DCHP-1 Online

skin boat

• 1 a skin boat, 30-40 feet long, 4-5 feet wide, and 3 feet deep, having a flat bottom and narrowing at bow and stern, used for carrying freight and passengers and traditionally rowed by Eskimo women. [See picture at oomiak.]

  See also: oomiak (and picture)  

  • 1811  (1947)  Our skin boat . . . was seized by the vortex, and received a rapid twist. . . .
  • 1830  (1963)  . . . saw six kyaks and two large skin boats full of people.
  • 1907  (1908)  There were thirty-six of them, all women and children, piled into one of their "oomiacks," or skin boats.
  • 1966  . . . the drawing made by an old lady called Pisiolak . . . shows a large skin boat or umiak being rowed through monster-infested waters.

• 2 a light sealskin boat completely decked except for a cockpit to accommodate the hunter, who propels the craft with a double-bladed paddle. [See picture at kayak ((1)).]

  See also: kayak ((1)) (and picture)  

  • 1841  After their expulsion from the Gulf Shores, they occasionally made predatory excursions against the French--coming into the Straits, early in the Spring, in skin-boats,--burning fishing rooms, boats, &c., killing the guardians or making them fly.
  • 1942  Not only was he notable to us, the strangers, as the first native hunter to venture with a skin boat among the moving ice floes, but he was notable in almost every way.

• 3 Northwest See 1956 quote.

  See also: skin canoe  (def. 2)  

  • 1924  The skin boat is used for bringing meat from the hunting grounds when the river is impossible for a raft. The uncured skins are sewn together with sinew and stretched around a spruce frame with the hair inwards.
  • 1947  In the springtime, skin boats are made and the hunters come in down the Nahanni or down the Beaver River, with their catch of fur, hunting beaver on the way.
  • 1956  [Some canoes consisted of a wooden framework covered with skins, not unlike the Eskimo umiak. They were used for bringing loads of furs out of the woods and, when the Indians reached their destination they took the skins off the framework . . . but left the wooden frames lying on the beach.]
  • 1963  . . . they built skinboats out of moosehide and departed down the Beaver . . . to Nahanni Butte. . . .