This is a pen and ink reader board illustration done for Chippewa Nature Center in Michigan, by artist Susan A. Walton of Hudson, Florida.

The illustration shows the skilled construction of an elegant and well-engineered birch bark canoe by the Ojibway using traditional methods and locally obtained materials.

Native Americans made several different kinds of watercraft for transportation and trading, fishing and hunting, and even for war.

Without draft animals like horses and oxen, rivers were more important than roads and footpaths, so they relied mostly on a providentially vast network of lakes, rivers and tributaries in the interior to get around. In some areas, such as along the Gulf Coast, they even dug canals to accommodate their craft and shorten travel.

In the south, the simple dugout canoe was king; in the far north, the kayak; in the northwest, fine carved and crafted boats of large size; on the plains the clumsy bull boat of hides stretched over a frame; but in the north, in and around the Great Lakes, the presence of birch trees allowed for the making of these particularly elegant, light and nimble birch bark canoes that could be easily portaged around rapids, log jams and such. They could be used to hunt moose, carrying people and cargo, even as mobile harvesting tools for collecting wild rice in the marshes. Each group that made them had their own identifiable traditional styles, almost as a trademark.

In some areas where birch bark was not available, elm bark was used by other peoples to make serviceable, somewhat less elegant canoes.

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