Coloured Illustrations of Adney Paddles

Bjorn Thomasson's site has an interesting page (in Swedish only) with some coloured illustrations of paddles documented in Adney's Bark Canoes and Skin Boats Of North America. Not sure if Bjorn did the colouring himself, but it adds a more lively touch to Adney's traditional black and white sketches. Here are some samples below



Micmac Paddle documented with a canoe sent to England in 1749. This is the rough blade design I used for the Cherry Fusion paddle



Penobscot/Maliseet paddle from the early 1800's, designed for sea fishing and hunting. I used this one for the Cherry Pileated Woodpecker paddle



Top paddle is the c. 1849 decorated Passamaquoddy I attempted to replicate. The middle one is a diamond bladed Passamaquoddy - I've got a yellow poplar blank with this shape that I posted on here. The bottom paddle is a c. 1888 St. John River area paddle



St. Francis Abnaki paddle that Adney documents disappeared from history around 1890.



Adney's surmised Beothuk ocean canoe paddle from the late 1800s. I started a cherry edged laminated version of the paddle, but made a mistake with the lamination. This one is awaiting another attempt



Late 1800 Eastern Cree paddle from Labrador. I recently posted info on other Cree paddles here.



Western Cree paddles. The upper is a man's paddle, the lower a women's paddle. Cree-paddles (mid 1800s) were often decorated with red pigment as pictured. Cliff Speer has a photo with replicas of these paddles on his Flickr page posing his team for the David Thompson Bicentennial canoe trek