The free online library at Archive.org has a great book outlining the extensive history of the Native culture on the East Coast. Twelve thousand years : American Indians in Maine by Bruce J.
Bourque is a thorough publication that features some photos beyond just the Maine border to include First Nations groups from Canada. Among one particular shot in the appendix section is photo A-18 featuring a Mi'kmaq group with canoe in front of a bark wigwam.
The two standing gentlemen at the far right and far left are each holding up an inverted paddle clearly showing the shape of the blade.
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2 comments:
Where are most of your patterns taken from, old paddle designs or do you make your own designs.
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I try to reproduce paddles from old photos or illustrations. Often use photoshop to blow up the image to scale and work from printed paper templates. There's a bit of creative license used because you can't really see the blade thickness so in that case the wood stock used dictates the final dimensions. Before the Covid issue, I had started visiting some museum collections to get more detailed measurement data on some historic paddles.
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