Existing comment:
The Dugout Canoe:
The shallow-draft dugout canoe was an Indian concept, but one so well suited to Virginia that Europeans and Africans also made them from the 1600s through the 1800s.
They were so much easier to make with metal tools than by the Indian method of burning and scraping with clamshells that the Indians switched over to European technology almost immediately. This canoe made from a chestnut tree with European tools may have been made by either Europeans, Indians, or Africans. For many years buried in a fresh water marsh, it became exposed in a mud bank of upper Machodoe Creek in King George County. |