I have made almost 1000 paddles inspired by traditional designs (as of 2005). I am often asked about the differences between the various blades, or questions about the Northwoods grip, for example.  I answer as well as I am able, and I see the questioner's face light up as he or she begins to understand. Still, I'm always left with the feeling that there is far more to know about these paddles and their history than I am able to draw on.  Follow along as I share a personal journey of discovery into the influences and reasoning behind traditional canoe paddles. 

In many cultures, tradition plays a significant role in determining the form of tools and decorations. In addition to being identifying traits for a particular group of people, traditions become established because they represent solutions that work well within the context of a particular situation.  Given that the conditions of canoe travel remain fairly constant, it is astonishing that so many variants to paddle design evolved. Amongst the many different blade shapes that have been conceived, traditional blades can be loosely categorized as being either straight-sided or round-sided. Surface areas are concentrated near the throat, evenly along the length, or near the tip. Tips are pointed, rounded, or blunt.  I began to wonder what, then, are the constants of these traditional designs. Blade length varies, but averages in the 27- to 30-inch range.  Width also varies, but blades are rarely wider than 6 inches.

Why such a narrow range of scale?  When I have made paddles with blades longer than 27 inches, which is the average length of my paddle blades, I have found that they quickly throw the whole paddle off balance. I like my paddles balanced at the throat, so that the mass of the shaft and grip equals the mass of the blade. As the blade gets longer, it has more mass farther away from the fulcrum, resulting in a blade-heavy paddle. This is tolerable for the short term, but becomes fatiguing over the long haul. Very long blades are also awkward to use. So, for the average-length paddle shaft, 30 inches seems to be the maximum useful length of blade.  Blades must be fully immersed in order to maintain their full efficiency. If the blade is not fully immersed, then it will pull air in behind it as it moves through the water. When this happens, the water becomes more "slippery," allowing the blade to slip backward, with less forward motion being applied to the canoe. Blades that are short must be made wider in order to maintain their overall surface area. Short blades are more difficult to use fully immersed, and when you make the short blade wide, blades not fully immersed will pull in air to an even greater degree.  This is called Ventilation.  Traditional blades almost universally have long sloping transitions from the main area of the blade, flowing smoothly into the throat. Making a blade long with a narrow throat ensures that the paddle is consistently used fully immersed. Thus ventilation is kept to a minimum, and efficiency is maximized.

Let's consider the use of paddles under traditional circumstances rather than today¹s recreational use, which involves only limited periods of time. Before the advent of roads, rivers and lakes were the highways throughout much of North America. To get anywhere, travelers would have to paddle their canoes hour after hour, day after day. A desirable paddle would allow the paddler to work all day without undue fatigue. A paddle that was too small
would not be powerful enough to get the job done, whereas a paddle that was too large would excessively tire the paddler. Edwin Tappan Adney and Howard Chapelle write in the classic The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America, "The voyageur was particular about his paddle; no man in his right mind would use a blade wider than 4 1/2 and 5 inches, for anything wider would exhaust him in a short distance."  (see the Voyageur paddle to the left)

Almost all of the blades that I make have widths of six inches. If I make them much wider than seven inches, blade flutter starts to become a significant issue. Flutter occurs when the water pressure on the power face of the blade reaches a point at which the flow of the water around the blade is unstable, and it flows off the edges unequally. This causes the blade to flutter, or wobble along its axis. This is why it is important to create a smooth ridge along the center of the paddle blade. It helps to direct the water flow evenly across the blade when the pressure builds up. I have also found that wide paddles resist the rotation required for precise underwater control. As a result, wider paddles feel more sluggish and imprecise in their performance. Certainly, a strong paddler can overpower these conditions, but over time, even the strongest paddlers will become tired and annoyed by this characteristic. 

That seems to explain why there are similarities in the scale of the blades, but not why there are so many variations in shape. I found it helpful to simplify the variety into two main categories: straight-sided and round-sided.  In those with straight sides the surface area is evenly distributed over the entire blade. Straight-sided blades are common in areas with consistently deep water, such as the countless lakes of the Canadian Shield. Here, the water is deep everywhere, and you rarely have to be concerned about shallow water.  Round-sided paddles, such as the ubiquitous beavertail, are common mostly along the East Coast regions of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Maine, and so on. This is a region full of deep lakes and shallow rivers. Paddles such as the teardrop-shaped beavertail keep much of their surface area located toward the tip of the paddle. If you paddle through shallow spots, having a wide tip allows the paddle to remain useful when a narrower one would be ineffective.
 

There is some speculation that the type and quality of the available materials also had an influence on paddle design. In Canoe Paddles; A Complete Guide to Making Your Own, Graham Warren and David Gidmark write, "The availability of tough, durable woods might have encouraged the paddlemaker to spend more time making an elaborate paddle, whereas the effort might not have been considered worthwhile with a soft, easily damaged wood." I remember hearing stories from a friend who had paddled the Hayes River down to York Factory, in northern Manitoba. Her group was accompanied by several Cree paddlers from Nelson House, who consistently used their paddles as rollers to bring their canoes up on shore. At the end of the portage, they would select pieces of local spruce and quickly shape new paddles with their axes. Finesse and precision were not high on their criteria list.  According to Adney and Chapelle, given a choice, paddle makers almost always chose a hardwood, birch being the traditional favorite, with maple a close second. These hardwoods were strong and could be worked thin with no loss of strength. In addition, they had a nice smooth-grain texture that was pleasing to work with. It¹s no small coincidence, then, that the region where these species of trees grow is also where the most elaborate paddles have developed.


I chose five paddles to reproduce. The five that I chose represent different geographical regions, design approaches, and time periods. For documentation, I pulled out my trusty copy of The Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America by Edwin Tappan Adney and Howard Chapelle (Smithsonian Institution Press). I went through it, page by page, looking specifically for anything about paddles.

Mi'kmaq (Mic Mac)

A Mi'kmaq paddle brought to England in 1749, along with a birchbark canoe, and documented by the British Navy, figure 4 in Bark Canoes and Skin Boats. The drawings in the book are from the Admiralty Collection of Draughts, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. This is the oldest accurately documented paddle that I know of. This alone would make it worthy of reproduction, yet it has a unique blade shape, and is the only pole grip that I chose to reproduce. The material of the original is not specified; I chose to make mine from cherry. Cherry makes very fine paddles. The blade is long and comes to a fairly narrow and pointed tip. At first I thought that this pointed tip would be too fragile to be practical, but then I started to wonder if perhaps its function was to allow it to act as a push pole or as a walking stick. The narrowness of the tip would expose much less of the blade to the wear and tear of poling or to the effects of fast moving shallow water. The pole grip continues to be an enigma. I can¹t decide if it works better with the palm of my grip hand facing toward me, or  away from me. It would be my inclination to hold my grip hand with the palm facing away from me.  This would also be consistent with how many of the other grips are used. This grip is comfortable enough to use this way, but I would suspect that it provides less rotation control than other grips. It still eludes me why anyone would choose to make a pole grip. Given the amount of effort required to make the paddle, it seems that adding any sort of flat area for a grip would be very little extra work compared to simply leaving a pole end.

Western Cree "Man's Paddle "     

The sample paddle was from northwest of James Bay, figure 124 in Bark Canoes and Skin Boats. I chose this one to represent the straight-sided paddles that are common in the waters of the Canadian Shield region, and because of the unique ball-shaped grip. The original paddle may have been maple or birch, though I suspect it was spruce. I made mine of ash.
I chose the man¹s paddle rather than the woman¹s paddle simply because of the grip. Of the two paddles documented, the woman¹s paddle had a pole-end grip, which was already represented in the Mi¹kmaq paddle from 1749. Of all the cultural groups I studied, the Cree were the only ones to differentiate between men¹s and women¹s paddles. Not only were the sizes different (the woman's paddle being slightly smaller, almost identical to the Têtes de
Boule paddle), but the decorations were clearly distinct as well.  Decorations would consist of bands, squares, dots, and crosses, usually in red. Sometimes the grips were painted as well.
The ball grip is common among Cree paddles. It is not clear from the evidence available to me whether the ball is just a disc or if it is truly spherical. I chose to make mine a flattened sphere. It¹s surprisingly comfortable to use, regardless of how you place your hand on it to grip it.
Where it really shines is in underwater recoveries, when you rotate the paddle with a palm roll, such as when using the Indian Stroke.

Têtes de Boule

I chose the Têtes de Boule, figure 102 in Bark Canoes and Skin Boats, as another representative of the straight-sided paddles, because of its interesting grip, and because it seemed to be one of the most likely candidates for contemporary use. The grip has a cylindrical roll across the top, which I have found to be very comfortable in practice. The original was most likely maple or birch. I used ash, which makes a very tough paddle, strong and resilient. I don¹t often use ash, as it is heavy and I find the coarse grain structure unpleasant.

Passamaquoddy

Two Passamaquoddy paddles documented in 1849, figure 72 in Bark Canoes and Skin Boats. These two paddles, especially the decorated one, have always fascinated me. I have been making paddles based on the decorated Passamaquoddy paddle for about six years now (fifth from top in photo), but have always wanted to do one as close as possible to the original. I wanted to capture some of the original flavor of these unique paddles. The original decorated Passamaquoddy paddle documented in Bark Canoes and Skin Boats was of maple, and the other one is cedar. I made my reproductions of basswood so that I could easily do the detail carving on the grips. Basswood is fast and easy to work with. I would recommend it for beginners who will be working primarily with hand tools. It isn¹t very tough, so I would suggest treating it like a softwood for the purposes of paddle making.

These were the largest blades that I made. I was surprised that such large blades were as comfortable to use as they were. These blades were large and powerful, and still comfortable after a number of hours of use. Of the two, I prefer the one that is more like a stretched-out beavertail, the one that is decorated. 

The drawing provided by Adney gave an indication of the type of decoration that was applied to the blade, but was rather skimpy on detail. I thought I would have to be content with this, but then last spring I came across a new book by Graham Warren and David Gidmark, Canoe Paddles: A Complete Guide to Making Your Own (Firefly Books, 2001). On page 20, I spotted a sketch drawn by Liz Reagan of a nearly identical paddle, which she had found in the Peabody Museum. I bought the book for just that one drawing. I did a computer scan of the drawing and printed it up to a scale that filled the paper. An enlarging photocopier would accomplish the same thing. I then drew pencil lines over it, dividing it into four equal lengthwise sections, and eight equal sections along its length. I then copied the drawing onto a sheet of graph paper that had a full-size tracing of the blade, prepared with the same divisions as I had made on the printout. I taped this full-size drawing over the completed paddle blade, and used carbon paper to transfer the design. To complete the design, I painted in the outlines with acrylic paint. After painting, I applied varnish over everything, as the acrylic is not waterproof.

The Passamaquoddy are a Malecite group, and the decorated paddle that I chose to reproduce was not uncommon. "Formerly, the Malecite placed his personal mark, or dupskodegun, on the flat of the top of his paddle near the cross-grip.  The mark was incised into the wood and the incised line was filled with red or black pigment when available. Sometimes the whole paddle, including the blade, was covered with incised line ornamentation

This was usually a vine-and-leaf pattern or a combination of small triangles and curved lines. The Passamaquoddy used designs suggesting the needlework once seen on fine linens. Sometimes other designs showing animals, camps, or canoes were used." (Adney and Chapelle, p. 80-82).