ABSTRACT
I A CANOE is an item of material culture, and as such it can be described, photographed and even bodily transported into a museum. But-and this is a truth too often overlookedthe ethnographic reality of the canoe would not be brought much nearer to a student at home, even by placing a perfect specimen right before him
The canoe is made for a certain use, and with a definite purpose ; it is a means to an end, and we, who study native life, must not reverse this relation, and make a fetish of the object itself. In the study of the economic purposes for which a canoe is made, of the various uses to which it is submitted, we find the first approach to a deeper ethnographic treatment. Further sociological data, referring to its ownership, accounts of who sails in it, and how it is done; information regarding the ceremonies and customs of its construction, a sort of typical life history of a native craftall that brings us nearer still to the understanding of what his canoe truly means to the native.
