Note 1 — Chapter IV · Canoes and Sailing

We Europeans—whether we know native craft by experience or through descriptions—accustomed to our extraordinarily developed means of water transport, are apt to look down on a native canoe and see it in a false perspective—regarding it almost as a child’s plaything, an abortive, imperfect attempt to tackle the problem of sailing, which we ourselves have satisfactorily solved.1 But to the native his cumbersome, sprawling canoe is a marvellous, almost miraculous achievement, and a thing of beauty (see Plates XXI, XXIII, XL, XLVII, LV). He has spun a tradition around it, and he adorns it with his best carvings, he colours and decorates it. It is to him a powerful contrivance for the mastery of Nature, which allows him to cross perilous seas to distant places. It is associated with journeys by sail, full of threatening dangers, of living hopes and desires to which he gives expression in song and story. In short, in the tradition of the natives, in their customs, in their behaviour, and in their direct statements, there can be found the deep love, the admiration, the specific attachment as to something alive and personal, so characteristic of the sailors’ attitude towards his craft.