How did the Woodland Indians make their canoes?
Building a canoe was a time-consuming process. The early European explorers, like Thomas Harriot, were amazed by the process. Here is how he described it: The manner of making their boats in Virginia is very wonderful. While they don’t have instruments of iron like ours, they still make them so handsomely that they can lift them into rivers and fish as well as ours. First, they choose some long and thick tree, according to the bigness of the boat they would frame and make a fire on the ground about the roots, kindling the flame with dry moss of trees and chips of wood, so that the flame does not mount too high and burn the entire tree. When it is almost burnt through and ready to fall they make a new fire, which they let burn until the tree falls down on its own. Then, burning off the top and the boughs of the tree in such a way that the body of the frame may retain his full length, they raise it upon poles laid across other forked poles, at a reasonable height as they may handsomely w
