Dugout Canoe

Call number: Rare Books F229 H27 1608L

The dugout canoe was an Indian concept but one so well suited to the Virginia rivers that Europeans and Africans also made them from the 1600s through the 1800s. Notice in this John White engraving the Indian technique of using fire to burn and shape a log into a canoe. This process became so much easier with metal tools that Indians soon adopted European technology.

Image rights owned by the Virginia Historical Society. Rights and reproductions