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Plantation Dugout: Canoe taking shape from a fallen cypress tree.
Dugout Canoe: The dugout canoe suited the shallow creeks and swamps of South Carolina's Lowcountry. From prehistoric times to the early 1900s, Native Americans, European settlers and Afro-Americans relied on the dugout for transportation.
Planters shipped cotton, rice and other goods in large dugouts. Small dugouts, like this one, were for personal transportation.
The form and construction of this canoe suggest that it dates from the early 1800s. The work was likely carried out by slave craftsmen on a rice plantation.
In 1977, archeologists recovered the canoe from an old rice field levee. An unfinished canoe still attacked to its root is a rare find.
Why wasn't the canoe finished? Builders probably stopped work because the hull cracked. |