NOOTKA Canoe

Watercolor 21" x 29"


The traditional territories of the Nuu-chah-nulth was the narrow coastal strip on the west coast of Vancouver Island, from Cape Flattery and Juan de Fuca Strait in the south to the Brooks Peninsula in the north. They were the people that paddled out to meet Juan Perez in 1774, and welcomed James Cook to Nootka Sound in 1778. It was Cook who gave these natives and the region the name ‘Nootka’ in the mistaken belief it was the name they applied to themselves.

These were truly people of the sea. The rugged rocky shore and nearly impenetrable forest
forced them to take to the water, and they developed an elegant dugout canoe of superb design and craftsmanship. The raw material was the magnificent local red cedar, and the canoes, often over fifty feet long, were carved from a single tree. The exterior form was shaped with hand adzes, the interior was chopped and burned to an even thickness, and then steam widened by dropping hot stones in the partially flooded hull until it was soft enough to bend. The final form was finished by smoothing and polishing with the rough skin of sharks. The Nuu-chah-nulth alone of all coastal tribes were whalers, often spending days at sea in wait for the migrating Greys.