canoe maker

Historic Illustration - Champlain Paddle Picture

Here's another image of the paddle featured in The voyages and explorations of Samuel de Champlain, 1604-1616. It contains one of the earliest recorded images of a North American paddle. Figure B illustrates a woman holding onto a child with one hand while grasping chevron decorated paddle with the other.


As far as I can tell, it is one of the oldest images that features the chevron theme I've been consistently seeing in historic paddle art. One must wonder if future artists simply used Champlain's imagery to perpetuate this decorative feature or if it really was as abundant as it seems in art today. I'm still searching for surviving museum paddles with this theme but have yet to come across one.

For more editions of this image, including a colour version from another text, check out an earlier post on Champlain here.