DCHP-1 Online
Mackinaw boat Hist. 
1 a heavy, flat-bottomed freight boat. [See picture at York boat.]
See also: Mackinaw (def. 3a) York boat
- 1861 Besides the merchants, there is another class, called freighters, who row the heavy Mackinaw boats, and haul them and their loads over the portages between York Factory and Red River.
- 1872 (1883) This is the regular Hudson Bay Mackinaw boat, used for carrying trade of the great Fur Company on every river from the Bay of Hudson to the Polar Ocean.
- 1902 (1954) [Near most of the larger river posts there was some spot selected where timber was abundant at which . . . the mackinaw boats and the canoes [were] built. . . .]
- 1965 On 30 June [1848] they left the Sault, travelling in two canoes and a mackinaw boat--a cross between a dory and a mudscow.
2 a schooner-rigged boat formerly in use on the Great Lakes.
See also: Mackinaw (def. 3b)
- 1860 (1956) [It was four o'clock . when one of the elegant steamers which now traverse Lake Superior by the side of the Indian canoes and the old brown "Mackinac barks" put us ashore on the sandy beach of the great peninsula of Keweena.]
- 1903 A dozen wharves of various sizes, over whose edges peeped the double masts of Mackinaw boats, spoke of a fishing community.
- 1861 Besides the merchants, there is another class, called freighters, who row the heavy Mackinaw boats, and haul them and their loads over the portages between York Factory and Red River.