Historically Authentic Birchbark Canoes
For more than one hundred years, Hafeman Boat Works in Bigfork, Minnesota, has handcrafted birch bark canoes without a single nail.
WRITTEN AND PHOTOGRAPHED BY CHRIS MARCOTTE
Often it is just the spark of an idea that sets our life’s course. And for William “Bill” Hafeman, this is true. For as long as he could remember, he had an interest in birch bark canoes. He learned the basics of their construction and attempted his first one when he was still in school. It wasn’t until he was a young adult that he had the chance to settle in an area where everything he needed to build a birch bark canoe was on his land. And once he had successfully built a few, and then sold one, he found his life’s ambition: Hafeman Boat Works.
Four generations (two children, four grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren) of Hafeman family members have helped to construct over five hundred full-sized, water-worthy canoes. Although most of them are used for recreational canoeing, some remain on display in businesses and private cabins and homes. The Hafeman canoes are handmade, and parts of three types of trees harvested from northern Minnesota woods are used in the construction: bark from paper birch, wood from white cedar, and roots from black spruce. The spruce roots are split and used to sew the canoe—there are no nails or screws.
How It All Began
Bill Hafeman and his wife, Violet, settled on the Big Fork River in the early 1920s, shortly after they married. The couple chose northern Itasca County because Hafeman relished the idea of living off the land. Throughout most of his long life, Hafeman fished, trapped, and gathered from the woods. As a boy growing up in Green Lake, Wisconsin, Hafeman enjoyed the stories a Native American janitor at his school shared about his family and their connection with the land. Clearly, that was the impetus for his fascination with the Native American lifestyle, especially their birch bark canoes.
Hafeman’s interest was renewed when he moved to Minnesota, and he made a few canoes based on what he’d learned from the janitor and from his own research. He welcomed suggestions from others in the area, and his craft improved. During the 1930s, he had a growing family to support, and times were tough. The dollar a day he made working in the gravel pit did little to supplement the food from the garden and the river. So when a man offered Hafeman twenty-five dollars for the sixteen-foot canoe he was finishing, he made his first sale. That was a month’s wages—and it didn’t take him a month to make it. Hafeman quit at the gravel pit and before long was charging one hundred dollars for a canoe.
Bill and Violet, 1976, taken bygranddaughter Christie (Hafeman) Boessel.
Hafeman loved to tell how he sold one of his birch bark canoes to gambler and entrepreneur Bill Harrah. Harrah was the founder of Harrah’s Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas which opened in 1937 and is now part of Caesars Entertainment. Harrah had learned of the canoes from a friend who spent his summer at an Itasca County resort, and he wanted one to display in his hotel. He wrote and inquired about buying one. But Hafeman knew it would cost quite a bit to build a sturdy crate and send a canoe by train from Minnesota to Nevada, so he told his wife to reply with a big price so he wouldn’t have to worry about it. She quoted three-hundred dollars, and Hafeman expected that was the end of that. Not so. Harrah sent a check for the amount and said he’d have a man come and pick it up! In 1966, when the Saturday Evening Post published an article stating Harrah was the world’s greatest gambler, Hafeman would tell people, “I beat the world's greatest gambler by two hundred dollars!”
Ray Boessel beside a recently completed seventeen-foot birch bark canoe. On the wall behind him is a bundle of black spruce roots hanging beside a beaver pelt.
In the mid-1960s Hafeman’s talent was recognized and in demand. One of his canoes was requested for Lady Bird Johnson (wife of then-President Lyndon B. Johnson) in 1967. A year or two later, Hafeman was commissioned by the Minnesota Historical Society to build a replica of the thirty-seven-foot Montreal canoe used by the voyageurs on the Great Lakes during the fur trading era. It is still on display there in the “Then, Now, Wow” exhibit in the main gallery. Orders for Montreal and North canoes were also requested from state and national parks in Minnesota.
In 1979, Hafeman was featured on the cover of Scene, a magazine published by Republic Airlines for their passengers. He was on national television in 1982, interviewed by Charles Kuralt on the popular CBS show On the Road with Charles Kuralt.
According to Ray Boessel, the current master builder for the company and husband of Hafeman’s granddaughter Christie, Hafeman built more than 150 canoes during his lifetime—the last one when he was eighty-six years old. And he built the last as he had the first, with all materials (except for the polyurethane sealant) gathered within thirty miles of Hafeman Boat Works.
Grown-up Grandkids Take the Lead
Christie Boessel (granddaughter of Hafeman) began working with her grandfather when she was thirteen. He was fulfilling a request for miniature scale models: a twenty-four-inch Montreal and a twelve-inch Chippewa Long Nose for the Maritime Museum in Duluth. Christie’s hands were small enough to complete the tedious projects. Then she started making the five-foot decorative canoes.
Christie met Ray Boessel at a neighborhood dance when she was in high school. He had already purchased a birch bark canoe from Hafeman, and it seemed their lives were meant to be intertwined. Christie and Ray married in 1977, and after a few years, Boessel was invited by Hafeman to learn the trade.
Boessel is honored to have learned the craft from Hafeman, using all the forms, tools, and techniques that Hafeman devised through the years. “Bill was a master craftsman,” Boessel said. “He and Christie taught me how to build canoes, and Bill taught me more about the local history than I learned in school.” Boessel has added another 356 canoes to the Hafeman Boat Works tally during the past forty-five years. “The only thing that has changed is that we completed a new log shop in 2008,” he says.
One of half a dozen canoe nose forms created by Bill Hafeman in the 1920s and still used at the Boat Works today. Cedar is soaked in water and fit into the form until it is dry.
The Construction Process
The process is one perfected by Hafeman during the first dozen years while he taught himself to make canoes. The only change since the beginning has been the material used to seal the seams. Originally Hafeman used spruce pitch, but because it tends to crack and doesn’t hold up to extreme hot and cold temperatures, he started using a polyurethane sealant that Boessel uses to this day.
Boessel still gathers materials the same way Hafeman taught him to do it. He looks for a cedar tree with limbs starting high up on the tree so there will be fewer knots. This lumber will be used for the ribs, lining, and gunwales. He also gathers birch bark, which can only be collected in the spring, when the sap is running and the outer layer separates easily from the tree. Only the outer layer is taken, so it doesn’t hurt the tree. The last tree he forages, the black spruce, is found in wetland bog; he digs under the moss to find roots no thicker than a pencil and is careful not to take enough to harm the tree. For each canoe, he needs 250 feet of roots, which he’ll then split to make 500 feet of bindings.
The shapes of the ends of the canoes (nose) distinguish the styles of different tribes. The top canoe is a Chippewa Long Nose, the middle one is a Beotuk, and the bottom one is an Algonquin. Hafeman Boat Works also has forms for nose styles in Malecite and Tetes de Boule.
Birch bark canoes are made right side up and from the outside in, which is the opposite way in which cedar strip canoes are constructed. The white, waterproof side of the bark is in; the yellow side is out because that side soaks up water to make it more pliable. Pieces are lapped and sewn together with the spruce roots; the bow stem is inserted and sewn into place to shape the ends of the canoe. These stems are bent by soaking them. They are then fitted into a wooden form and left to dry. Sides are pulled up and held in place by another wooden form; gunwales are bent and secured. Forty-eight-inch-long strips of cedar are inserted perpendicularly, and ribs are formed (via steam processing) and pounded in place. The ends of the ribs are caught under the gunwales, thus applying pressure against the lining. This, in turn, exerts pressure against the bark and maintains the form of the canoe. Pitching the canoe—or putting pitch (polyurethane sealant) over the seams—is the final step.
Each Hafeman Boat Works birch bark canoe is a work of art. Visitors can witness the process and hear the stories of local history. Spending an afternoon at the Hafeman Boat Works is something the whole family will enjoy and remember for years to come.
Traditional Birch Bark Canoe Types
Montreal: Thirty-seven feet long; used by the voyageurs on the Great Lakes during the fur trading era as it could carry three tons of goods plus its crew and gear.
North: Twenty-six feet long; traders used these to navigate inland lakes and rivers to transport several tons of bartered goods and furs west of Lake Superior.
Chippewa Long Nose: Either sixteen feet (two-person) or thirteen feet long (solo); traditionally used by Native Americans in this area. This is the standard canoe made at Hafeman Boat Works.
If the door is open and a canoe is outside, visitors are welcome to stop in at the Hafeman Boat Works.
IF YOU GO?
Hafeman Boat Works is located at 59520 State Hwy. 6, Bigfork, Minnesota (about thirty miles north of Deer River).
Visitors are welcome to watch the process of building a historically authentic canoe and to learn the lore of the birch bark canoe. The Boat Works operates Sunday through Friday, although Boessel may be in the woods collecting material, so check first: 218-743-3709 or email rcboesl@bigfork.net.