Voyageurs: Running the Rapids

As you walk along the craggy granite cliffsides of the north shore Lake Superior, you see it would be no small feat to travel a steep stretch of any number of wild rivers down into a rocky cove of the Great Lake.

Poplar Creek at the shore of Lutsen Resort

The necessary system of inland portages came as result of the rocky terrain which feed the creeks that the Voyageurs tried to traverse, many times unsuccessfully, in hand crafted birch bark canoes, sometimes 36 to 40 feet long and six feet wide, depending on the fur haul purpose.  The common

Voyageur, ironically, tended to be a relatively short man with a sturdy center of gravity so to maintain hours upon hours of hunched over paddling; yet many of these men could not swim, "Running a rapids could be a wild, exhilarating descent.  The canoe men  steered their fragile vessel around rocks, through boiling eddies, and over sudden drops.  A slight miscue could destroy a canoe or cause damage forcing the whole brigade to stop for repairs…"

Northshore pebble beach

Unlike the seamless fiberglass canoe of today, the birchbark was constructed from nothing more than a rough mold to start, large sheets of birchbark sewn together with watup (split spruce root), shaped, and laced to flexible gunwale strips and over stern and bow sterns, with extra ribs of white cedar for support.  "To prevent water from leaking in, all the sewn seams were covered with pitch that was boiled and mixed with tallow and charcoal…En route, a large sponge was used to bail out water."  The birchbark, then, was flexible enough to withstand violent rapids, but light enough for four men to carry over portage, glide over calmer waters, then serve as cover at night against the nightly elements.