During his first sojourn in Canada, Champlain recognized the need to make alliances with the Indians and to adopt their means of transportation, the birchbark canoe. It was the most suitable craft for shallow waterways.

Canoe, 17th century Detail of Canot des amicouet, an engraving by Louis Nicolas (1634-after 1678) Collection of the Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA

. . . Their canoes are some eight or nine paces long, and a pace or a pace and a half broad amidships, and grow sharper and sharper toward both ends. They are very liable to overturn, if one know[s] not how to manage them rightly; for they are made of a bark of trees called birch-bark, strengthened within by little circles of wood strongly and neatly fashioned, and are so light that a man can carry one of them easily . . . . . . with the canoes of the savages one may travel freely and quickly throughout the country, as well up the little rivers as up the large ones. So that by directing one’s course with the help of the savages and their canoes, a man may see all that is to be seen, good and bad, within the space of a year or two. Champlain, Of Savages, 1603

Algonquin canoe Birchbark and cedar Canadian Museum of Civilization

The advantages of the Natives’ canoe became even more apparent when the French tried to traverse the Lachine rapids in their own craft. Adopting the birchbark canoe gave the French full access to the North American continent.