Ancient link between Canada and Russia?…500 words…2 minute read…
The sturgeon-nose canoe is a unique style of canoe historically used by the Kutenai (Ktunaxa) and the Sinixt First Nations bands centered in the Kootenay region of British Columbia Canada. Remarkably, a very similar type of canoe emerged in the Amur River valley, which now straddles the border between northeast China and southeast Russia. How could both areas, literally a world apart, at a time when there was limited communication between regions, much less countries, have developed basically the same unique canoe design?
In John Jennings book “Bark Canoes”, he writes that famed canoe historian Tappan Adney was “fascinated by the striking similarities between the birch-bark canoes of the Amur region of Asia and the Kootenay-Shuswap canoes of the lower British Columbia and the American Northwest. No other bark canoes in the world have their Sturgeon-nose shape.”
Ethnographer Harry Holbert Turney-High in his book “Ethnography of the Kutenai” (1941) which describes in detail the Kootenay Native Bands, while on the topic of the sturgeon-nose canoe, mentions that “the resemblance of the Kutenai canoe to that of the Amur basin in Siberia has long been remarked.”
In the scientific community, there are two schools of thought on how the sturgeon-nose canoe could appear in two different parts of the world. The first is called the “theory of dispersal.” This is the belief that “similarities of artifacts or symbols among cultures represent that a superior culture had transmitted its elements to another culture.” In this instance, the theory of dispersal is reinforced by the similarity in the native petroglyphs (rock art) by the indigenous people in both the Amur region and British Columbia coastal areas. Tappan Adney was convinced members of the Amur people could have reached the Kootenay area in Canada from their home land in what is now the border between China and Russia in Siberia. It would have been quite a journey down the Amur river, across the Bering sea, down the west coast of North America, then up the Columbia river to the Kootenay river. Adney points out that Russian fur traders would often send indigenous Amur natives across the Bering Straight to what is now Alaska in large, sea going Baidarka kayaks to harvest seal pelts…so theoretically at least, it could be done.
The other side of the coin has scholars believing that many such innovations arose independently among different cultures. The theory goes that faced with similar resources, environment and needs, it is conceivable that unrelated groups can (and do) develop similar artifacts. This theory would propose that the Amur people developed and evolved along the same path as the Kutenai (Kutnaxa) and Sinixt native bands of Canada. Adney, discounted this theory based on how similar the design and construction of the vessels was between the two otherwise divergent groups.
Perhaps we will never know how the Kutnaxa and Sinixt bands of North America and the Amur people of Russia ended up with the same distinctive design of canoe. It’s hard not to love a mystery.
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