The Indigenous Watercraft of Northern Eurasia

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The Indigenous Watercraft of Northern Eurasia

W. W. Fitzhugh

PhD in Anthropology, Senior Scientist, Smithsonian Institution's Arctic Studies Center and curator of North American archaeology, Washington, USA

H. T. Luukkanen

independent researcher, Hiihtomaentie, Helsinki, Finland

Hear we overview the indigenous watercraft from northern Europe to Bering Strait and the Far East. Our purpose has been to document the types of boats, their history, and how they were made and used by the cultures of this vast region. Data have been gleaned from diverse sources, including archaeological finds, ethnographic descriptions, museum collections, photographs, historical documents, and reports of early trans-Siberian travelers. Because of space limitations, the summary provided here is devoted to bark boat traditions, with limited discussion of skin boats because the latter are better known in existing literature. Our work has been facilitated by Valentina V. Antropova, whose 1961 survey of Soviet/Russian watercraft guided much of our work. We describe four major canoe traditions, each coinciding with major river systems: Ob-Pechora, Yenesei, Lena, and Amur. Within each river system there may be several sub-types, e. g. Amur I and Amur II. Except in rock art, the history of bark boat development is very shallow as very few bark canoes have been preserved archaeologically. Paddles, however, indicate the presence of bark canoes as early as 8000 years ago. Some rock art depicts log canoes rather than bark or skin boats. Wooden planked boats replaced bark canoes in northwestern Eurasia during the late Iron Age but persisted in the Amur into the 20^th century. Canoes appear to have dispersed from South Siberia during the early Holocene and developed distinctive features in their respective river systems. Some Ket Yenesei canoe styles may be prototypes of Kootenai Indian canoes of interior British Columbia.

Keywords: indigenous watercraft, bark canoe, boat history, archaeology, canoe types, construction, functions

Аборигенное судостроение Северной Евразии

В. В. Фицхью

независимый исследователь, Финляндия, Хельсинки

Х. Т. Луукканен tree bark boat tradition

независимый исследователь, Финляндия, Хельсинки

Настоящая работа содержит обзор источников по аборигенному судостроению от Северной Европы до пролива Беринга и Дальнего Востока. Цель исследования состоит в документации типов лодок, их истории, а также процессов их изготовления и использования в культурах этой обширной территории. Представленные данные собраны из разнообразных источников, включая археологические находки, этнографические описания, музейные коллекции, фотографии, исторические документы и записки первых путешественников, посетивших Сибирь. В настоящей работе мы уделяем большее внимание традиции строительства лодок из древесной коры, в меньшей степени обсуждая лодки с кожаным покрытием, поскольку последние известны гораздо лучше. Данная работа восходит к труду В. В. Антроповой, чье исследование лодок народов СССР/ России, опубликованное в 1961 г., послужило для нас руководством. Мы описываем четыре основных наиболее важных традиции строительства каное, совпадающие с основными речными системами Северной Евразии: Обско-Печорской, Енисейской, Ленской и Амурской. В пределах каждой из них могут быть выделены некоторые подтипы, например Амур I и Амур II. За исключением наскальных изображений, история развития традиций строительства лодок из древесной коры малоизвестна, поскольку они представлены всего несколькими археологическими находками. Находки весел тем не менее указывают на существование лодок из коры по крайней мере 8000 л. н. Некоторые наскальные рисунки изображают лодки-долбленки, а не лодки, крытые корой или кожей. В Северо-Западной Евразии деревянные лодки из досок замещают лодки из коры в позднем железном веке, но продолжают существовать на Амуре в XX столетии. Представляется, что каное распространяются из Южной Сибири в раннем голоцене и приобретают своеобразные черты в различных речных системах. Некоторые стили каное енисейских кетов могли быть прототипами каное индейцев Коутенай во внутри- материковых районах Британской Колумбии.

Ключевые слова: аборигенный водный транспорт, каноэ из коры, история лодки, археология, типы каноэ, конструкция, функции.

In 1964, the Smithsonian Institution published Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America authored by Edwin Tappan Adney and Howard I. Chapelle. By that time, the Smithsonian had been collecting Native American artifacts and watercraft for more than a century. Yet, except for a report by Otis Mason and Meriden Hill This paper is a condensation of a book the authors have prepared titled Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of the Eurasian North, to be published in 2019 by Smithsonian Books and Random House (Mason Otis T., and a description of building a Chippewa birch-bark canoe by Robert RitzenthalerMeriden S. Hill. Pointed Bark Canoes of the Kutenai and Amur. Report of the U. S. National Museum for 1899. Washington, 1901. P. 525-537). Ritzenthaler R. E. The Building of a Chippewa Indian Birch-Bark Canoe // Bulletin of the Public Museum of the City of Milwaukee. Vol. 19(2). 1950. P. 59-98., anthropological literature on indigenous North American watercraft was largely anecdotal. For the first time, Ad- ney and Chapelle had provided scholars and general readers with a comprehensive study of canoes and kayaks in North American collections that included detailed descriptions, ethnographic data, photographs and drawings, and information on use, decoration, and ritual. Despite its monographic style, the book became so popular that it remained in print ever since. The opportunity to prepare a comparable work prompted the present authors to undertake a sequel for the Eurasian continent. Bark and Skin Boats of the Eurasian North describes the history, use, and types of bark and skin boats utilized by the traditional cultures of northern Eurasia. The book serves as an historical atlas of traditional boats among more than forty tribes and peoples from northern Europe to Central Asia and the Far East.

The Tappan Adney Legacy

Tappan Adney was a renaissance individual -- artist, naturalist, woodsman, linguist, and scholar. At age 19, while Adney was vacationing in Woodstock, New Brunswick, a Maliseet Indian named Peter Joe taught him how to make a bark canoe. Soon Adney became fascinated with American Indians, Indian lore, and, in particular, their canoes and canoe traditions. His early curiosity about Indian watercraft developed into a lifetime spent documenting canoes and kayaks in museums and Native communities across North America Adney T E., Chapelle H. Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America. Washington, 1983. P. 4; Jennings J. The Art and Obsession of Tappan Adney. Toronto, 2004.. He documented manufacturing techniques, raw materials, and vessel performance; he interviewed and photographed Native Americans making canoes and used this information to build scale models and make nautical-style drawings of canoe lines, and sketches of construction details. Late in life, he sold his models and willed his voluminous archives to the Mariner Museum in Newport News, Virginia (Fig. 1). Following Adney's death in 1950, Howard Chapelle, a marine architect and curator of naval history at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, organized Adney's materials into a monographic study. Its ethnographic descriptions and photographs provided a window onto a long-neglected and mostly vanished part of North American Native life, and its construction drawings enabled recreational boat-builders to make authentic replicas for the first time.

While the history of European plank boats has been discussed by many authors Johnstone P The Seacraft of Prehistory. Cambridge, 1980; McGrail S. Ancient Boats in North-West Europe: The Archaeology of Water Transport to AD 1500. New York, 1998; Crumlin-Pedersen O. Archaeology and the Sea in Scandinavia and Britain: A Personal Account. Maritime Culture of the North 3. Roskilde, 2010., there has been relatively little synoptic literature on traditional watercraft covering the entire region of northern Eurasia. Rudolf Trebitsch Trebitsch R. Fellboote und Schwimsдcke und ihre geographische Verbreitung in der Vergangenheit und Gegenwart // Archiv fьr Anthropologie. Neue Folge, Bd. XI. 1912. S. 61-84. wrote on the origin and distribution

Fig. 1. Yakut Canoe Model. Adney made this model based on Otis Mason's 1901 publication of a model Yakut canoe (MAE 701-51) collected by Alexander Fedorovich von Middendorf in the Lena River valley in 1846. The MAE model was loaned to the Smithsonian to facilitate Mason's comparative study of North American canoes (Mariner's Museum photo MP48)

skin boats in Europe; H. H. Brindley Brindley H. H. Notes on the Boats of Siberia // Mariner's Mirror. 1919. No. 5(4). P. 66-72; No. 5(5). P. 130-142; No. 5(6). P 184-187. reported on boats of Siberia based on reports of early explorers and navigators; and Scandinavian skin boats have been discussed by Westerdahl Westerdahl Ch. : 1) Sewn Boats of the North: A Preliminary Catalogue with Introductory Comments. Part I // International Journal of Nautical Archaeology and Underwater Exploration. No. 14(1), 1985. P 33-62; 2) Sewn Boats ofthe North: A Preliminary Catalogue with Introductory Comments. Pt. II // International Journal of Nautical Archaeology and Underwater Exploration. No. 14(2), 1985. P 119-142. There is also an early global summary of skin and bark boats Nishimura Sh. A Study of Ancient Ships of Japan. Pt. 4: Skin Boats. Tokyo, 1931. and on bark boats of East Africa Arnold B. Les pirogues kapepe, l'espace nautique du bassin de la riviиre Malagarasi (Tanzanie) et quelques observations sur les pirogues en йcorce d'Afrique orientale. Le Locle, 2014.. Three years before Adney's and Chapelle's book appeared, Valentina V. Antropova Antropova V. V. Boats // Historical-Ethnographic Atlas of Siberia / eds M. G. Levin, L. P Potapov. Moscow, 1961., a researcher in the Ethnography Department of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, also known as the Kunstkamera in St. Petersburg, published a chapter titled “Boats” in the Kunstkamera's 1961 Historical-Ethnographical Atlas of Siberia. Antropova's paper described northern Russia's indigenous bark canoes, dugouts, planked boats, kayaks, and large skin boats for each major ethnographic group and offered a typological classification of the different boat types. Antropova recognized that because Siberia lacked Europe's Roman literature, her primary sources would be ethnographic and historical.

North Eurasian Boat Types

In her “frame boat” class, Antropova identified three birch-bark canoe types, which she named after the river systems where they had been found. The Yenisey type has a pointed, overhanging bow and stern. The Lena type has a rounded, upturned bow and stern projection, a partially enclosed cockpit, and gunwales that do not extend the full boat is defined by a keel running down the middle of the vessel's bottom to which ribs that curve upward to the gunwales are attached.

Fig. 2. Canoe types of the Russian North and Far East (drawing by Harri Luukkanen and Marcia Bakry) length of the boat. The Amur type has bow and stern projections, a narrow beam, and sometimes partially covered bow and stern decks. Birch bark was the preferred material for all three types. Antropova's skin boat classification has two types. The large, open skin

Although adding weight, the keel adds longitudinal strength needed for use in rough maritime regions. This large, open-top, skin-covered bidara was used by Chukchi and Pacific coastal groups in northeastern Siberia for long-distance travel, trade, and hunting whales and walrus. It was called angyapik by the Chukchi and Yupik Eskimo, umiak by the Alaskan and Canadian Inuit, and angyaq by Kodiak Alutiit. The second type is the smaller, fully-decked, skin-covered kayak used on both sides of Bering Strait and throughout Arctic North America as a hunting craft propelled by single, double, or occasionally in the Aleutian Islands, by three paddlers, said to have been an innovation to accommodate a Russian trade boss.

Although Antropova was primarily concerned with the description and geographic distribution by ethnic group, like Trebitsch, she also had ideas about boat history. She commented on the widespread distribution of the bark canoe, which was replaced in Western Siberia and the Okhotsk region first by expanded log boats and later, following Russian contact with Native groups in the 17^th to 19^th centuries, by plank boats. Based on linguistic data, she speculated that the birch-bark canoe probably originated in the taiga forest zone of southern Siberia. She also commented on the northeastern Siberian distribution and probable origin of skin-covered bidarkas and kayaks, which she identified as the most specialized and ancient of all known Russian indigenous boats, among interior reindeer hunters. Citing Rudenko Rudenko S. I. Early Harpoon Heads of the Asiatic Eskimo // Sovietskaia Etnografiia. Moscow, 1947. No. 2. P. 33-56. and Arutiunov's and Sergeev's Arutiunov S. A., Sergeev D. A. Problems of Ethnic History in the Bering Sea: The Ekven Cemetery. Transl. by R. L. Bland. Anchorage, Alaska, 2006. finds at Ekven, she noted that models of boats similar to ethnographic skin-covered umiaks and kayaks were recovered from Old Bering Sea and Punuk archaeological sites in coastal Chukotka dating ca. 1,500-800 and 1,200 years ago, respectively. She also remarked that 16^th-century exploration literature contains illustrations of kayak-like boats used by Nenets maritime hunters and their neighbors in the Barents and Kara Seas Belyavsky F. O. A Trip to the Arctic Sea. St. Petersburg, 1833 (see: 2007 Khanty-Mansiysk: FGUK State Historical Museum). .

The classification system used in our survey largely follows Antropova's taxonomy but recognizes five rather than three bark canoe types (Fig. 2). We follow Antropova's Yenisey and Lena types, split her Amur type into two sub-types (Amur I and II), and identify a new Ob-Pechora type. In addition, our study of keeled skin boats recognizes more variation in the open and closed types than Antropova's. We classify the kayak group into several ethnic-based sub-types, including Yukagir, Eskimo-Chukchi, Koryak, and Kuril/ Ainu. Our open skin boat classification follows Antropova's two types: the Eskimo-Chukchi type of Chukotka and the Koryak-Kerek type of northern Kamchatka.

Description of Canoe Types

Bark canoes were used by all aboriginal peoples living in Northern Eurasia's boreal forest. The era of birch-bark canoe lasted until the 18^th century in most of Eurasia and a century or two longer in parts of eastern Siberia and the Far East. Canoe type areas usually follow the large river basins of the Pechora-Ob, Yenisey, Lena, and Amur River homelands of the people who used these boats. Each river drainage area had its own typical canoe design, and these types often were shared across linguistic and ethnic borders. The close linguistic and cultural relations among the various groups living along a single river system facilitated sharing, and their canoe traditions tended to cluster in a similar fashion.

The Yenisey type has strong double gunwales that sandwich both the horizontal lath planking strips and the vertical ribs, a technique still used in modern wood canoe construction today. The Lena type with more or less vertical bow and stern profiles was used by Evenk and Sakha peoples living around the eastern portions of the Vitim and Olekma rivers, eastern tributaries of the Lena. In addition to this type, people living in the Lena basin also used canoe types known from the Yenisey and Amur systems due to population migrations and adoption of neighboring canoe technology.

Amur canoes occur in two main forms. Amur I has long projecting bow and stern extensions resembling “beaks” that turn upward at their ends, while Amur II is a short canoe with straight, pointed extensions at the waterline. The longer Amur I type typically had a beam of 70 centimeters, a strong bottom construction using as many as five bark layers glued together, and an interior keel running from end to end. Wooden blocks were sewn into the bark sheets to support the gunwales at the bow and stern. Because its hull design resisted flexing, the Amur I type could be made very long -- as demonstrated by a 15-meter-long bark canoe found on the Maya River, a tributary of the Aldan. The Amur II-type canoe, originally described by Otis Mason as a “sturgeon-nose” canoe because its ends or “beaks” resembled a sturgeon's snout, was short, had rather weak gunwales, and could carry only a single person. Beyond the Amur, the Amur II type was known in the upper (southern) Lena River locations where Evenk people of Amur origin resided. Most Amur basin people were Tungus-related, and all made similar bark canoes.

Our proposed Ob-Pechora type bark canoe originated in Southern Siberia, where it was used by Samoyed and shared with Ob-Ugrian peoples; from there, it diffused throughout Western Siberia between the Pechora and the Yenisey Rivers. Evidence for this canoe type comes from several sources: Kamas canoe construction on the Yenisey River documented in G. F. Miller's 1730-1740 “Description of Siberian Peoples” Vermeulen H. S. Ethnography and Empire. G. F. Mьller and the Description of Siberian Peoples // Before Boas. The Genesis of Ethnography and Ethnology in the German Enlightenment. London, 2016. P. 131-218.; a drawing of a Mansi or Khanty boat in Obdorsk made by Tobias Konigsfeld in 1728 De Lisle N., Konigsfeld T. Extract de Voyage un Sibirie M. DeLisle & Journal de M. Konigsfeld en 1740 // Francois Antoine (1768), Histoire gйnйrale des voyages, voyage de Sibiria. Paris, 1768.; a Khanty model in the Swedish Ethnographic Museum collected by F. R. Martin on the Tobol River in 1895; a bark canoe model from the Amgun River (MAE 5333); and Samoyed oral evidence from Narym Pelikh G. I. Proiskhozhdenie selkupov. Tomsk, 1972..

The Ob-Pechora type occurred in the middle Ob-Irtysh-Tobol area occupied mainly by the Samoyed (Nenets, Selkup, and Kamas-Koibal) and Ob-Ugrian (Khanty and Mansi) peoples. This canoe type was found among Turkic Tatars in the south Siberian taiga and was shared with western Ural peoples in the Mezen-Pechora taiga of northeastern Europe. Its main differences from the Yenisey type are: (1) presence of an oval rim instead of transverse thwarts, known among the Eastern Khanty; (2) a single rather than a double gunwale strake; (3) passing the bark over, rather than between, the gunwales; and (4) a different method for fastening the gunwales. The latter involved lashing the gunwales together fifty centimeters from their ends, thus creating a narrow top profile for bow and stern. In the Ob canoe, the gunwale ends were not pinched together but were fastened to separate pieces of bent wood. The rounded ends provided more cargo space and buoyancy and reduced taking on wave water. On the middle Ob, Khanty canoe builders doubled the birch-bark bottom by inserting an additional bark layer inside the outer shell. In other features, the Yenisey and Ob-Pechora canoes were similar.

Despite the great distances and multiple ethnic groups occupying the region from the Yenisey to the Pechora, the similarities between the canoes of this region probably results from two factors: migration history of the past 1,000 years, and the intense interactions of long-distance traders during the Russian fur-trade era. The Khanty, Nenets, and Mansi were constantly trading and warring with one another across the Ural passes. Until circa 1470, many Mansi lived on the European side and held lands reaching as far west as the Dvina River Sokolova Z. P The Mansi. Moscow, 1983., where their traders were in contact with Karelian groups. This could account for the similarity in canoe styles between the Ob and the Mezen-Pechora taiga. Archaeological, linguistic, and DNA data Tambets K. et al. The Western and Eastern Roots of the Saami -- The Story of Genetic `Outliers' Told by Mitochondrial DNA and Y Chromosomes // American Journal of Human Genetics. No. 74(4). 2004. P. 661-682. suggest that the eastern Saami peoples who once lived along the southern White Sea coast had contacts with groups living in the Cis- Urals Foss M. E. Kul'turnye sviazi severa Vostochnoi Evropy vo II tysiacheletiiu do nashei ehry // Sovetskaia Etnografiia. 1948. No. 4. P. 23-35.. It is likely that the Saami birch-bark canoe types as they are known today from oral descriptions and remains found in northern Sweden, were also similar to Mansi or Samoyed canoes known from the White Sea.

Here, as in other areas of Eurasia, Antropova's and our studies indicate that geographic proximity along a single river system generally was a more important factor than either language or ethnicity in determining the geography of boat types. This principle confounds the typological changes usually seen across cultural-historic and ethnolinguistic borders. In his study of northeastern European paddle types, Grigori Burov Burov G. M. On Mesolithic Means of Water Transportation in Northeastern Europe // Mesolithic Miscellany. No. 17. 1996. P. 5-15. found that he could date different types of paddles to a certain millennium, beginning as early as 8700 bp. In this case, chronology rather than culture seems to have been the dominant factor determining a paddle form. By contrast, from the 19^th century ethnographic data, Otis Mason Mason O., Meriden Sh. Pointed Bark Canoes of the Kutenai and Amur. Report of the U. S. National Museum for 1899. Washington, DC, 1901. P. 525-537. found that the shapes of paddles from different Amur cultures were good indicators for the ethnic groups who made them. Similarly, style shifts in Eskimo kayak and paddle types from Alaska to Greenland show strong correlation with ethnic and language areas Rousellot J.-L. Watercraft in the North Pacific: A Comparative View // Anthropology of the North Pacific Rim. Washington, 1994. P. 243-258; Golden H. Kayaks of Alaska. Portland, 2015..

Recent research at the 8500 bce Mesolithic site at Star Carr by Peter Rowley-Conwy Rowley-Conwy P To the Upper Lake: Star Carr Revisited -- by Birchbark Canoe // Economic Zooarchaeology: Studies in Hunting, Herding, and Early Agriculture. Chapter 23. Oxford, 2017. reviewed the scant information on bark canoes in North European prehistory. Noting finds of birch resin and bark sheets in water-logged Mesolithic sites, Rowley-Conwy believes birch-bark canoes were the usual vehicles for exploiting post-glacial wetland environments. Undoubtedly, the same could be said for post-glacial northern Eurasia, where 8700 year old paddles indicate water transport.

Geography of Bark Canoes Types

When we began our canoe project, we thought that careful comparison of boat types would enable us to make a rough synthesis of Northern Eurasian boat history by using a combination of construction form controlled for both spatial and chronological dimensions (Figs 3, 4). This approach, which is the normal basis for archaeological reconstruction, had a practical disadvantage due to the limited knowledge of canoe history, even for the past 500 years. This type of historical data does exist for plank boat development in the Mediterranean and Western Europe for the past 2,000 years McGrail S. Ancient Boats in North-West Europe: The Archaeology of Water Transport to AD 1500. New York, 1998; Christensen A. E. Ships and Navigation // Vikings: the North Atlantic Saga. Washington, 2000. P. 86-97; Crumlin-Pedersen O. Archaeology and the Sea in Scandinavia and Britain: A Personal Account. Maritime Culture of the North 3. Roskilde, Denmark, 2010.. Reconstructing such a data matrix was the goal of early attempts at a global evolutionary framework of boat development based on ethnographic data, as seen, for example, in James Hornells Hornell J. Water Transport: Origins and Early Evolution. Newton, 1970. Water Transport: Origins and Early Evolution. Hornell encountered many of the same problems we faced, including insufficient archaeological and historical data. In the case of bark canoes and skin boats, we are limited to a few centuries of historical documentation, ethnographic boat models, rare archaeological finds, and rock art images of problematic interpretation. Our birch-bark canoe data matrix, which includes only data from the end of the 18^th century onward, is not a reliable database for understanding 10,000 years of canoe form and construction. Although a sporadic 8,700-year development is known for paddles, they tell us little more than the size of the canoes. Nevertheless, one thing is clear: the movements of people hunting, fishing, trading, warring, and migrating in the taiga zone have been hugely successful in spreading bark canoe technology into all corners of Eurasia and throughout Northern North America.

We must remark on an exception in the general absence of data for Europe west of the Ob River. The Saami bark canoe, although being closest to Europe's technological heartland, lasted longer than bark canoes in other areas of northeastern Europe and Scandinavia. There is some evidence that the birch-bark canoe survived as a rarity until the early 1800s in Swedish Lapland, where oral literature and archaeological sites reveal evidence of bark canoes Westerdahl Ch. Sewn Boats of the North: A Preliminary Catalogue with Introductory Comments. Pt. I // International Journal of Nautical Archaeology and Underwater Exploration. No. 14 (1), 1985a. P 33-62; Westerdahl Ch. Sewn Boats of the North: A Preliminary Catalogue with Introductory Comments. Pt. II // International Journal of Nautical Archaeology and Underwater Exploration. No. 14 (2), 1985. P 119-42.. Remains of an undated birch bark canoe of Saami or Karelian origin have been found in the Lake Saimaa region of eastern Finland, although not enough was preserved to determine its type classification Itkonen T. I. Suomen Ruuhet: 1-, 2-, 3-Ja Monipuiset Seka Lautaruuhet Kivikaudesta Vuoteen 1940. Forssa, 1942. P 48.. In Europe, the use of the birch-bark canoe faded early because of the appearance of the expanded log boat, which replaced it in the taiga during the Late Medieval period and may have superseded the skin boat in the tundra zone. This phenomenon may have taken place when the Saami-Karelian people invented or adopted expanded log boats to which planks could be attached, providing higher sides to keep out water Luukkanen H. On the Diffusion of Bark Canoes, Skin Boats and Expanded Log Boats in the Eurasian North // A Circumpolar Reappraisal: The Legacy of Gutorm Gjessing (1906-1979). BAR International Series, 2154. Oxford, 2010. P. 189-217..

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Fig. 4. Canoe construction variation in Central and Southern Siberia (drawing by Harri Luukkanen)

The canoes of the eastern Ob and western Yenisey River basins conform to a single type, within which there is significant diversity owing to the complex history of the peoples in this area, many of whom arrived from the south and east. We know from written documents Georgi G. J. Beschreibung aller Nationen des Russischen Reichs (Dscription of all Nations of the Russian Empire). St. Petersburg, 1776. that Mansi hunters (known then as Yugra) on the Ural slopes and in the Mezen-Pechora River basin were bark canoe builders, but the descriptions are vague. The Eastern Khanty peoples, who lived as hunters and fishermen, seem to have built birch- bark canoes in the Narym region until the early 1700s Ides E. Y. Three Years Travel over Land from Moscow to China. London, 1706.; some Western Khanty hunters, including the Tara near Omsk, may have used them in the taiga forest country until 1886 Granц J. Suomalaisten elдmдstдSiperiasta. A Letter to Finland from Tomsk, Siberia // The Morning Paper (Newspaper). Finland, August 29, 1886. Available: http://www.migrationinstitute.fi/files/pdf/ suomalaiset_siperiassa/pastori_granon_kirjeita.pdf (accessed: 01.02.2019).. Little is known about these canoes because the appearance of iron following contacts with Russian traders resulted in the Mansi and Khanty switching to expanded log boats with planked sides earlier than the Samoyed.

The coming of new boat technology was part of a wave of social, economic, and political change that occurred when the Russian fur trade expanded into Western Siberia. Trade and European technology, including guns, iron, axes and other useful goods, exacerbated longstanding regional hostilities and often led to interethnic competition. From the 15^th through the 17^th centuries, northeastern Europe and Western Siberia experienced recurring intertribal warfare, and watercraft played a major role in skirmishes, raids, and all-out battles Golovnev A. V. Wars and Chiefs Among the Samoyeds and Ugrians of Western Siberia // Hunter- Gatherers in the Modern World: Conflict, Resistance, and Self-Determination. New York; Oxford, 2000. P. 125-49.. Pressure from population movements from the south and east also contributed to conflicts. The arrival of Ugrian peoples east of the Ob River brought hostilities. According to Khanty accounts of the Ob River wars between the Ural Samoyed and the Ugrian peoples circa 1500-1700, Khanty Ugrians using expanded log boats prevailed partly because their archers, who were armed with crossbows, could shoot holes in the Samoyed's bark canoes Starcev G. Die Ostjaken: Sozial-Ethnographische Skizze. Aus dem Russischen Ьbertragen von Katharina Oestreich-Geib. Mьnchen, 1988. S. 5. (First published in 1928 as Study on Vakh River Ostyak, Moskva).. The Khanty had replaced their bark canoes with log boats in some parts of the upper Ob before the 1700s. The Selkup (Ostyak Samoyed) also built bark canoes in the Western Siberian taiga. The Selkup bark canoe that Kai Donner collected at the Ket River in 1911-1914 shows Yenisey-type construction, which also appeared in the eastern Ob basin. Distinctive features of these canoes are use of bird-cherry wood, double layering of the birch-bark bottom, partial decking, and the use of a bent-wood oval insert instead of straight crossways thwarts.

Antropova Antropova V. V. Boats. assumed -- and we concur -- that the most recent dispersal of the bark canoe probably occurred in late Iron Age (ca. 500 все to 1 ce) or even later, and probably was centered on Southern Samoyed territory around the headwaters of the Ob, Yenisey, and Lena rivers. Later, there were many other, smaller, shifts in canoe types that resulted in their modern distribution. Various Samoyed groups used bark canoes which would have been known to other people who entered their lands, including Ket and other upper Yenisey groups. Turkic Tatars, the Southern Samoyed's neighbors to the south, may have adopted the bark canoe from them, as suggested by the Tatars calling the birch-bark canoe a “Samoyed” boat Belgibaev E. A. Chelkantsy Landshaft i Cul'tura // Iazyki korennykh narodov Sibiri. Chelkan Collection. Novosibirsk, 2004. P. 102-126..

Moving east, we leave the canoe traditions of the Ob-Yenisey region and come to the huge Lena River basin and its dominant people, the Sakha, formerly known as Yakut. The Sakha have a mixed bark canoe history owing to their appearance in the Lena valley in the 1300s, arriving from the Baikal region to the south. According to Antropova Antropova V. V. Boats., the Sakha called their Lena canoe a “Tungus” boat, while linguistic data suggest a western bark canoe heritage related to the Yenisey River Ket Sieroszewski W The Yakut: An Experiment in Ethnographic Research. The Economic Bases of the Way of Life. Moscow, 1993.. Sakha groups also settled along the upper Aldan River, where they traded with Chinese and Manchu people by crossing the Stanovoy Mountains to the Zeya River and were introduced to beaked Amur-type canoes.

Environmental conditions partly dictated the origins of these peoples and the directions of their migration routes. The Ob, Yenisey, and Lena rivers were major north-south transport corridors. No less important were the east-west routes created by the Arctic Ocean coast and the east-west-running tributaries of the large rivers, whose headwaters nearly link up between the major river drainages. Travel across these routes was a routine matter by sledge in the winter and by canoe during the rest of the year. In these Central Siberian regions few mountains intervened. Finally, the open Buryat Steppe of north-central Asia south of the Yenisey and Lena headwaters enabled easy movement for horse-based pastoralists and the armies of Central Asian empires and states.

The major dynamic driving population migrations and other movements in Central Siberia, however, was the tumultuous history of cultural interactions channeled by these geographic corridors. During the past 2,000 years, many events resulted in population movements and demographic disruptions. The two most important were the expansion of Turkic-speaking peoples from the Altai Mountain region beginning in the 7^th century and the Mongol expansion from the same area in the 13 ^th century. The Turkic expansion reached as far west as the Black Sea and north into the Lena valley, displacing some peoples into the Arctic and assimilating others. The Mongol wars and incursions caused similar disruptions as people were expelled from their homelands. These migrations and displacements were not a new phenomena; they were preceded by similar events linked to the expansion of militarism and pastoral nomadism stimulated by horse domestication in the late Bronze Age and by intensified equestrian conquest in the Iron Age. These movements undoubtedly influenced canoe history, resulting in both demographic movements, such as those of the Ket, the Evenk, and the Sakha, and cultural exchanges, seen in, for instance, the sharing of Lena traditions with Yenisey peoples and in similarities between the Lena and Amur versions of the birch bark canoe seen in the partially-covered decks of the Chuni Western Evenk canoes from the Niblet River (Krasnoyarsk Krai Museum photo 028-009-2107).

The easternmost birch bark canoe users were the Yukagir, who were in the late 19^th century a remnant of a much larger people living on the upper and lower Kolyma River in northeastern Siberia, where they speared reindeer at river crossings from bark canoes, skin kayaks, or log boats. They originally lived east of the Yenisey, north of Lake Baikal and next to the Samoyed and migrated (perhaps a millennium ago) from there down the Lena River Ushnitsky V. V. The Whole Truth about the Tungus and Their History (Vsya Pravda o Tungusakh i ikh Istorii). Available at: http://merkit.livejournal.com (accessed: 01.02.2019).. During this journey they would have been in contact with the Tun- gus-Evenk, Even, and Sakha. The Yukagir, who were still making birch bark canoes along the upper Kolyma River in 1827, probably acquired their boat traditions from contact with the Samoyed around Lake Baikal.

South of the Yukagir were the Evenk, who inhabited a large swath of territories in the upper Amur, Lena, and Yenisey drainages of Eastern Siberia. As might be expected from their large distribution, the Evenk have an equally complicated bark canoe history that includes many boat types. The origin of the western Tungus-Evenk peoples, who entered Yenisey lands from the south and east, is unclear, but they probably learned to build Yenisey bark canoes by contact with the Ket, the Assan, and other Yeniseyan peoples along the Angara River Forsyth J. History ofthe Peoples of Siberia: Russian's Northern Asian Colony 1581-1990. Cambridge,

1994..

While these reconstructions are speculative and based largely on linguistic and oral history, Western Evenk bark canoes in the Lower and Stony (Podkamennaya) Tunguska rivers belong to the Yenisey type. The border between the Yenisey and the Lena canoe regions ran along the Vitim and Olekma rivers, where both types were known. West of the Vitim, around Lake Baikal and along the Kirenga and Lena headwaters, the Yenisey type was dominant, whereas along the Lena River proper, east of the Vitim confluence, the Lena canoe was prevalent Antropova V. V. Boats.. East of the Yenisey River, various Evenk hunting peoples were the main users of birch bark canoes, and they kept this tradition alive until the early 1900s, when they adopted expanded log boats.

Canoe sizes varied considerably in these large river basins. Some bark canoes were very large, but most were small, usually only two or three meters long, and were built for one or two persons so the canoe could be easily carried over portages. Some boats were made narrow and fast to transport hunters, while others were wide and slow, serving as freighters. The largest birch-bark canoe we know of in Northern Eurasia was an archaeological find built by Evenk hunters along the Maya River, the easternmost Lena tributary; it is 15 meters long and was found at Ust-Maya village in 2001, probably having been made less than 20 years earlier Abakumov S. On Orels Track // From the History of Ulusov of Yakutia. 2001. P. 1-6.. The canoe has not survived, but it was identified as being a 70-centimeter-wide Amur Type I beaked canoe.

In the Far East, the birch-bark canoe persisted into the 20^th century. In old Manchuria, in the basin of the Amur (Heilongjiang) River and along its many tributaries in Russian, Chinese, and Outer Mongolian territory, Tungus-related peoples such as the Man- chu, Nanay, and Negidal once constructed similar versions of the beaked Amur canoe. Most were small single-person vessels used for hunting and fishing. Drawings document some canoes from the Chinese Qing (Manchu) dynasty.

Elm and Larch Bark Canoes

Canoes made of other bark than birch represent a line of canoe development about which much less is known. Archaeological finds and documented descriptions across

Northern Eurasia identify canoes made of elm, larch, pine, spruce, and aspen. These boats may have had more limited use in time and distance -- for instance, for a single crossing of a river -- or when birch bark was not available.

The “alternative path” theory for non-birch-bark canoes was suggested by a unique archaeological find on the Viskan (Byslatt) River in Swedish Vastergotland, which may be the only elm-bark canoe known in Europe. This fragmented canoe was discovered eroding from a riverbank in 1934 and was between three and five meters long, with slender ribs of hazel branches fastened into the gunwales with wooden pegs; remains of leather were also present. Maria Lindberg Lindberg M. The Byslдtt Bronze Age Boat: A Swedish Bark Canoe. Master's thesis, Marine Archaeology Programme, University of Southern Denmark, 2012. reexamined this find, which was radiocarbon-dated to the late Bronze Age, circa 900 to 800 bce. No birch bark canoes (and only a handful of conventional log boats) are known in southern Sweden.

Another example of canoes made from other types of bark comes from the old city of Novgorod in northwestern Russia. Here archaeologists found the remains of three composite canoes beneath the walls of the Vladimir Tower, which dates to 1044 ce. Study of the best-preserved canoe revealed a thin, expanded log hull measuring 675 by 90 by 55 centimeters covered with glued-on aspen-bark panels Troianovskiy S. V., Petrov M. I. The XI Century Boat from Novgorod // Soviet Archaeology. Vol. 2. 1969. P. 1-7.. The Vladimir Tower boats may be the most extraordinary small boats in Europe since the canoes combine all the known technologies of their day. Each vessel was a thin-hulled log boat with sewn planks supported by wooden ribs and covered by an outer layer of aspen bark and an inner layer of hide. Their elaborate construction suggests they may have had a special use.

The Ainu Yachip Birch-Bark Canoe

Adney and Chappelle Adney T. E., Chapelle H. Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America. 2nd ed. Washington, 1983. described North American Indian elm- and pine-bark canoes in addition to birch-bark ones, and some Northern Eurasian groups, too, used bark other than birch. Information about elm-bark canoes in Eurasia is scarce, except in Hokkaido, where it was used extensively for impromptu boats and other purposes by the Ainu. Nishimura Nishimura Sh. A Study of Ancient Ships of Japan. Pt. 4: Skin Boats. Tokyo, 1931. noted that the basic Ainu boat, a dugout craft known as a chip, closely resembled dugouts of the ancient Evenk-related Japanese. Besides log chips, the Ainu used built- up versions called mochips, hollowed-out tree trunks to which planks were stitched on either side Ohtsuka K. Iiaomanochip: Reviving of Boat-Building and Trading Tradition // Ainu: Spirit World of a Northern People. Washington, 1999. P. 374-380.. Ainu log and planked boats existed on Sakhalin Island into the 19^th century; Chepelev Chepelev V. R. Traditional Means of Waterway Transportation among Aboriginal Peoples of the Lower Amur Region and Sakhalin // Study of Maritime Archaeology. St. Petersburg, 2004. Iss. 5. P. 141-161. studied them and other wooden boats of the Far East. Nishimura documented the Ainu elm-bark canoes that preceded and then persisted alongside log and plank boats following their introduction from mainland Asian via Japanese, Korean, and Manchurian influences.

The Hokkaido History Museum has examples of even simpler bark canoes made of elm bark. This craft has no rib framework; rather, it is structured by a square arrangement, at the top of the boat, of robust sticks attached to a bentwood gunwale-like oval hoop to which bark sheets are fastened at several points. A mat of parallel sticks serves as a flooring to protect the bark bottom. This is the simplest type of bark boat of any we have seen in northern Eurasia and can be imagined as the type of craft that was an early prototype in the evolution of the frame canoe. Its serviceability depends on using elm bark, which is much thicker than any other northern tree bark. Our research also turned up an unusual source of data for Ainu boats: carvings of miniature boats on Ainu ikupasuy prayer sticks. These images are quite common and usually accompany images of large fish and marine mammals. We searched for images of sea-going bark canoes and skin boats among hundreds of 19^th and early 20^th century ikupasuys, but found none, only images of log and plank boats.

Although elm was unavailable in Northern Siberia, larch was a suitable -- if uncommon --alternative to birch. The first academic explorer of Siberia, D. G. Messerschmidt, a German traveling in 1723 on behalf of the RAS, journeyed from New Mangazeya (later renamed Turukhansk) on the Yenisey to the Lower Tunguska River, where he met small groups of Evenk and commented on their bark canoes, some of which he measured and weighed. The Evenk apparently were using larch-bark canoes alongside birch-bark ones; Messerschmidt recorded Evenk larch-bark canoes between the Uchami and Taimura Rivers that were similar in both use and size to those of birch bark; he records one as being 360 by 90 by 30 centimeters.

In 1914, the Dolgan people in Sloika near the Golchikha trading post in western Taimyr used larch-bark canoes, as recorded in an account written by Maud Dorian Haviland Haviland M. D. A Summer on the Yenisey. London, 1971.. She and an English companion on an ornithology expedition tried to cross a flooded river with their Dolgan guides in larch bark canoes. The Dolgan and Nganasan used similar small boats for hunting birds on Taimyr lakes, where birch bark is not available. Her report shows that larch canoes were common even in the northernmost tundra of the Russian High Arctic for spearing wild reindeer in rivers and for crossing lakes and rivers with tame reindeer during seasonal migrations. These boats, less than three meters long, were small and light -- designed for a single person -- and could be carried on a reindeer sledge.

Open Skin Boats and Kayaks

In addition to hosting bark canoes, Northern Eurasia has an extensive history as a skin boat using region; nearly all major groups in the tundra zone used skin boats at some point in their past, although the intensity and purposes differed as it did in the case of bark canoes. Skin boats were used by Siberian Eskimo, Chukchi, and Koryak peoples and had a wider distribution along the Arctic and Pacific coasts in the past than known from recent history. Open skin boats and kayaks have been reported from most coastal areas of Northern Eurasia, the Sea of Okhotsk, and even parts of the Far East. European, Siberian, and Central Asian peoples inhabiting inland regions also used open skin boats, half-decked canoe-kayaks, and bowl-shaped vessels covered with seal, reindeer, or moose hide.

In Northern Europe, the Saami people may have an early history of skin boat use, as suggested by Stone Age petroglyphs and folk legends. For many years, Nordic archaeologists interpreted petroglyph images dated between 2,000 to 6,000 years old as depictions of skin boats based on their high sides and profiles similar to Eskimo umiaks. However, because heavy ground stone axes and woodworking gouges have been unearthed in the same areas as the petroglyphs, archaeologists today tend to interpret these images as log boats or expanded log boats with sewn plank additions. Nevertheless, some probably do show skin boats, especially in areas where people once hunted seal and walrus among the broken spring sea ice, where hunters would not have been able to use heavy log boats. There are oral history accounts of Saami skarne-vantse skin boats in Swedish Lapland as well as legends relating to how people used skin boats to cross rivers with their reindeer and to hunt sea mammals along the coast Westerdahl Ch. Sewn Boats of the North: A Preliminary Catalogue with Introductory Comments. Part I // International Journal of Nautical Archaeology and Underwater Exploration. No. 14(1). 1985. P. 33-62; Sewn Boats of the North: A Preliminary Catalogue with Introductory Comments. Pt. II // International Journal of Nautical Archaeology and Underwater Exploration. No. 14(2). 1985. P 119-142. Itkonen T. I. Suomen Ruuhet: 1-, 2-, 3-Ja Monipuiset Seka Lautaruuhet Kivikaudesta Vuoteen 1940.. Although there is no detailed knowledge of Saami skin boats, one archaeological find from Tiisteenjoki village on the Lapua River, along the western Finnish coast, dates to circa 3200 bp⁵⁰. According to Mulk and Bay- liss-Smith (2006), skin boats may have been used on the northern Norwegian coast until circa 300 to 600 ce, when “Viking” lapstrake boats began to replace them. In interior regions, small skin boats survived in villages of the Vapsten Lapp people in Sweden until the first half of the 19 ^th century Whitaker I. The Scottish Kayaks Reconsidered // Antiquity. No. 51(201). 1977. P 41-45..

The Karelians, possibly the closest relatives of the Saami owing to mixing and assimilation, arrived on the Kola Peninsula in the 1200s. They later became skin boat users, especially in the White Sea region. Kalevala runes collected between 1600 and 1850 describe boats covered with “fish” (i. e., seal) skin in several regions inhabited by the Finns, Karelians, and Ingrians from the Gulf of Bothnia and the White Sea coast.

Russian Pomors, who arrived on the White Sea coast in the 13^th century and pushed the Saami, Karelians, and Ingrians farther north, used light canvas-covered plank boats to hunt seal amid spring sea ice until circa 1900. This fact does not necessarily imply a prior history of skin-covered frame boats; rather, the Pomors may have used skins as a practical way to waterproof their leak-prone sewn or nailed plank boats. Pomor plank boats were six to eight meters in length, and it is likely that their construction incorporated elements of previous Saami and Karelian technology, including seal-skin waterproofing over planks. The boat traditions of the Maritime Pomors are well documented, as is their large-scale sealing industry, which employed thousands of people and hundreds of boats for hundreds of years. Further research may show that both skin boats and sealing or whaling have a deep history in Northern Scandinavia and northwestern Russia. The many river estuaries from Kola to Taimyr, where beluga whales were hunted, have rock engravings whose shapes suggest skin boats.

Fig. 5 shows the types of open skin boats and skin-covered kayaks that existed in most areas of Northern Eurasia. Two major points can be made about their diversity: first, the overriding conclusion is that open skin boats have been used widely along the continent's northern and northeastern coasts, from Europe to the Amur River and the Sea of Okhotsk wherever sea ice was seasonally present. Second, skin-covered kayaks and canoe-kayaks built for individual use in a cold marine or tundra environment were also widely distributed throughout these territories and were used for sea mammal hunting along the coast and for reindeer hunting on lakes and rivers. Inland versions were usually covered with reindeer or moose hide rather than seal skin. Although archaeological evidence is needed for confirmation, historical sources documenting Stephen Burough's voyages to the Kara