American Realities with Bill Youngs
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      • Volume One >
        • The Native Americans
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      • Part I: Possessing the Falls >
        • Chapter One: James Glover: Purchasing the Falls
        • Chapter Two: Waiting for the Indians
        • Chapter Three: Harnessing the Falls
        • Chapter Four: "The World's Fair of the Northwest"
        • Chapter Five: The City Beside the Falls
      • Part II: Rediscovering the Falls >
        • Chapter Six: The Twilight of Old Spokane
        • Chapter Seven: Urban Blight and Urban Renewal
        • Chapter Eight: King Cole and The Heart of a City
        • Chapter Nine: Visualizing a World's Fair
      • Part III Redesigning the Falls >
        • Chapter Ten: From Spokane to Paris >
          • Tom Foley's Turn
        • Chapter Eleven: Wooing the Foreign Exhibitors
        • Chapter Twelve: Wooing the Domestic Exhibitors
        • Chapter Thirteen: The Environmental Debate
        • Chapter Fourteen: Building the Fair
        • Chapter Fifteen: Marketing, Money, and Management
      • Part IV: The Fair by the Falls >
        • Chapter Sixteen: Opening Day
        • Chapter Seventeen: A Mingling of Peoples
        • Chapter Eighteen: Days at the Fair
        • Chapter Nineteen: The Press of New Ideas
        • Chapter Twenty: The Final Tally
      • Part V: An American Environment >
        • Chapter Twenty-One: Spokane Falls, An American Environment
      • The Fair and the Falls Map

Historical Gleanings: Aleut Baidarkas

added ​June 3, 2019

      In American Colonies: The Settling of North America, Alan Taylor describes the Russian exploration, exploitation, and settlement of the Aleutian Islands and Alaska. I was intrigued by his description of the Aleut baidarkas.
 
      "The surrounding waters abounded in fish and sea mammals, which were central to the Aleut diet and life. They developed an ingenious, compact boat known as a baidarka (akin to the Inuit kayak): sealskins sewn and stretched over a framework of driftwood and whalebone. Small and light, yet capable of riding through severe swells, the watertight baidarka snugly held one man or two. In 1788 an English visitor, Martin Sauer, admired the Aleut baidarka: “If perfect symmetry, smoothness, and proportion, constitute beauty, they are beautiful: to me they appeared so beyond any thing I ever beheld.” Wearing watertight parkas made of seal gut or bird skins, the Aleut quickly, silently, and smoothly paddled into the swimming masses of seals or sea otters to kill with stone-tipped harpoons attached to an inflated bladder to hinder the wounded animal’s flight." (Alan Taylor, American Colonies​)


     Wanting to enrich our mental picture of indigenous and frontier Alaska my research assistant, Brian O'Reilly, and I tackled several questions: what did a baidarka look like? Could we find historic drawings and photographs? Is anyone still building them?

     Sometimes a picture is worth 1000 words, but on the other hand, sometimes words can supply a picture not available in a film or photo. Here is a description by a midshipman on board one of Capitan James Cook's vessels about sailing among baidarka's in Unalga Pass in June 1778:

     “We found ourselves going thro’ the water above 6 knots, yet… the Indians in their Seal skin Canoes kept way with us very easily.” (1)

​      One senses the those Aleuts were showing off, not just their "canoes," but their own strength as well. Records indicate that the arms of the indigenous men were much thicker and stronger than those of Europeans. Herewith some pictures:

Picture

N. B. Miller, Sea Otter Hunters and Kayaks Showing Waterproof Garments and Kayak Covers, Unalaska, 1896 (2)

Picture

"Native Sea Otter Fleet Onga" [date unknown??] (3)

Picture

Double-hole Kayak (Baidarka), circa 1929, King Island, Alaska   (4)

Picture

     In the image above, modern day baidarka-builder Mitch Poling is showing a scale model of a Baidarka. In the video that follows he relates the history of the baidarka and explains that he was brought up in Alaska's Prince William Sound among baidarkas. The short film includes historic images and tells us that these delicate-seeming craft were paddled all the way from Alaska to Fort Ross in California, where the Russians established an outpost (1812-1842).    Click here to see the video.

Citations:

(1) ​George Dyson. "The Aleutian Kayak: The Aleuts Built the Baidarka to Suit Their  Life as Hunters on the Open Ocean. The Sophisticated Design of This Kayak  Is Still Not Entirely Understood." Scientific American (2000): 84-91. [Page number for quotation ??]

(2) University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections, 1896 [Really?? Did UW access this picture the same year it was taken??]

(3) Crary-Henderson Collection; Anchorage Museum, Gift of Ken Hinchey, B1962.001.776 (detail)

(4) "Gift of the Old Town Canoe Company" [Can we learn more about this baidarka, such as where it is now??]