The Dugout

In the early days the boats we used to transport people and cargo along the labyrinth of rivers in our part of the Amazon were dugout canoes. Some were the original nothing added design and others had been modified with planked up sides. Without these canoes the goings and comings of the missionaries and the transportation of the supplies they needed for ministry would have been close to impossible. The big canoes were called “bongos” and the smaller ones were called “curiaras” The critical eye of the beholder determined what was big and what was small. There were the big ones and the smaller big ones and of course the small ones and the smaller small ones.
The best canoes, made from the Palo Amarillo tree, were as you might guess the hardest to come by. Because these trees only grew in the headwaters areas it could take the canoe makers several weeks pulling their half finished craft up hills and carefully letting them down the other side just to get them to water deep enough to float. The more common canoes were built right on the banks of the bigger rivers but that type of wood tended to rot more quickly. So we painted the inside and outside of any canoe we might purchase with used motor oil to help preserve the wood and hopefully add years of life to its usefulness. We patched holes with a tough very brittle jungle pitch called’peraman’ by heating it up and adding our good old standby ‘used motor oil’ to make it more pliable. We were of course very careful not to hit rocks as we navigated up and down the rivers but sometimes a hard run in with a rock couldn’t be avoided.
It’s an amazing transformation to watch a huge jungle giant of a tree turn into a 50 or 60 foot long with a 6 foot beam, beautifully crafted dugout. God grew that insignificant little seed into the tall giant that would one day catch the eye of the master canoe maker as he carefully sought out the best of the very best trees. As any good builder would do before starting his work he engraved the finished product in his mind before applying his axe to the base of the giant. He would reject any tree even if it seemed to have great potential if it didn’t meet the required criteria. A simple example is the Kapok tree, one of the biggest if not the biggest tree in the jungle. No canoe maker even looks twice at a Kapok tree because the wood is too soft and wouldn’t last.
Felling a jungle giant of canoe making potential is a complicated operation. Getting a tree like that to topple over may take a lot of axe work but the real challenge is figuring out how to get it on the jungle floor without ruining it. The disappointment of having a great looking tree split on the way down or to discover a huge rotten place inside the trunk is all to common. Once the tree is safely on the ground and it checks out to not have any holes or rotten places it’ll take days to clear the site of branches, vines and other trees the giant will have brought to earth as it fell.
The totally ‘just as it fell’ trunk must now be cut to the desired length, the prow and stern having been worked out in the master’s mind as the giant stood upright on the jungle floor the day he discovered it. For the really big canoes the stern will be squared off right from the start while the prow will be crafted according to the traditional jungle dugout prows.
From this point to the beautifully formed finished product, months of backbreaking and dangerous work will have come and gone. Any canoe maker I ever met had multiple scars either from an errant machete slice or an axe swing slightly off mark. When you think of the tens of thousands of axe swings applied to the tree, the log and on to finishing the canoe it’s a wonder dugout makers have hands, feet and legs let at all!
Canoe making usually begins at the start of the dry season simply because the dryer the working conditions the better. The sweat bees, the ants and the gnats will always be there but no jungle craftsman wants to work in the rain or wait for days on end as the leaden skies pour down their burden of tropical rain.
All jungle peoples use axes, machetes and knives. They are all very good with these tools and a jungle man will almost never venture into the jungle without a good sharp machete or good sized knife just as in the other world people don’t venture out if wallet, cell phone and keys aren’t in place and in the right pockets.
They keep their tools very sharp. Sharpening files are highly prized items but after getting a decent edge with a steel file the literally ‘razor sharp’ edge on a machete is kept in place by passing both sides of the tool back and forth and at just the right angle relative to the blade and a smooth, very soft sandstone that has been prepared for just that purpose. These sandstone sharpening stones are much prized. The master craftsman canoe makers especially are very particular about their tools, they want them sharp and they want them ‘just so’. Any old machete, axe or adz simply won’t do.
Once the log has been cut to length the tedious axe work begins in earnest. The bark and sap wood must be cut away down to good wood. The log must be formed and shaped to the desired design. This requires day after day of swinging an axe with precision while fighting the never ending swarms of sweat bees, mosquitos, blood sucking gnats and the ants that seem to be everywhere and on everything! The log must be turned so that both bottom and top can be worked. This is no easy task considering the resources available, which are the afore mentioned cutting tools, jungle vines and stout saplings. The top must be flattened to a certain degree so as to give room for the digging out of the trunk by axe and adz when it’s time to do so. And then there is the stage, which seems to fly in the face of all logic, for drilling hundreds of holes in the bottom and the sides.
For an uninformed on looker the sight of seeing the workers sinking hole after hole into the hull of the log which in the end is supposed to be a relatively water tight dugout must evoke incredulity. But yes there is a very good reason for the seeming madness. These holes are drilled to a precise and predetermined depth before the log is totally ‘dug out’. The drill is an old fashioned hand turned brace and the bits are the old fashioned wood boring variety. The depth of the penetration is determined by placing a marker on the drill bit itself usually by tying a rag tightly at the point where the drilling is to stop. All this is so that the hull will have a uniform thickness. Say if in the case of a big dugout the hull should be 3.5 inches thick the holes in the yet not completely hollowed out canoe are drilled in to that depth. Now as the digging out slowly proceeds, when ever the adz wielding worker comes to daylight as in he’s reached the top of the hole which had been drilled from the outside in, he stops digging because at that point the hull is just the right thickness. This scene is repeated hundreds of times till the hull has been completely hollowed out. If the hull were not of a uniform thickness it would split badly in the spreading process and possibly be ruined. The holes are plugged by inserting whittled to size hardwood saplings from the outside. Every peg is cut off smooth to the contour of the hull from the outside.
The biggest canoes are crafted right on the river bank. And as mentioned previously, midsize to smaller canoes are sometimes shaped and formed in the headwaters of the rivers and once the log has been hollowed out the still unfinished canoe is pulled through the jungle, muscled up hills and carefully let down the other sides to get it to water deep enough to float. A path has to be cleared through the jungle and logs for the canoe to slide on must be cut etc.
Whether small, midsize or big, now comes the final phase of transforming a jungle tree into a jungle dugout capable of carrying people and cargo along the jungle rivers and streams. Hard work, patience, expertise and fire are the key words. At this point all the work is still being done on dry land. The canoe is turned on it’s side where quick burning material such as dry palm fronds are carefully placed inside. This then is set on fire and fanned by workers furiously swishing bundled branches with lots of leaves in order to get the fire as hot as possible in the shortest amount of time. The purpose is to burn off the ends of the pegs that were driven in from the outside, burn the inside of the hull enough so that when scraped of the charred wood a smooth inner surface will be in place. At this point the inside has been hollowed out but the opening is very small comparatively.
Now the ‘maestro’ must oversee one of the most critical parts of the whole long process. The canoe is now turned to the upright position so that the small opening from prow to stern can be spread and pried open. A fifty foot long dugout with only a foot or foot and a half opening wouldn’t allow for loading much cargo. Besides that the thing would be unworkably tippy. At this point the dugout is still basically round, like a barrel with a flattened off place on top. Dry wood is gathered and and fires are started and made to burn along the entire length of the hull on both sides. The object is to heat the dugout everywhere. As the heat works through the wood it allows the workers to very slowly and carefully pry the opening on top apart. I think the heat energizes the water trapped in the wood fibers which makes it more pliable. This part of the canoe making is one of the most critical because if not done properly it can split badly and months of work can be lost. To spread a big canoe will take many workers a whole day to to get the opening on top from a foot and a half to 5 or 6 feet. Special small logs are cut into segments of various lengths, the bottoms are placed inside the canoe and the top placed under the rounded curl at the edge of the small opening on top. A skilled worker now forces the tip of his axe between the log and the canoe edge and begins to slowly pry the log perpendicularly down the inside of the canoe which of course forces the edge open. This must be done very slowly and uniformly up and down the entire length of the canoe. Usually when a canoe of any size is being spread many men will help, all working under the supervision of a few ‘maestros’. When the desired shape and width are achieved hand hewn planks are fitted and secured at intervals across the now wide open dugout to hold its shape and for added stability and strength. A good backboard made from the root of a big sassafras tree is fitted now fitted on the stern and finally after months of day after day, seemingly never-ending work, the canoe is ready to be launched.
Sadly, dugout canoe making is becoming a lost art among the tribal peoples who live along the jungle rivers. For one thing most of the good and easily accessible trees good for making canoes and close to any river bank are all gone. It’ll take decades for the young trees to growth big enough for canoe making size. The other thing is that canoe making is a learned skill and is very labour intensive. Today’s young men are unwilling to invest the time and effort to master the art. More and easier money can be made by working in any number of outside jobs.
I consider it a special privilege to have lived there in the jungle during the time when dugouts both small and big were the prime movers along the jungle rivers. Just off the top of my head I can think of at least ten dugouts from very small to midsize I owned there over the years. Each one in its own time and place made a memorable contribution to life on the banks of our beloved rivers. Its good to have memories because life will never be the same in that part of God’s creation we used to call home.