Searching for Wisconsin's Dugout Canoes

[Glenn MacGrady]

"Pollen records from Wisconsin lakebeds suggest the climate was warmer and drier around 3,000 to 6,000 years ago, when many of the dugouts from the southern part of the state were made from elm . . . ."

Searching for Wisconsin’s Dugout Canoes

Researchers compiling a digital library of dugout canoes show how Indigenous practices persisted as landscapes changed.

undark.org

 

[lowangle al]

That was interesting Glenn. I never thought that dugouts and birchbark canoes would have been built and used by the same people at the same time.

There was a dugout found in a pond less than a mile from my house in the Poconos. It was estimated to be 400 years old and looked like the ones from Wisconsin. I wonder if anyone has used sonar or other means to see if they may be others on the bottom.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

I assume dugouts are a more ancient technology than birch bark construction, and that the hulks can be preserved for a longer time against total rot disintegration.

 

[lowangle al]

Yeah, I assume all of that too. It made me wonder if the local natives (most likely Lenape) also used birch bark canoes. According to the little research I did they did not have the right type of birch trees to make them. They used American tulip, elm, white oak, chestnut or red ceder for their dugouts.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

"Was it abandoned? Was it lost by accident?

"Staff archaeologist Amy Rosebrough first asked the questions two years ago when a team of divers excavated a 1,200-year-old canoe out of Lake Mendota.

"Less than a year later, jaws dropped again when a 3,000-year-old canoe was retrieved from the waters, found 100 yards from the discovery of the first dugout canoe."

From this article, which also has a video:

Some questions answered, mystery still unraveling around Lake Mendota’s ancient canoes

With the vessels sitting in a tank of water at the State Archive Preservation Facility in Madison, Rosebrough now has the evidence to uncover the unknowns of a local past.

www.nbc15.com