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For first time in centuries, native Americans use traditional fire technique to create canoe along the harbor, then paddle it into the water

Mishoon under way from Little Mystic Boat Ramp

For the past week, members of the Nipmuc and Massachusett tribes gathered daily at the Little Mystic Boat Ramp in Charlestown to burn a large pine log, then carve it out to create a mishoon or traditional canoe.

Wraithe was there when they put the canoe into the water for the first time today.

Mishoon front

More on the project.
Interview with project leaders Andre Strongbearheart Gaines and Thomas Green.

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Comments

Why didn't they create traditional paddles?

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The guy seated second from the bow still has some bark on his and it looks to be chiseled and not a standard laminated shape.

Hard to tell for sure. I will ask my friend who was hanging out all weekend watching the scene.

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Obviously getting ready to take on those rowing Vikings...

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The Vikings referred to both the Inuit peoples of Greenland and First Nations folk further west as "skraelings". https://www.thoughtco.com/skraelings-viking-name-for-the-inuit-172664

Of course said hunter-gatherers were much better adapted to the arctic when the Medieval warm period ended and the resurgent ice age drove the Europeans out.

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I've read about this technique. Very cool to see it being put into practice.

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It Is a fun story, but how can anyone say it never happened since 1722? Did they google it and nothing came up? I know the Globe story said a law was passed to stop it but it also says that no one has cared about that law for centuries either.

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Rafts built by combining pallets with blocks of styrofoam brought in by the tide. Float down the river with the outgoing tide and hope the current drops you on the Dot side rather than the Quincy marsh.

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Given that nearly all of the area was shorn of trees by the time it was outlawed.

This would have competed with colonial export of timber to Britain - someone was likely to get a bounty for enforcing it.

In any case, guns, germs, and stolen land had massively reduced the Native American population in the area by the 1720s.

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Yeah, I see them making a mishoon at Plimoth Plantation all the time.

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