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 Learning PHP, MySQL &
JavaScript
SIXTH EDITION

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With PHP 8, MySQL 8, PDO, CSS, HTML5, jQuery &

React

Robin Nixon
Learning PHP, MySQL & JavaScript
by Robin Nixon
Copyright © 2021 Robin Nixon. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
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or describes is subject to open source licenses or the intellectual
property rights of others, it is your responsibility to ensure that your
use thereof complies with such licenses and/or rights.
978-1-492-09381-7
[LSI]
Preface

The combination of PHP and MySQL is the most convenient

approach to dynamic, database-driven web design, holding its own
in the face of challenges from integrated frameworks—such as Ruby
on Rails—that are harder to learn. Due to its open source roots
(unlike the competing Microsoft .NET Framework), it is free to
implement and is therefore an extremely popular option for web
development.
Any would-be developer on a Unix/Linux or even a Windows/Apache
platform will need to master these technologies. And, combined with
the partner technologies of JavaScript, React, CSS, and HTML5, you
will be able to create websites of the caliber of industry standards
like Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail.

Audience
This book is for people who wish to learn how to create effective and
dynamic websites. This may include webmasters or graphic
designers who are already creating static websites but wish to take
their skills to the next level, as well as high school and college
students, recent graduates, and self-taught individuals.
In fact, anyone ready to learn the fundamentals behind responsive
web design will obtain a thorough grounding in the core
technologies of PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, CSS, and HTML5, and you’ll
learn the basics of the React library and React Native Framework,
too.
Assumptions This Book Makes
This book assumes that you have a basic understanding of HTML
and can at least put together a simple, static website, but does not
assume that you have any prior knowledge of PHP, MySQL,
JavaScript, CSS, or HTML5—although if you do, your progress
through the book will be even quicker.

Organization of This Book

The chapters in this book are written in a specific order, first
introducing all of the core technologies it covers and then walking
you through their installation on a web development server so that
you will be ready to work through the examples.
In the first section, you will gain a grounding in the PHP
programming language, covering the basics of syntax, arrays,
functions, and object-oriented programming.
Then, with PHP under your belt, you will move on to an introduction
to the MySQL database system, where you will learn everything from
how MySQL databases are structured to how to generate complex
queries.
After that, you will learn how you can combine PHP and MySQL to
start creating your own dynamic web pages by integrating forms and
other HTML features. You will then get down to the nitty-gritty
practical aspects of PHP and MySQL development by learning a
variety of useful functions and how to manage cookies and sessions,
as well as how to maintain a high level of security.
In the next few chapters, you will gain a thorough grounding in
JavaScript, from simple functions and event handling to accessing
the Document Object Model, in-browser validation, and error
handling. You’ll also get a comprehensive primer on using the
popular React library for JavaScript.
With an understanding of all three of these core technologies, you
will then learn how to make behind-the-scenes Ajax calls and turn
your websites into highly dynamic environments.
Next, you’ll spend two chapters learning all about using CSS to style
and lay out your web pages, before discovering how the React
libraries can make your development job a great deal easier. You’ll
then move on to the final section on the interactive features built
into HTML5, including geolocation, audio, video, and the canvas.
After this, you’ll put together everything you’ve learned in a
complete set of programs that together constitute a fully functional
social networking website.
Along the way, you’ll find plenty of advice on good programming
practices and tips that can help you find and solve hard-to-detect
programming errors. There are also plenty of links to websites
containing further details on the topics covered.

Supporting Books
Once you have learned to develop using PHP, MySQL, JavaScript,
CSS, and HTML5, you will be ready to take your skills to the next
level using the following O’Reilly reference books:
Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference by Danny
Goodman
PHP in a Nutshell by Paul Hudson
MySQL in a Nutshell by Russell Dyer
JavaScript: The Definitive Guide by David Flanagan
CSS: The Definitive Guide by Eric A. Meyer and Estelle Weyl
 HTML5: The Missing Manual by Matthew MacDonald

Conventions Used in This Book

The following typographical conventions are used in this book:
Plain text
Indicates menu titles, options, and buttons.

Italic
Indicates new terms, URLs, email addresses, filenames, file
extensions, pathnames, directories, and Unix utilities. Also used
for database, table, and column names.

Constant width

Indicates commands and command-line options, variables and

other code elements, HTML tags, and the contents of files.

Constant width bold

Shows program output and is used to highlight sections of code

that are discussed in the text.

Constant width italic

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NOTE
This element signifies a tip, suggestion, or general note.
 WARNING
This element indicates a warning or caution.

Using Code Examples

Supplemental material (code examples, exercises, etc.) is available
for download at github.com/RobinNixon/lpmj6.
This book is here to help you get your job done. In general, if
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programs and documentation. You do not need to contact us for
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We appreciate, but do not require, attribution. An attribution usually
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“Learning PHP, MySQL & JavaScript 6th Edition by Robin Nixon
(O’Reilly). Copyright 2021 Robin Nixon, [[[ISBN NUMBER GOES
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Senior Content Acquisitions Editor, Amanda
Quinn, Content Development Editor, Melissa Potter, and everyone
who worked so hard on this book, including ???, ??? & ??? for their
comprehensive technical reviews, ??? for overseeing production, ???
for copy editing, ??? for proofreading, ??? for creating the index,
Karen Montgomery for the original sugar glider front cover design,
??? for the latest book cover, my original editor, Andy Oram, for
overseeing the first five editions, and everyone else too numerous to
name who submitted errata and offered suggestions for this new
edition.
Chapter 1. Introduction to
Dynamic Web Content

The World Wide Web is a constantly evolving network that has

already traveled far beyond its conception in the early 1990s, when
it was created to solve a specific problem. State-of-the-art
experiments at CERN (the European Laboratory for Particle Physics,
now best known as the operator of the Large Hadron Collider) were
producing incredible amounts of data—so much that the data was
proving unwieldy to distribute to the participating scientists, who
were spread out across the world.
At this time, the internet was already in place, connecting several
hundred thousand computers, so Tim Berners-Lee (a CERN fellow)
devised a method of navigating between them using a hyperlinking
framework, which came to be known as Hypertext Transfer Protocol,
or HTTP. He also created a markup language called Hypertext
Markup Language, or HTML. To bring these together, he wrote the
first web browser and web server.
Today we take these tools for granted, but back then, the concept
was revolutionary. The most connectivity so far experienced by at-
home modem users was dialing up and connecting to a bulletin
board that was hosted by a single computer, where you could
communicate and swap data only with other users of that service.
Consequently, you needed to be a member of many bulletin board
systems in order to effectively communicate electronically with your
colleagues and friends.
But Berners-Lee changed all that in one fell swoop, and by the mid-
1990s, there were three major graphical web browsers competing
for the attention of 5 million users. It soon became obvious, though,
that something was missing. Yes, pages of text and graphics with
hyperlinks to take you to other pages was a brilliant concept, but the
results didn’t reflect the instantaneous potential of computers and
the internet to meet the particular needs of each user with
dynamically changing content. Using the web was a very dry and
plain experience, even if we did now have scrolling text and
animated GIFs!
Shopping carts, search engines, and social networks have clearly
altered how we use the web. In this chapter, we’ll take a brief look
at the various components that make up the web, and the software
that helps make using it a rich and dynamic experience.

NOTE
It is necessary to start using some acronyms more or less right away. I
have tried to clearly explain them before proceeding, but don’t worry
too much about what they stand for or what these names mean,
because the details will become clear as you read on.

HTTP and HTML: Berners-Lee’s Basics

HTTP is a communication standard governing the requests and
responses that are sent between the browser running on the end
user’s computer and the web server. The server’s job is to accept a
request from the client and attempt to reply to it in a meaningful
way, usually by serving up a requested web page—that’s why the
term server is used. The natural counterpart to a server is a client,
so that term is applied both to the web browser and the computer
on which it’s running.
Between the client and the server there can be several other
devices, such as routers, proxies, gateways, and so on. They serve
different roles in ensuring that the requests and responses are
correctly transferred between the client and server. Typically, they
use the internet to send this information. Some of these in-between
devices can also help speed up the internet by storing pages or
information locally in what is called a cache, and then serving this
content up to clients directly from the cache rather than fetching it
all the way from the source server.
A web server can usually handle multiple simultaneous connections,
and when not communicating with a client, it spends its time
listening for an incoming connection. When one arrives, the server
sends back a response to confirm its receipt.

The Request/Response Procedure

At its most basic level, the request/response process consists of a
web browser asking the web server to send it a web page and the
server sending back the page. The browser then takes care of
displaying the page (see Figure 1-1).
 Figure 1-1. The basic client/server request/response sequence

The steps in the request and response sequence are as follows:

1. You enter http://server.com into your browser’s address bar.
2. Your browser looks up the Internet Protocol (IP) address for
server.com.
3. Your browser issues a request for the home page at
server.com.
4. The request crosses the internet and arrives at the
server.com web server.
5. The web server, having received the request, looks for the
web page on its disk.
6. The web server retrieves the page and returns it to the
browser.
7. Your browser displays the web page.
For an average web page, this process also takes place once for
each object within the page: a graphic, an embedded video or Flash
file, and even a CSS template.
In step 2, notice that the browser looks up the IP address of
server.com. Every machine attached to the internet has an IP
address—your computer included—but we generally access web
servers by name, such as google.com. As you probably know, the
browser consults an additional internet service called the Domain
Name Service (DNS) to find the server’s associated IP address and
then uses it to communicate with the computer.
For dynamic web pages, the procedure is a little more involved,
because it may bring both PHP and MySQL into the mix. For
instance, you may click on a picture of a raincoat. Then PHP will put
together a request using the standard database language, SQL—
many of whose commands you will learn in this book—and send the
request to the MySQL server. The MySQL server will return
information about the raincoat you selected, and the PHP code will
wrap it all up in some HTML, which the server will send to your
browser (see Figure 1-2).
 Figure 1-2. A dynamic client/server request/response sequence

The steps are as follows:

1. You enter http://server.com into your browser’s address bar.

2. Your browser looks up the IP address for server.com.
3. Your browser issues a request to that address for the web
server’s home page.
4. The request crosses the internet and arrives at the
server.com web server.
5. The web server, having received the request, fetches the
home page from its hard disk.
6. With the home page now in memory, the web server notices
that it is a file incorporating PHP scripting and passes the
page to the PHP interpreter.
7. The PHP interpreter executes the PHP code.
8. Some of the PHP contains SQL statements, which the PHP
interpreter now passes to the MySQL database engine.
9. The MySQL database returns the results of the statements to
the PHP interpreter.
10. The PHP interpreter returns the results of the executed PHP
code, along with the results from the MySQL database, to
the web server.
11. The web server returns the page to the requesting client,
which displays it.

Although it’s helpful to be aware of this process so that you know

how the three elements work together, in practice you don’t really
need to concern yourself with these details, because they all happen
automatically.
The HTML pages returned to the browser in each example may well
contain JavaScript, which will be interpreted locally by the client, and
which could initiate another request—the same way embedded
objects such as images would.

The Benefits of PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, CSS,

and HTML5
At the start of this chapter, I introduced the world of Web 1.0, but it
wasn’t long before the rush was on to create Web 1.1, with the
development of such browser enhancements as Java, JavaScript,
JScript (Microsoft’s slight variant of JavaScript), and ActiveX. On the
server side, progress was being made on the Common Gateway
Interface (CGI) using scripting languages such as Perl (an alternative
to the PHP language) and server-side scripting—inserting the
contents of one file (or the output of running a local program) into
another one dynamically.
Once the dust had settled, three main technologies stood head and
shoulders above the others. Although Perl was still a popular
scripting language with a strong following, PHP’s simplicity and built-
in links to the MySQL database program had earned it more than
double the number of users. And JavaScript, which had become an
essential part of the equation for dynamically manipulating
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and HTML, now took on the even
more muscular task of handling the client side of the asynchronous
communication (exchanging data between a client and server after a
web page has loaded). Using asynchronous communication, web
pages perform data handling and send requests to web servers in
the background—without the web user being aware that this is
going on.
No doubt the symbiotic nature of PHP and MySQL helped propel
them both forward, but what attracted developers to them in the
first place? The simple answer has to be the ease with which you
can use them to quickly create dynamic elements on websites.
MySQL is a fast and powerful yet easy-to-use database system that
offers just about anything a website would need in order to find and
serve up data to browsers. When PHP allies with MySQL to store and
retrieve this data, you have the fundamental parts required for the
development of social networking sites and the beginnings of Web
2.0.
And when you bring JavaScript and CSS into the mix too, you have a
recipe for building highly dynamic and interactive websites—
especially as there is now a wide range of sophisticated frameworks
of JavaScript functions you can call on to really speed up web
development, such as the well-known jQuery, which until very
recently was one of the most common way programmers access
asynchronous communication features, and the more recent React
JavaScript library which has been growing quickly in popularity, and
is now one of the most widely downloaded and implemented
frameworks, so much so that since 2020 the Indeed job site lists
more than twice as many positions for React developers than for
jQuery.

MariaDB: The MySQL Clone

After Oracle purchased Sun Microsystems (the owners of MySQL),
the community became wary that MySQL might not remain fully
open source, so MariaDB was forked from it to keep it free under the
GNU GPL. Development of MariaDB is led by some of the original
developers of MySQL and it retains exceedingly close compatibility
with MySQL. Therefore, you may well encounter MariaDB on some
servers in place of MySQL—but not to worry, everything in this book
works equally well on both MySQL and MariaDB, which is based on
the same code base as MySQL Server 5.5. To all intents and
purposes you can swap one with the other and notice no difference.
Anyway, as it turns out, many of the initial fears appear to have
been allayed as MySQL remains open source, with Oracle simply
charging for support and for editions that provide additional features
such as geo-replication and automatic scaling. However, unlike
MariaDB, MySQL is no longer community driven, so knowing that
MariaDB will always be there if ever needed will keep many
developers sleeping at night, and probably ensures that MySQL itself
will remain open source.

Using PHP
With PHP, it’s a simple matter to embed dynamic activity in web
pages. When you give pages the .php extension, they have instant
access to the scripting language. From a developer’s point of view,
all you have to do is write code such as the following:

<?php
echo " Today is " . date("l") . ". ";
?>

Here's the latest news.

The opening <?php tells the web server to allow the PHP program
to interpret all the following code up to the ?> tag. Outside of this
construct, everything is sent to the client as direct HTML. So, the
text Here's the latest news. is simply output to the browser;
within the PHP tags, the built-in date function displays the current
day of the week according to the server’s system time.
The final output of the two parts looks like this:

Today is Wednesday. Here's the latest news.

PHP is a flexible language, and some people prefer to place the PHP
construct directly next to PHP code, like this:

Today is <?php echo date("l"); ?>. Here's the latest news.

There are even more ways of formatting and outputting information,

which I’ll explain in the chapters on PHP. The point is that with PHP,
web developers have a scripting language that, although not as fast
as compiling your code in C or a similar language, is incredibly
speedy and also integrates seamlessly with HTML markup.

NOTE
If you intend to enter the PHP examples in this book into a program
editor to work along with me, you must remember to add <?php in
front and ?> after them to ensure that the PHP interpreter processes
them. To facilitate this, you may wish to prepare a file called
example.php with those tags in place.

Using PHP, you have unlimited control over your web server.
Whether you need to modify HTML on the fly, process a credit card,
add user details to a database, or fetch information from a third-
party website, you can do it all from within the same PHP files in
which the HTML itself resides.

Using MySQL
Of course, there’s not a lot of point to being able to change HTML
output dynamically unless you also have a means to track the
information users provide to your website as they use it. In the early
days of the web, many sites used “flat” text files to store data such
as usernames and passwords. But this approach could cause
problems if the file wasn’t correctly locked against corruption from
multiple simultaneous accesses. Also, a flat file can get only so big
before it becomes unwieldy to manage—not to mention the difficulty
of trying to merge files and perform complex searches in any kind of
reasonable time.
That’s where relational databases with structured querying become
essential. And MySQL, being free to use and installed on vast
numbers of internet web servers, rises superbly to the occasion. It is
a robust and exceptionally fast database management system that
uses English-like commands.
The highest level of MySQL structure is a database, within which you
can have one or more tables that contain your data. For example,
let’s suppose you are working on a table called users, within which
you have created columns for surname, firstname, and email,
and you now wish to add another user. One command that you
might use to do this is as follows:

INSERT INTO users VALUES('Smith', 'John',

'[email protected]');

You will previously have issued other commands to create the

database and table and to set up all the correct fields, but the SQL
INSERT command here shows how simple it can be to add new data
to a database. SQL is a language designed in the early 1970s that is
reminiscent of one of the oldest programming languages, COBOL. It
is well suited, however, to database queries, which is why it is still in
use after all this time.
It’s equally easy to look up data. Let’s assume that you have an
email address for a user and need to look up that person’s name. To
do this, you could issue a MySQL query such as the following:

SELECT surname,firstname FROM users WHERE

email='[email protected]';
MySQL will then return Smith, John and any other pairs of names
that may be associated with that email address in the database.
As you’d expect, there’s quite a bit more that you can do with
MySQL than just simple INSERT and SELECT commands. For
example, you can combine related data sets to bring related pieces
of information together, ask for results in a variety of orders, make
partial matches when you know only part of the string that you are
searching for, return only the nth result, and a lot more.
Using PHP, you can make all these calls directly to MySQL without
having to directly access the MySQL command-line interface
yourself. This means you can save the results in arrays for
processing and perform multiple lookups, each dependent on the
results returned from earlier ones, to drill down to the item of data
you need.
For even more power, as you’ll see later, there are additional
functions built right into MySQL that you can call up to efficiently run
common operations within MySQL, rather than creating them out of
multiple PHP calls to MySQL.

Using JavaScript
The oldest of the three core technologies discussed in this book,
JavaScript, was created to enable scripting access to all the elements
of an HTML document. In other words, it provides a means for
dynamic user interaction such as checking email address validity in
input forms and displaying prompts such as “Did you really mean
that?” (although it cannot be relied upon for security, which should
always be performed on the web server).
Combined with CSS (see the following section), JavaScript is the
power behind dynamic web pages that change in front of your eyes
rather than when a new page is returned by the server.
However, JavaScript can also be tricky to use, due to some major
differences in the ways different browser designers have chosen to
implement it. This mainly came about when some manufacturers
tried to put additional functionality into their browsers at the
expense of compatibility with their rivals.
Thankfully, the developers have mostly now come to their senses
and have realized the need for full compatibility with one another, so
it is less necessary these days to have to optimize your code for
different browsers. However, there remain millions of users using
legacy browsers, and this will likely be the case for a good many
years to come. Luckily, there are solutions for the incompatibility
problems, and later in this book we’ll look at libraries and techniques
that enable you to safely ignore these differences.
For now, let’s take a look at how to use basic JavaScript, accepted
by all browsers:

<script type="text/javascript">
document.write("Today is " + Date() );
</script>

This code snippet tells the web browser to interpret everything

within the <script> tags as JavaScript, which the browser does by
writing the text Today is to the current document, along with the
date, using the JavaScript function Date. The result will look
something like this:

Today is Wed Jan 01 2025 01:23:45

Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
canoes, although such combinations are sometimes the result of
comparatively recent repairs or restorations rather than evidence of the
original construction. No date can be placed on the introduction of nails into
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eastern areas before 1850.
Among the many published descriptions of the method of building bark
canoes the earliest give very incomplete information on the building sequence
and usually contain obvious errors as to proportions and materials. (An
example is that of Nicolas Denys, who, sometime between 1632 and 1650,
saw bark canoes being built in what is now New Brunswick and Cape Breton.)
The best descriptions are relatively recent and, as a result, may describe
methods of construction that are not aboriginal.
The description given here is based upon notes made by Adney in 1889-90
and upon inspection of old canoes from the various tribal areas. It was noted
that, although among canoes of the same approximate length there was some
variation in dimensions and some variety in end form, the construction
appeared to vary remarkably little, and it is apparent that the Malecites held
very closely to a fixed sequence in the building process. There was, however,
great variation in detail. The number of gore slashes in canoes 18 to 19 feet
long varied from 10 to 23 on a side. The number was not always the same on
both sides of a canoe nor were the gores always opposite one another.
Canoes with long, sharp ends often had a large number of closely spaced
gores in the middle third of the length, with widely spaced gores toward the
ends. Full-ended canoes, on the other hand, had rather equally spaced gores
their full length. The amount and form of rocker was also a factor in spacing
the gores, and when the rocker was confined to short distances close to the
ends there would naturally be rather closely spaced gores in these portions of
the sides.
A number of the building practices remain to be described, but these will be
best understood when the individual tribal canoe forms are examined. No
written description of building canoes can be understood without reference to
drawings, and to promote this understanding construction details have been
shown on many of those of individual canoes of each tribal type.
Figure 48
"Peter Joe at Work." Drawing by Adney for his article "How an Indian
Birch-Bark Canoe is Made" (Harper's Young People, supplement, July
29, 1890).
 Chapter Four
EASTERN MARITIME REGION
Study of the tribal forms of bark canoes might well be started with the canoes
of the eastern coastal Indians, whose craft were the first seen by white men.
These were the canoes of the Indians inhabiting what are now the Maritime
Provinces and part of Quebec, on the shores of the St. Lawrence River and in
Newfoundland, in Canada, and of the Indians of Maine and New Hampshire,
in New England. Within this area were the Micmac, the Malecite, and the
mixture of tribal groups known as the Abnaki in modern times, as well as the
Beothuk of Newfoundland. All these groups were expert canoe builders and it
was their work that first impressed the white men with the virtues of the
birch-bark canoe in forest travel.

Micmac
The Micmac Indians appear to have occupied the Gaspé Peninsula, most of
the north shore of New Brunswick and nearly all the shores of the Bay of
Fundy as well as all of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Cape Breton.
They may have also occupied much of southern and central New Brunswick as
well, but if so they had been driven from these sections by the Malecites
before the white men came. The Micmacs were known to the early French
invaders under a variety of names; "Gaspesians," "Canadiens," "Sourikois," or
"Souriquois," while the English colonists of New England called them merely
"Eastern Indians." The name Micmac is said to mean "allies" and not known,
but this name was in use early in the 18th century, if not before 1700.
The Micmac were a hunting people with warlike characteristics; they aided the
Malecite and other New England Indians in warfare against the early New
England colonists and in later times aided the French against the English in
Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. These Indians lived in an area where water
transport represented the easiest method of travel and so they became expert
builders and users of birch-bark canoes, which they employed in hunting,
fishing, general travel, and warfare.
The area in which they lived produced fine birch bark and suitable wood for
the framework. Through experience, they had become able to design canoes
for specific purposes and had produced a variety of models and sizes. The
hunting canoe was the smallest, being usually somewhere between 9 and 14
feet long, with an occasional canoe as long as 15 feet. This light craft, known
as a "woods canoe" and sometimes as a "portage canoe," was intended for
navigating very small streams and for portaging. Another model, the "big-river
canoe," somewhat longer than the woods canoe, was usually between 15 and
20 feet long. A third model, the "open water canoe," was for hunting seal and
porpoise in salt water and ranged from about 18 feet to a little over 24 feet in
length. The fourth model, the "war canoe," about which little is known,
appears to have been built in either the "big-river" or "open-water" form, and
to the same length, but sharper and with less beam so as to be faster.
The tribal characteristics of the Micmac birch-bark canoes were to be seen in
the form of the midsection, in certain structural details, and in their generally
sharp, torpedo-shaped lines. The construction was very light and marked by
good workmanship. The distinctive profiles of bow and stern, which do not
appear in the canoes of other tribes in so radical a form, were almost circular,
fairing from the bottom around into the sheer in a series of curves. The break
in the profile of the ends at the sheer, a break that marks in more or less
degree, the end profile of other tribal forms, never occurs in the Micmac
canoe. At most, a slight break in the "streamlined" curve might occur at the
point where the profile was started in the bottom, at which point there might
be a short, hard curve.
Figure 49
Micmac 2-Fathom Pack, or Woods, Canoe for woods travel with light
loads, used by the Nova Scotia Micmacs.
The form of the sheer line of the Micmac canoes apparently varied with the
model: the woods canoe had the usual curved sheer with the point of lowest
freeboard about amidships, the big river canoe had either a nearly straight
sheer or one very slightly hogged, while the open-water canoe had a strongly
hogged sheer in which the midship portion was often as much as 3 or 4
inches above that just inboard of the ends. However, there is a possibility
that, at one time, the sheer of all Micmac canoes was more or less hogged.
The little that is known of the war canoes of colonial times indicate that they
had the strongly hogged sheer that now marks the open-water model,
through it is also known that some of these were really of the big-river model,
which in later times had usually no more than a vestige of the hogged sheer.
The hull-forms of the Micmac canoes were marked in the topsides by a strong
tumble-home, carried the full length of the hull, that gave these canoes more
beam below than at the gunwale. The form of the midsection varied with the
model; the woods canoe usually had a rather flat bottom athwartships, the
big river canoe a slightly rounded bottom, and the open water canoe either a
well-rounded bottom or one in the form of a slightly rounded V. The fore-and-
aft rocker in the bottom was always moderate, usually occurring in the last
few feet near the ends; however, many of the canoes were straight along the
bottom. This condition will be again referred to in discussing the building beds
used in this type. The ends were usually fine-lined; in plan view the gunwales
came into the ends in straight or slightly hollow lines. The level lines below
the gunwales might also be straight as they came into the ends, but were
commonly somewhat hollow; a few examples show marked hollowness there.
Predominantly, the Micmac canoes were very sharp in the ends and paddled
swiftly. Early Micmac canoes seem to have been narrower than more recent
examples, which are usually rather broad as compared to the types used by
some other tribes.
Structurally, the Micmac canoes were distinguished by the construction of the
ends and by their light build throughout. The canoes had no inner framework
to shape the ends; stiffness there was obtained by placing battens outside the
bark, one on each side of the hull, that ran from the bottom of the cut in the
bark required to shape the ends to somewhat inboard of the ends of the
gunwales at the sheer. These two battens, as well as a split-root stem-band
covering the raw ends of the cut bark, were held in place by passing a spiral
over-and-over lashing around all three. Sometimes thicker battens reaching
from the high point of the ends inboard to the end thwarts were added, in
which case the side battens were stopped at the high point of the ends and
there faired into the thick battens.
Figure 50
Micmac 2-Fathom Pack, or Woods, Canoe with Northern Lights decoration
on bow, and seven thwarts.
The gunwale structure was rather light, the maximum cross section of the
main gunwale in large canoes being rarely in excess of 1¼ inches square.
These members usually tapered slightly toward the ends of the canoe and had
a half-arrowhead form where they were joined. Old canoes had no guard or
outwale, but some more recent Micmac canoes have had a short guard along
the middle third of the length. Often there was no bevel to take the rib ends
on the lower outboard corner of the main gunwales, and the gunwales were
not fitted so that their outboard faces stood vertically. Instead, the tenons in
the gunwales were cut to slant upward from the inside, so that installation of
the thwarts would cause the outboard face to flare outward at the top.
Between this face and the inside of the bark cover were forced the beveled
ends of the ribs, which were cut chisel-shape. However, some builders
beveled or rounded the lower outboard corner of the main gunwale, as
described under Malecite canoe building (p. 38). The bark cover in the Micmac
canoe was always brought up over the gunwales, gored to prevent
unevenness, and folded down on top of them before being lashed. The
gunwale lashing was a continuous one in which the turns practically touched
one another outboard, though they were sometimes separated under the
gunwale to clear the ribs, which widened near their ends, so the intervals
between them were very small.
The other member of the gunwale structure was the cap; its thickness was
usually ¼ to ⅜ inch, reduced slightly toward the ends. Its inboard face and
the bottom were flat, but the top was somewhat rounded, with the thickness
reduced toward the outboard edge. The cap was fastened to the main
gunwales with pegs and with short lashing groups near the ends, but in late
examples nails were used. The ends of the caps were bevelled off on the
inboard side, so that they came together in pointed form. The cap usually
ended near the end of the gunwale but in some canoes, particularly those
that were nail-fastened, the cap was let into the gunwale (see p. 50) so that
the top was flush with end of the gunwale.

Figure 51
Micmac 2-Fathom Pack, or Woods, Canoe with normal sheer and flat
bottom.
The ends of the gunwales were supported by headboards that were bellied
outboard to bring tension vertically on the bark cover. The heel of the board
stood on a short frog, laid on the bottom with the inboard end touching or
slightly lapping over the endmost rib. The frog supported the heels of the
headboard and also the forefoot of the stem-piece, which otherwise would
have but partial support from the sewing battens outside the ends at these
points. The headboard was rather oval-shaped and the top was notched on
each side to fit under the gunwale; the narrow central tenon stood slightly
above the top of the main gunwales when the headboard was sprung into
place and was held in position by a lashing across the gunwales inboard of the
top of the headboard. The heel was held by the notch in the frog. Cedar
shavings were stuffed into the ends of the canoe between the stem-piece and
the headboard to mold the ends properly, as no ribs could be inserted there.
All woodwork in these canoes was white cedar, except the headboards and
thwarts, which were maple, and the stem battens, which were usually basket
ash but sometimes were split spruce roots.
The more recent Micmac canoes usually had no more than five thwarts; this
number was found even on small woods canoes. However, old records
indicate that canoes 20 to 28 feet long on the gunwales were once built with
seven thwarts. The shape of the thwarts varied, apparently in accordance with
the builder's fancy. The most common form was nearly rectangular in cross-
section; in elevation, it was thick at the hull centerline and tapered smoothly
to the outboard ends; and in plan it was narrowest at the hull centerline and
increased in width toward the ends, the increase being rather sharp at the
shoulders of the tenon. In some, the tenon went through the main gunwales
and touched the inside of the bark cover; in others the ends of the thwarts
were pointed in elevation, square in plan, and were inserted in shallow, blind
tenons on the inboard side of the main gunwales. A single 3-turn lashing
through a hole in the shoulder and around the main gunwale was used in
every case.
Figure 51
Micmac 2-Fathom Pack, or Woods, Canoe with normal sheer and flat
bottom.
Sometimes the thwarts just described were straight (in plan view) on the side
toward the middle of the canoe, and only the middle thwart was alike on both
sides. In others the straight side of the end thwart and of that next inboard
were toward the bow and stern of the canoe. In still others, the middle thwart
had a rounded barb form in plan, with the barb located within 6 or 7 inches of
the shoulder and pointed toward the tenon; the next thwarts out on each side
of the middle thwart were shaped like a cupid's bow but slightly angular and
aimed toward the ends of the canoe, and the end thwarts were of similar
plan. In one known example having such thwarts, there were two very short
thwarts at the ends of the canoe, of the usual plain form described earlier,
each a few inches inboard of the headboard. Thus this canoe had seven
thwarts in the old fashion.
The ribs, or frames, were thin, about ¼ or 5⁄16 inch thick, and across the
bottom of the canoe they were often 3 inches wide. In the topsides the ribs
were tapered to about 2 inches in width; when the bottom and outboard
corner of the main gunwales were not beveled, the rib ends were cut square
across on the wide face and chisel-shaped. When the gunwale corner was
beveled, the ribs were formed with a sharply tapered dull point at the ends.
From the middle of the canoe to the first thwarts each way from the middle,
the ribs were spaced 1 inch edge-to-edge. From the first thwarts to the ends,
the spacing was about 1½ inches. Most builders made the ribs narrower
toward the ends; if those in the middle of the canoe were 3 inches wide,
those near the ends might be 2½. They were shaped and placed as described
for the Malecite canoe in Chapter 3.
In the construction of a Micmac canoe, the gunwales were first formed,
assembled, and used as a building frame. If the sheer was to be hogged, this
was done by treating the main gunwales with boiling water before assembly
and then staking them out to dry in the required sheer curves. The building
bed was well crowned, usually 2 to 2½ inches because of the very wide
bottom and the tumble-home of these canoes. Most Micmac canoes appear to
have had only slight fore-and-aft rocker in the bottom; the bottoms of the
seagoing type were often quite straight, and the other two types had a slight
rocker of perhaps 1½ inches, most of it near the ends. When the sheer was
hogged, the amount of hog was probably close to the amount of crown in the
building bed. The ends of the gunwales, when laid on the bed, were blocked
up to about the desired amount of rocker to be given the bottom.

Figure 53
Micmac 3-Fathom Ocean Canoe Fitted for Sailing. Short outwales or
battens project gunwales to strengthen the ends of the canoe. Some
specimens of this type of canoe had almost no rocker in the bottom.
The bark cover was selected with great care from the fine stand of paper
birch available to the Micmac. Except in emergencies, only winter bark was
used. The cover was gored six to eight times on each side, and most of these
cuts were grouped amidships, owing to the sharpness of the ends. The gores
were trimmed edge-to-edge, without overlap, as the Micmac preferred a
smooth surfaced canoe, and the sewing was the common spiral, over and
over. The width of the bark cover was usually pieced out amidships on each
side (at least in existing models) by the addition of narrow panels. These may
not have been necessary in the very old canoes, which appear to have been
much narrower than more recent examples. The horizontal seams of the
panels were straight, or nearly so, and did not follow the sheer. The closely
spaced spiral over-and-over stitch was sewn over a batten, the lap being
toward the gunwale. As has been said, a continuous over-and-over gunwale
lashing was used. The thwart lashings were through single holes in the thwart
shoulders, three turns being usual, and two turns around the gunwale on
each side were added, all passing through the bark cover, of course. The
sewing was neat and the stitches were even.
The wood lining, or sheathing, of the Micmac canoe was like that described
for the Malecite canoe in the last chapter. The sheathing was a full ⅛ to about
3
⁄16 inch thick. The strakes were laid edge-to-edge longitudinally, with slightly
overlapping butts amidships, and were tapered toward the ends of the canoe.
The maximum width of any strake at the butts was about 4 inches.

Figure 54
Micmac Rough-Water Canoe, Bathurst, N.B. (Canadian Geological Survey
photo.)
In some of the rough-water canoes fitted to sail, a guard strip running the full
length of the canoe and located some 6 or 7 inches below the gunwale was
placed along both sides to protect the strongly tumble-home sides from
abrasion from the paddles, particularly when the craft was steered under sail.
These strips, about 5⁄16 inch thick and ¾ inch wide, were butted on each
side, a little abaft amidships, and were held together by a single stitch. The
guards were secured in place by rather widely spaced stitches around them
that passed through the bark cover and ceiling, between the ribs in the
topsides. At bow and stern, the ends of the guards butted against the battens
outside the bark at the end profiles and were secured there by a through-all
lashing.

Figure 55
Micmac Woods Canoe, built by Malecite Jim Paul at St. Mary's Reserve
in 1911, under the direction of Joe Pictou, old canoe builder of Bear
River, N.S. Modern nailed type. (Canadian Geological Survey photo.)
The proportions and measurements of the Micmac canoes appear to have
changed between the colonial period and the late 19th century. From early
references, it is apparent that the early canoes were much narrower than later
ones, in proportion to length, as mentioned earlier. An 18-foot rough-water
canoe of the 18th century appears to have had an extreme beam of between
30 and 34 inches and a gunwale beam, measured inside the members, of 24
to 28 inches, the depth amidships being about 18 to 20 inches. A similar
canoe late in the 19th century would have had an extreme beam of nearly 40
inches, a beam inside the gunwales of 33 or 34 inches, and a depth of about
18 inches or less. An early woods canoe, about 14 feet long overall, appears
to have had an extreme beam of only 29 inches and a beam inside the
gunwales of about 25 or 26 inches. A woods canoe of 1890 was 15 feet long,
36½ inches extreme beam, and 30 inches inside the gunwales, with the depth
amidships about 11 inches. A big-river canoe of this same date was a little
over 20 feet in extreme length, 18 feet over the gunwales, 41 inches extreme
beam, and 34 inches gunwale width inside, with a depth amidships of about
12½ inches. An 18-foot big-river canoe of an earlier time was reported as
being 37 inches extreme beam, 30½ inches inside the gunwales, and 13
inches depth amidships. The maximum size of the rough-water seagoing
canoe, in early times, may have been as great as 28 feet but with a narrow
beam of roughly 29 or 30 inches over the gunwales, and say 24 inches inside,
with a depth amidships as much as 20 or 22 inches due to the strongly
hogged sheer there. In modern times, such canoes were rarely over 21 feet in
overall length and had a maximum beam of about 42 inches, a beam inside
the gunwales of 36 or 37 inches, and a depth amidships of 16 or 17 inches.
In early colonial times, and well into the 18th century, apparently, the Micmac
type of canoe was used as far south as New England, probably having been
brought there by the Micmac war parties aiding the Malecite and the
Kennebec in their wars against the English. The canoe in the illustration on
page 12 is obviously a Micmac canoe and apparently one used by a war party.
As it was brought to England in 1749 in the ship America, which was built in
Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and probably sailed from there, it seems highly
probable that the canoe had been obtained nearby, perhaps in eastern Maine.
The small woods canoe, most commonly about 12 feet long, appears first to
have been used by all the Micmac. By the middle of the 19th century,
however, this type was to be found only in Nova Scotia, owing to the
movement of most of the tribe toward the north shore in New Brunswick,
where their inland navigation was confined to large rivers and the coast.
Hence the Micmac in New Brunswick used the big-river model and the
seagoing type. The latter was last used in the vicinity of the head of Bay
Chaleur and was often called the Restigouche canoe, after the Micmac village
of that name. It was replaced by a 3-board skiff-canoe and finally by a large
wooden canoe of the "Peterborough" type with peaked ends and lapstrake
planking; some of the latter may still be seen on the Gaspé Peninsula.
Figure 56
Micmac Rough-Water Canoe fitted for sailing. (Photo W. H. Mechling,
1913.)
The use of sail in the Micmac canoes cannot be traced prior to the arrival of
the white men. The use probably resulted from the influence of Europeans,
but it is possible that the prehistoric Indians may have set up a leafy bush in
the bow of their canoes to act as a sail with favorable winds. The old Nova
Scotia expression "carrying too much bush," meaning over-canvassing a boat,
is thought by some to have originated from an Indian practice observed there
by the first settlers. In early colonial times, the Micmac used a simple square
sail in their canoes and this, by the last decade of the 19th century, was
replaced by a spritsail probably inspired by the dory-sail of the fishermen. The
Indian rig was unusual in several respects. The sheet, for example, was
double-ended; one end was made fast to the clew of the sail and the other to
the head of the sprit, so that it served also as a vang. The bight was secured
within reach of the steersman by a half hitch to a crossbar fixed well aft
across the gunwales. The sail, nearly rectangular and with little or no peak,
was laced to the mast, and the sprit was supported by a "snotter" lanyard tied
low on the mast. A sprit boom was also carried by some canoes; this was
secured to the clew of the sail and to the mast, a snotter lanyard being used
at the latter position.

Figure 57
Micmac Rough-Water Canoe, Bay Chaleur. (Photo H. V. Henderson, West
Bathurst, N.B.)
Figure 58
Micmac Rough-Water Sailing Canoe, Bay Chaleur. (Canadian Geological
Survey photo.)
The mast was secured by a thwart pegged, or nailed, across the gunwale
caps. Sometimes, the thwart was also notched over the caps, so that the side-
thrust caused by the leverage of the mast would not shear the fastenings. The
crossbar for the sheet was sometimes similarly fastened and fitted, with its
ends projecting outboard of the gunwales. The heel of the mast was
sometimes stepped into a block, which was usually about 5 inches square and
1½ inches thick, nailed or pegged to the center bottom board, or sometimes
it was merely stepped into a hole in the center bottom board. The bottom
boards, usually three in number were of wide, thin stock and were clamped in
place over the ribs by three or four false frames driven under the thwarts, just
as were the canoe ribs under the gunwales.
Figure 59
Details of Micmac Canoes, Including Mast and Sail.
The canoes could not sail close-hauled, as a rule, though some Indians
learned to use a leeboard in the form of a short plank hung vertically over the
lee side and secured by a lanyard to a thwart, the board being shifted in
tacking. An alternate was to have a passenger hold a paddle vertically on the
lee side. There seems to have been no fixed proportions to the area of sail
used; the actual areas appear to have been somewhere between 50 and 100
square feet, depending upon the size of the canoe. Joseph Dadaham, a
Micmac, stated in 1925 that he used "24 yards" in the sail of a "rough-water
canoe" 20 feet long and about 44 inches beam, while one 18 feet long and
about 36 inches extreme beam carried "16 to 18 yards"; it is obvious that the
"yards" are of narrow sail cloth and not square yards of finished sail. In the
last days of sailing bark canoes, mast hoops and a halyard block were fitted
so that the sail could be lowered instead of having to be furled around the
mast (to accomplish this the "crew" had to stand). Dadaham also stated that
for his sheet belay he used a jamb-hitch which could be released quickly when
the canoe was found to be overpowered by the wind. It appears that during
the last era of these bark canoes the rig had been improved to fit it for open-
water sailing.
The paddles used by the Micmac appear to have varied in shape. If the canoe
shown in Chapter 1 (p. 12) was indeed a Micmac canoe as supposed, the
paddle shown there is quite different from the later tribal forms illustrated
above, and it is possible that the top grips shown in the more modern forms
were never used in prehistoric times, when the pole handle shown with the
old canoe may have been standard.
The Micmac canoes were decorated by scraping away part of the inner rind of
the birch bark, leaving portions of it in a formal design. It seems very
probable that the Micmac seldom used this form of decoration in early times,
but later they used it a great deal in their rough-water canoes, perhaps as a
result of contact with the Malecite. The formal designs used as decoration by
the Micmac did not have any particular significance as a totem or religious
symbol; they were used purely as decoration or to identify the owner. Such
forms as the half-moon, a star in various shapes, or some other figure might
be used by the builder, but these were apparently only his canoe mark, not a
family insignia or his usual signature, and could be altered at will.
The usual method of decoration was to place the canoe mark on both sides of
the canoe at the ends and to have along the gunwales amidships a long
narrow panel of decoration, usually of some simple form. The panel
decorations are said by Micmacs to have been selected by the builder merely
as pleasing designs. One design used was much like the fleur-de-lis, another
was a series of triangles supposed to represent camps, still another was the
northern lights design, a series of closely spaced, sloping, parallel lines (or
very narrow panels) that seem to represent a design much used in the quill
decoration for which the Micmac were noted. Canoes are recorded as having
stylized representations of a salmon, a moose, a cross, or a very simple star
form; these may have been canoe marks or may once have been a tribal mark
in a certain locality. A series of half-circles were sometimes used in the
gunwale panels, which were rarely alike on both sides of the canoe, and it is
probable that use was made of other forms that have not been recorded.
Colored quills in northern lights pattern were used in some model or toy
canoes but not in any surviving example of a full-size canoe. It is quite
possible, however, that such quill-work was once used in Micmac canoe
decoration. Painting of the bark cover for decorative purposes in Micmac
canoes has not been recorded.
Figure 60
Micmac Canoe, Bathurst, N.B. (Canadian Geological Survey photo.)
Historical references to the canoes of the Micmac are frequent in the French
records of Canada; it must have been Micmac canoes that Cartier saw in 1534
at Prince Edward Island and in Bay Chaleur. The most complete description of
such canoes is in the account of Nicolas Denys, who came to the Micmac
country in 1633 and remained there almost continuously until his death at 90,
in 1688. His travels during this period took him into Maine as far as the
Penobscot and throughout what are now New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
While his descriptions are primarily concerned with the Malecite dress,
houses, and hunting and fishing techniques, his notes on birch-bark canoes
seem to indicate very clearly that he is describing a hogged-sheer Micmac
rough-water canoe. He says, for example, that the length of these canoes was
between 3 and 4½ fathoms, the fathom being the French brasse, so that they
ranged in length from 16 to 24 feet over the gunwales. This gunwale length
seems reasonable, since Denys gives the beam as only about 2 English feet,
obviously a gunwale measurement in view of the great tumble-home in these
canoes. That the Micmac rough-water canoe is the subject of Denys'
observations is further indicated by his statement that the depth was such
that the gunwales came to the armpits of a man seated on the bottom. This
could only be true in a canoe having a hogged sheer in the lengths given, and
is, in fact, a slight exaggeration unless the man referred to was of less than
average height. The depth would be about 22 English inches, great even for a
24-foot canoe. Denys states that the inside sheathing of these canoes was
split from cedar. He also states that the splints were about 4 inches wide,
were tapered toward the ends, and ran the full length of the canoe. It is
probable that they were butted amidships, as in known examples; this,
however, would have been covered by a rib and might not have been noticed.
Denys says that the Indians "bent the cedar ribs in half-circles to form ribs
and shaped them in the fire." Adney believed this meant by use of hot water.
However, this bending could have been done by what was known in 17th-
century shipbuilding practice as stoving, in which green lumber was roasted
over an open fire until the sap and wood became hot enough to allow a
strong bend to be made without breakage. Wood thus treated, when cooled
and seasoned somewhat, would hold the set. While it is certain that later
Indians knew how to employ hot water, it does not follow that all tribes used
this method, particularly in early times.
Denys also states that the roots of "fir," split into three or four parts, were
used in sewing. He apparently used "fir" as a general name for an evergreen.
It is probable that the roots used were of the black spruce. The technique of
building he describes is about the same as that outlined in the last chapter. He
says that the gunwales were round and that seven beech thwarts were
employed, practices that differ from those in more recent Micmac canoe
building, and he notes the goring of the bark cover. Denys states the paddles
were made of beech (instead of maple as was perhaps the case) with blades
about 6 inches wide and their length that of an arm (about 27 inches), with
the handle a little longer than the blade. He also says that four, five, or six
paddlers might be aboard a canoe and that a sail was often used. "Formerly
of bark," the sail was made of a well-dressed hide of a young moose. Since it
could carry eight or ten persons, the canoe Denys is referring to is obviously a
large one. In his building description he does not mention headboards, rail
caps, or the end forms. It may be assumed that he was then describing a
canoe he had seen during construction but whose building he did not follow
step by step.
De la Poterie, in his book published in 1722, gives a profile and top view of
what must have been a Micmac canoe. The probable length indicated must
have been about 22 English feet overall and about 32 inches extreme beam;
seven thwarts are shown.
Late in the 19th century there appears to have been some fusion of Micmac
and Malecite methods of construction, as Malecite built to Micmac forms and
vice versa. This apparently did not produce a hybrid form so far as
appearance was concerned but it did affect construction, in that inner end-
frames were used and other details of the Micmac design were altered. The
Micmac, having early come into close contact with the Europeans, were
among the first Indians to employ nails in the construction of bark canoes,
and this resulted in an early decadence in their building methods. Hence,
some examples of their canoes show what the Indians termed broken
gunwales, in which the ends of the thwarts were not tenoned into the
gunwales, but rather were let flush into the top by use of a dovetail cut or,
less securely, by a rectangular recess across the gunwale, and were held in
place with a nail through the thwart end and the gunwale member.
From scanty references by early writers, it appears that a spiral over-and-over
lashing was originally used by the Micmac on the ends and gunwales. The
lower edges of the side panels were sewn over-and-over a split-root batten.
In some extant examples the gores are sewn with a harness stitch; in others
a simple spiral stitch is used. The cross-stitch does not appear to have been
used by the Micmac. The gunwale caps were certainly pegged and the ends
lashed; the bark cover was folded over the gunwale tops and clamped by the
caps as well as secured by the gunwale lashings. Tacking the bark cover to
the top of the gunwales, with the cap nailed over all, marks the later Micmac
canoes. The use of nails and tacks seems to have begun earlier than 1850.

Figure 61
Micmac Woman gumming seams of canoe, Bathurst, N.B., 1913.
(Canadian Geological Survey photo.)
In spite of decadent construction methods used in the last Micmac birch-bark
canoes, the model remained a very good one in each type. The half-circular
ends, sharp lines, and standard mid-sectional forms were unaltered; the
hogged sheer was retained in some degree in at least two of the canoe types,
the rough water and the big river, right down to the end of bark-canoe
building by this tribe. The very fine design and attractive appearance of the
Micmac canoe may have contributed to the early acceptance by the early
explorers and traders of the birch-bark canoe as the best mode of water
transport for forest travel.

Malecite
Another tribe expert in canoe building and use was the Malecite. These
Indians were known to the early French explorers as the "Etchimins" or
"Tarratines" (or Tarytines). Many explanations have been given for the name
Malecite. One is that it was applied to these people by the Micmac and is from
their word meaning "broken talkers," since the Micmac had difficulty in
understanding them. When the Europeans came, these people inhabited
central and southern New Brunswick and the shore of Passamaquoddy Bay,
with small groups or tribal subdivisions in the area of the Penobscot to the
Kennebec. These were early affected by the retreat of the New England
Indians before the whites into eastern and northern Maine and southeastern
Quebec. As a result, the Penobscot and Kennebec Indians became part of the
group later known as Abnaki, while the Passamaquoddy Indians remained
wholly Malecite and closely attached to those living along the St. John River in
New Brunswick. Like their neighbors the Micmac, the Malecite were hunters
and warlike; during the colonial period they were usually friendly to the
French and enemies of the English settlers in their vicinity. It is not certain
that the tribe now called by that name were actually of a single tribal stock; it
is possible that this designation really covers a loose federation of small tribal
groups who eventually achieved a common language. In addition, the tribal
designation cannot be wholly accurate because of the fact that much of the
original group living in New England were absorbed in the Abnaki in the 17th
and 18th centuries. Therefore, the Malecite are considered here to be those
Indians formerly inhabiting valleys of the St. John and the St. Croix Rivers,
and the Passamaquoddy Bay area. The remaining portions, the Kennebec and
Penobscot Indians, must now be classed as Abnaki, of whom more later (see
p. 88).
In considering the birch-bark canoes of the Malecite, it is important to
understand that this tribal form includes not only the types used in more
recent times in New Brunswick and on Passamaquoddy Bay, but also an
overlapping type related to the later Abnaki models. The old form of Malecite
canoe used on the large rivers and along the coast appears to have had
rather high-peaked ends, with a marked overhang fore and aft. The end
profiles had a sloping outline, strongly curved into the bottom, and a rather
sharply lifting sheer toward each end. This form was also to be seen in old
canoes from the St. John River (the lower valley), the Passamaquoddy, the
Penobscot, and the upper St. Lawrence. By late in the 19th century, however,
this style of canoe had been replaced by canoes having rounded ends, the
profiles being practically quarter-circles and sometimes with such small radii
that a slight tumble-home appeared near the sheer. The small radius of the
end curves is particularly marked in some of the seagoing porpoise-hunting
canoes of the Passamaquoddy. In modern forms, the amount of sheer is
moderate and the quick lift in the sheer to the ends is practically nonexistent.
On the St. Lawrence, the radii of the end curves are very short and the upper
part of the stems stands vertical and straight; the sheer, too, is usually rather
straight. The older type, with high-peaked ends, was also marked by very
sharp lines forward and aft, and had a midsection with tumble-home less
extreme than in the Micmac canoes. The bottom, athwartships, was usually
somewhat rounded (in coastal canoes the form might be a rounded V) and
the bilges were rather slack, with a reverse curve above, to form the tumble-
home rather close to the gunwales. The river model probably had lower ends
and less rake than the coastal type, but surviving examples of both give
confusing evidence. The river canoes usually had a flatter bottom than the
coastal type, the latter having somewhat more rocker fore-and-aft. The
sections near the ends were rather V-shaped in the coastal canoes, U-shaped
in the river canoes.
The old form of small hunting canoe is represented by but one poor model
(see p. 72) in which the ends are lower and with much less rake than those of
the river type. From this very scant evidence, it seems probable that the small
woods canoes were patterned on the river canoe in all respects but the profile
of the ends.
Figure 62
Malecite 2½-Fathom River Canoe, 19th Century. Old form with raking
ends and much sheer.
From the early English and French accounts, it is evident that none of the
maritime Indians used very large or long war canoes, capable of holding many
men. The old war canoes of the Malecite appear to have been either of the
coastal or river types as the circumstances of their place of building and use
dictated. The slight information available in these accounts suggests that the
war canoe did not differ in appearance from the other types of Malecite
canoes, and that they were not of greater size. The Malecite appear to have
followed the same practices as the Micmac, using for war purposes canoes of
standard size and appearance but narrower and built for speed, since a war
party sought to travel rapidly to and from its objective in order to surprise the
enemy and escape before organized pursuit could be formed. The Malecite
placed four warriors in each canoe, two to paddle and two to watch and use
weapons while afloat. However, only on rare occasions were bows and arrows
used from canoes afloat; most fighting was done on land. Each canoe carried
the personal mark of each of the four warriors, apparently one mark on each
flap, or wulegessis, under the gunwales near the ends. When a war leader
was carried however, only his mark was on his canoe. After a successful raid,
the Malecite used to race for the last mile or so of the return journey, and the
winning canoe was given, as a distinction, some mark or picture, often
something humorous such as a caricature of an animal. This practice,
however, was not confined to war canoes; in rather recent times it has been
noted that such pictures were placed on any canoe that had shown
outstanding qualities in racing competition or in exhibitions of skill.
When making long canoe trips, the Malecite followed the widespread Indian
practice of using the canoe as a shelter at night. When a camping place was
reached, the canoe was unloaded, carried ashore, and turned upside down so
that the tops of the ends and one gunwale rested on the ground. If the ends
were high enough, as in the old Malecite type, one gunwale was raised off the
ground far enough to permit a man to crawl under. If, as in the Micmac
canoes, the ends were too low to allow this, they were raised off the ground
by short forked sticks, with the forks resting against the end thwarts and the
upper gunwale and the heels stuck into the earth. The dunnage (provisions or
other cargo) was then stowed on the ground under the ends of the canoe and
the two men would sleep under a single blanket with their feet pointed in
opposite directions, each with his head on a pile of dunnage. If there were
too many men aboard to do this, in bad weather a crude shelter was made by
resting some poles on the upturned bilge and covering them with sheets of
bark; under such a shelter meals could be cooked.

Figure 63
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