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Part 1 Introduction

The Weymontaching Indians: Geographicaland Ethnological BackgroundThe Weymontaching Band is made up ofsome four hundred individuals living inseverai local groups in and around Sanmaur,in the upper St-Maurice region. Situatedabout a hundred miles north of La Tuque,the village serves as home base for a smallwhite community established near the raii-road that runs from Abitibi to southernQuebec. The indian reserve itself consistsof over seven thousand acres along thebanks of Rivire St-Maurice, at the mouthof Rivire Manouane.Weymontaching-"place where you cansee for a great distancew-has been thegathering place of the Band, but nowadaysthe lndians meet there only in summer forthe missionary's visit and in winter forChristmas and New Year's festivities. Therest of the year they iive in groups of relatedfamiiies near their hunting grounds or the"headquarters" of the iumbering companiesthat employ them for cutting and ioggingoperations. Their lands stretch from RivireVermillon West to Parent, north to theGouin dam, and south to Lac Kempt; theyare bordered in the southwest by the ter-ritory of the Manouane lndians and in thenorthwest by that of the Obedjiwan. TheWeymontaching, Manouane and Obedjiwanlndians thus share the whole plateau andvalley drained by the St-Maurice and itstributaries.The three bands have a common linguis-tic and ethnic origin, and exchanges ofmembers among them, particulariy throughmarriage, are frequent. Next to the banditseif, this group of three bands representsthe most significant unit of solidarity forthe individual. The lndians not included inthis group do not belong to the samefamily; the Pointe-Bleue Montagnais to theeast, the Gatineau and Ottawa River Ai-gonkins to the West, and the WaswanipiCrees and the Amos indians to the northhave no real connection with the Weymon-taching, Manouane and Obedjiwan indians.

Ethnological literature refers to the St-Maurice lndians by the iess famifiar nameT&tes de Boule (Mooney in Hodge 1913:452),and sometimes aiso by the name Pois-sons blancs (white-fish people), which is aliteral translation of the local expressionAttikamek, a name apparently used by the

lndians themseives in earlier times. Theseterms are no longer used by the Weymon-taching; instead, iike the Manouane andObedjiwan Indians, they now use the nameof the territory or the band to which theybelong. For example, in the local dialectWemontassi IrinUk means "Weymontachingindian", or more iiteraiiy, "Weymontachingman". in this paper the term Ttes deBoule wiil be used mainly to describe thekind of canoe used by the lndians of theSt-Maurice region.Our canoe was built at Dam C, a settle-ment of about ten famiiies, on the banksof the Manouane, 13 miles from Weymon-taching. Dam C takes its name from a hold-ing dam, third of a series built on theManouane, which is a tributary of the St-Maurice. Founded about tweive years agowhen a lumbering company began opera-tions in the area, the settlement was aban-doned by the company when the cuttingwas finished, but the indians who hadworked there and whose hunting groundswere nearby chose to remain. Aithough thesettlement has no real stabiiity of popuia-tion, some famiiies, such as that of thebuiider of Our canoe, [ive there ail yearround.The Shape of the Ttes de Boule Canoeand Its Pattern of DistributionBirchbark canoes are usuaily ciassified(Waugh 1919; Ritzenthaler 1950; Adneyand Chapelle 1964) according to the shapeof the tips; the variations iargeiy refiectthose ethnic differences that anthropoio-gists recognize within the great Aigonkian-speaking famiiy. There are two other dis-tinctive features in the overail iines of thesecanoes: the sheer of the gunwale and thebottom profile of the huli. When the curveof the stempiece is long and gradual, thecurvature of the huli is noticeably sharper.Similarly, a high bow and Stern create asharp curve at the ends of the gunwales,provided that the depth of the huii remainsconstant. Variations aiso exist in the bot-toms of these canoes, which can be fiat,rounded or V-shaped.This method of identification cannot,however, be rigidly applied, for these fea-tures sometimes occur in unexpected com-binations. Furthermore, two quite differenttypes of canoe are sometimes found within

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Introduction

Plate 1Model of a Manouane canoe (National Museums of Canada, Ill-C49a)

a single tribal group among the GatineauAlgonkins. Nevertheless, this system ofclassification does make it possible to dis-tinguish dominant technical trends within agroup, and to note major differences inshape between cran used by related ethnicgroups. I shall follow this classification inmy general description of the Ttes deBoule birchbark canoe, noting the more ob-vious differences that distinguish it fromthose used by neighbouring groups. -The Ttes de Boule canoe is character-

. ized by a flat bottom, a very slight hull, curvature, a rather abrupt sheer of the gun-wales at both ends, and a regular and\gentle curve of the stempieces.The hull curvature is slight, although th ir eis a brief slope near the stempieces. Inthis the Indians of the St-Maurice regionresemble the Algonkins and Ojibways tothe West; the bottom of their canoe isflat and straight for almost its entire length.The hull curvature is more pronouncedamong the Montagnais to the east, and evenmore so among the Crees on the easternshores of James Bay, where the ends are

so high that the hull takes on a cradleshape.The sheer of the gunwales is also indica-tive of the intermediate position of the In-dians of St-Maurice. South of the St.Lawrence and in the Maritimes, the dopeof the gunwales is very slight and gradual,with the exception of the Beothuk canoe,whose distinguishing characteristics appearmarginal, and that of the St-Franois Abe-nakis, which is very similar in shape to theTtes de Boule canoe. Among the Algon-kins and Ojibways, the slope is even sharperthan on the Ttes de Boule canoe.In the canoe of the St-Maurice region,the sharp curve of the stempiece at thewaterline gives a slight curvature to thehull. The top of the stempiece bendsslightly inward, retaining an almost verticalposition. Thus the end of the canoe de-scribes a very open arc in comparison withthe long-prowed Ojibway canoe, in whichthe tip of the stempiece curves inward andrests on the forward part of the canoe.Curiously enough, a similar mode of con-struction is found at the other extremity of

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The One-Man Hunting Canoe

the cultural area, among the Micmacs. Else-where south of the St. Lawrence, the topof the stempiece is nearly vertical. TheAlgonkins bend it inward and downward tofit into the headboard that supports theends of the gunwales, which in turn reston the inside curve of the stempiece. Thisunusual form of construction is found inmost of the canots de matre, or rabascas.This kind of canoe is also common amongthe Ojibways; I shall cal1 it "Algonkin"here, to distinguish it from the long-prowedcanoe peculiar to the Ojibways. Among theeastern Crees and Montagnais, the curve ofthe tip of the stempiece is like that charac-teristic of the Tfes de Boule, except thatit ends under the gunwales instead of pro-jecting vertically between them.These remarks outline the distinctivecharacteristics of the Ttes de Boule birch-bark canoe. As for 3 s ar ea of use, .it I s _ComEon to the Weymontaching, Manouaneand Obedjiwan bands. With respect to theObedjiwan, we have to rely on the wordsof Our informant and builder, who did,however, note that the Obedjlwan canoewas flatter and had straighter sides "likethe Iroquois canoes", by which he meantthe canots de matre. The Ttes de Boulecanoe is also found, with minor differences,among the Grand-Lac-Victoria and LacSimon Alaonkins. I was unable to de-termine whether the typlcal Algonkin canoeexisted in that reaion. but it seems unlikelv.These groups arthe'immediate neighbou;~of the St-Maurice lndians to the northwest,although neither group acknowledges anyties. The Maniwaki and Lac Barrire Al-gonkins have different origins from the firstgroup, even though they occupy adjacent.lands. In addition to a canoe with semi-circular stempieces, these Algonkins builda craft that is classified here as Ttes deBoule. Adney and Chapelle (1964: 119) re-fer to it as wabinaki chiman, which is thelocal term. This represents the westernllmit of the area of use of the Ttes de Boulecanoe, although it is also found occasional-ly among the Ojibways. Clearly. the tech-niques used by the lndians of the St-Mauriceregion link them to the western groups,at least insofar as the shape of their birch-bark canoe is concerned. It should be add-ed, however, that the St-Franois Abenakissouth of the St. Lawrence have, in additionto a canoe with no noticeable sheer, an-

other model similar to the T&tes de Boulecanoe. Furthermore, their hunting groundsare known to have extended in earlier timesas far as Rivire Vermillon in the St-Mauriceregion, thus bordering on the huntinggrounds of the Weymontaching band. Thisindicates an unbroken pattern of distribu-tion for the Ttes de Boule canoe.The One-Man Hunting CanoeThe builder of the canoe that will be de-scribed here stated that it was a one-manhunting canoe; such craft Vary between8 and 12 i t in length, and are not reallycapable of carrying more than one hunterand his equipment. Canoes 14 ft or morein length can easily carry a number ofpeople on a hunting expedition, or movea hunter's family and their belongings from

.- winter to summer quarters. Sociologicalstudies of hunting in the subarctic regionssuggest that two-man teams of hunters aretypical, but investigations of their materialculture indicate the use of one-man canoesin many tribal groups. Adney and Chapellemake specific references to its use amongthe Montagnais, Tetes de Boule, Algonkinand Ojibway lndians (1964: 106, 107, 116,123). How is this wide pattern of distribu-tion to be interpreted?There is reason to believe that, in addi-tion to the two-man hunt, the less commonpractice of the one-man hunt aiso existed.A study of Weymontaching trapping bygroups indicates a few such cases (Guy1966). Rogers (1963: 58) also reports thatMistassini trappers sometimes work alone.The moose-hunting technique described byDunning (1959: 25) for the PekangekumBand can be used by one man; the authoradds, however, that a novice generally ac-companied the experienced hunter. Evenwith a group of several hunters. it was notunknown for them to work alone in certaincircumstances, and at such times the one-man huntina canoe offered obvious ad-vantages.The shortness and liahtness of the smallcanoe were features appreciated by theindividual hunter, and according to Our in-formant, account for its use. With sucha canoe, the hunter could negotiate difficultportages and out-of-the-way trails to reachotherwise inaccessible places. It could alsoserve as a useful complement to a longer,

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lntroductlon

Plate 2Manouane decorated canoesmore spacious craft used for other pur-poses. We can only guess at this, sinceethnohistorical works dealing with thissocioeconomic aspect seem virtually non-existent. There is no way to determine withany real certainty the probable uses ofthis li ttle craft. Contemporary ethnographyadds nothing t0 Our knowledge since birch-bark canoes are no longer being built.except for museums and private collec-tions, and the manufactured canvas canoeis usually more than 14 ft long. In anycase, it seems most unlikely that the mal1canoe could have served to carry a familyfrom summer or fall camps to their winterquarters. It seems rnuch more likely thatit was used for hunting and fishing aroundspring and summer camps, for the reasonsalready mentioned.