Expedition at Kakabeka Falls, 1877.

French explorers witnessed the pearl diving industry in the Caribbean, where the newcomers got a glimpse of the native dugouts used in the activity.

George Agnew Reid, The Arrival of Champlain at Quebec, 1909. Pastel on wove paper, 62 × 43 cm.

Arthur Heming, The Voyageur, 1915. Oil on canvas, 76.7 × 102.2 cm.

Frederic Remington, Radisson and Groseilliers, 1905. Oil on canvas, 110.2 x 194.3 cm.

George Caleb Bingham, Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, 1845. Oil on canvas, 73.7 × 92.7 cm.

This 1822 watercolor from the Manitoba Museum’s Hudson’s Bay Company Collection, illustrates a canot du maître carrying two officers.

Adam Sherriff Scott, Chief Trader Archibald McDonald Descending the Fraser, 1828, ca. 1942. 81.28 x 63.5 cm.

Paul Kane, The Mountain Portage, 1849–56. Oil on canvas, 64 × 51 cm.

George Franklin Arbuckle, The Spring Fur Brigades Leave Montreal for the West, ca. 1946. 77.47 x 78.74 cm.

Frances Anne Hopkins, Canoe Party Around Campfire, ca. 1870. Oil on canvas, 90.2 × 151.8 cm.

The Canadian Canoe Museum holds this Algonquin canoe; the tribe primarily resided in the Ottawa River region.

This birch-bark canoe was given to the Prince of Wales by the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1860.

William Armstrong, Indian Encampment, ca. 1860. Watercolor on paper, 29.8 x 42.2 cm.

Frances Anne Hopkins, Canoe Manned by Voyageurs Passing a Waterfall, 1869. Oil on canvas, 152.4 x 73.7 cm.

Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait, A Good Chance, ca. 1863, lithograph print. Published by Currier & Ives for the American Hunting Scenes print series.

Tappan Adney, Taking the Moose Back to the Camp, ca. 1896