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From: Peter A. Chopelas <pac_at_premier1.net> subject: RE: [Paddlewise] Paddles and history (to John Winter) Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2001 19:03:01 -0700 · This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:33:23 PDT

John Winter wrote:
>your friend Peter seems to suffer from the engineer's disease.
>

Dear Mr. Winter,

I known of this affliction and many of my profession are quite seriously 
afflicted but I assure you I suffer no such illusions.  As a matter fact 
this is not a condition solely isolated to engineers, but can afflict any 
humans who will attribute contemporary motivations on ancient peoples or 
cultures.  This leads to many irrational conclusions about ancient cultures 
by modern historians such as your illustrious Dr. Inverbon.  If you go back 
and review what I wrote I did not attribute any such systematic 
investigation on the efficiency of paddles to native peoples because I know 
for a fact this what not their primary motivation.

Dr. Inverbon is limited by his own cultural experience, his limited 
intellect and perhaps the limitations caused by his partaking in too many 
mind altering substances in the name of investigation of native ritual 
practices.  By merely looking at cave wall paintings you can never hope to 
learn what those symbolic and often sacred images meant to the peoples that 
created them.  And as you pointed out, without a written language we can 
not read what they thought or understood and most of us modern folks are 
without a clue as to what they thought.

I just happen to have had a personnel experience where I had been able to 
receive first hand information directly from native paddle makers.  Now I 
can not speak with any knowledge of native Greenland or Inuit history but, 
living in the Pacific Norwest I have had personnel contact with an Aleut 
leader.

A little known fact outside of Alaska is that some 250+ years ago Russian 
missionaries had introduced Christianity to the native peoples of Alaska. 
Some 750 years before that it was the Greeks who had introduced 
Christianity to the then mostly pagan Russians.  And despite the separation 
of time, language and cultural traditions, all of these peoples had 
preserved the ancient and pure faith of Orthodox Christianity such that we 
all still practice and enjoy intercommunion.

Since my parents were Greek immigrants to the United States I too was 
raised within the Orthodox Christian Tradition and have something in common 
with the Aleuts of Alaska.

What does this have to do with paddles?  Well, not much so far but I'm 
getting to that.

It just so happens a few years ago that an old native Aleut Priest was in 
the Seattle area with his family because of necessary medical treatment for 
a member of his family that he could not get in the tiny and remote village 
where he lives.  He was invited by our parish priest to stay in our 
community and celebrate the Divine Liturgy with us one Sunday morning. 
 After we partook of the Holy Mysteries together in the Ancient Tradition 
of Orthodox Christians, I took the opportunity to inquire of him about the 
native culture of his people.  During the fellowship hour we talked 
extensively about his people and village life.  He also warned me to be 
very skeptical of anything said about the natives of Alaska unless it comes 
directly from them.  Tragically it seems that many modern anthropologists 
have reached conclusions about native beliefs and motivations without 
bothering to even ask the natives themselves. As it appears your Dr. 
Inverbon has perhaps done.

Most natives in the remote parts of Alaska are unfortunately still 
illiterate, especially the Old Ones, and since the village Priest is the 
only one who can read or write, he becomes by default the Keeper of the 
Ancient Knowledge, much the same way their religious leaders were in their 
pre-Christian days.  Unlike westerners however, their whole life revolves 
around their religion, and they look to their Church for leadership, not 
politicians or scientists.  They also feel it is important to preserve 
their experiences and even understand their old pagan ways so they 
collectively know and remember their past.  This history was carefully p  
reserved by native oral tradition and handed down from generation to 
generation by individuals specially trained to remember these stories.  And 
now by default these deeply religious people have entrusted their priests 
with this knowledge.

Of course, during our conversation and fellowship, I eventually brought the 
conversation around to kayaks and I saw how his eyes became filled with awe 
and great sadness as well.  I learned a lot of interesting things about 
what the natives thought of kayaks and kayaking they would not generally 
share with non-natives.  But since we shared a most intimate and sacred 
bond that even predates both our current cultures, he was much less 
reluctant to share his people's history and motivations with me.  I know 
that much of the motivation attributed by modern anthologists is just 
outright speculation and often unfortunately the result of intentionally 
misleading information distributed by misguided natives trying to preserve 
their "secret" history.  The cave paints of natives riding walrus in 
jousting matches that Dr. Inverbon has seen is one such deception.

With much reluctance this old Aleut priest told me about the history of the 
long thin pointed (high aspect ratio) paddle.  You see the purpose of the 
paddle, and the kayak in general was not for hunting as is popularly 
believed.  It is silly and useless to hunt large mammals with such a light 
and flimsy craft. They hunted from land or ice flows.  True larger kayaks 
were used for transporting goods, but the primary purpose of the single 
kayak in their pre-Christian days was to prove the "manhood" of the young 
adult males (hence the reason women never used them except for transport, 
they were not suffering from the typical testosterone poisoning that 
afflicts most young male humans of all cultures).

The lighter and flimsier the kayak, the braver the kayaker must be.  The 
bigger the waves, the rougher the conditions, AND the flimsier the kayak, 
then obviously the braver the kayaker.  Eventually, after many tragic 
casualties, their skills did become very high so that even this did not 
seem much of a challenge.  They even developed enough skills to stand up 
and ride their kayaks down the face of massive waves using only their feet 
on the deck for control (and to think that the native Hawaiians claim to be 
the ones that invented surfing!).

These ancient contests became very competitive and despite the danger they 
even began attacking the other contestants to prove who is the strongest 
and bravest.  That was also when the first sharply pointed bows appeared on 
kayaks, it was very useful for ramming the other's hull or person to knock 
them out of the running.

At first it occurred to them to make their paddles big and heavy to use as 
a weapon, very similar to the club-like Euro paddles that are so popular 
today among non-native kayakers.  But it was soon found that those with the 
Euro style paddles could not catch the other competitors, and it would also 
throw them off balance as they swung it around over their heads getting 
ready to strike the other kayaker.  This was devastating to those standing 
on their kayaks racing down the face of the waves.  Falling off your kayak 
in those conditions did not only mean you would lose the contest, it would 
often cost the competitor his life.  Even if they did survive somehow, they 
would have to live the rest of their life in shame and remain unmarried.

As many centuries past in this fashion, the human toll became unacceptably 
high, so the tribal elder got together to determine if there was some way 
they could preserve their traditions and the excitement of the competitions 
yet somehow make it not so costly on the young men.  They devised the 
double ended "lancelet" paddle.  They had light long thin blades that came 
to a point at the tip.  Example of these can be seen in historic 
illustrations and museum pieces and in such publications at David 
Zimmarly's "Qayak" and George Dynson's "Biadarka" where you can go look for 
yourself.

The object of this design was to be able to stab and slice at the 
competitor without losing your balance.  This was such a success that they 
even put bone or ivory tips and edges in the blades.  It was also 
discovered that when paddling over long distances that the one using the 
longest and thinnest blades also had the best endurance, confirming another 
important value of such an unusual blade.

To keep the flying blood and body parts from falling into the kayak they 
devised a seal skin skirt or cover the cockpit.  The term "spray skirt" was 
not referring to water spray, but the blood that would spray when a major 
artery was severed.  It was considered bad luck to discover after a 
successful contest to find your competitor's body parts and blood inside 
your kayak. If you notice in most historic photos native kayakers did not 
use spray skirts, their skill was high enough it was not necessary.  These 
were reserved only for competition or surfing.

Once Christianity was introduced and had become popular, especially among 
the Old Ones, this kind of brutal and deadly competition fell out of favor. 
 The older members of the tribe of course saw multiple generations of 
promising young men succumb to this challenge, who more often then not 
resulted in a senseless loss of life or limb.  These losses of the most 
skilled and capable young men the tribe could hardly afford to lose.  And 
the more intelligent young men would also immediately and willingly adopt 
the new religion since it meant they could be spared this senseless risk to 
their life and limb without loss of honor. And especially since it seemed 
all the most attractive young tribal women were joining the Church in large 
numbers as well.  This type of bravery did not appear to interest the women 
anymore (of course they never asked if it interested them before either, 
but no one was interested in what the young women thought much before, they 
had no choice in the matter anyway).

Since Christianity's standards were socially more valuable, and certainly 
less risky to your life than these contests, these contests quite literally 
died out.  The extreme risk takers who continued to participated soon all 
died off.  The new standards were responsibility, respect for life, caring 
for others before yourself, community service, humility, honesty and 
similar moral values.  These values are what better allowed the survival of 
their people in one of the harshest environments in the world.

The old Priest then said a prayer to thank God that He saved his people 
from this destructive life style before they became extinct from of their 
own folly.

The old Priest telling me this story indicated what a great shame this past 
is to his people.  To this day many Old Ones lament the senseless sacrifice 
of their young men in the past.  So they wish to keep the memory of this 
great tragedy only to themselves.  They will deny this history to outsiders 
to this day.  Accordingly they never put these stories to writing lest 
others should find them.  They only will trust their tribal elders and 
Priests with the memory of this tragic chapter in their history.

Some will even tell silly stories to outsiders to hide this past, and even 
engage in elaborate deceptions such as the cave paintings.

Interestingly, as a memorial to those lost I suppose, they kept making and 
using the long thin paddles.  They found them not just useful for long 
distance paddling (quite obviously because they are more efficient), but 
the hard bone edges helped them hack through masses of seaweed, and the 
sharp points were handy for cooking meat over an open fire (also introduced 
by the Russian colonists, cooked meat is much easier on the teeth).  And 
this kind of paddle came in handy if a paddler should inadvertently 
surprise a bear or bull seal and all he had was the sharply pointed blades 
on his paddle to defend himself with.

This is why the first western Europeans to discover the native Alaskans 
found them using the long thin paddles with the pointed tips, and yet find 
no evidence of this previously brutal blood sport involving kayaks.  And 
they just thought the kayaks were cute little boats with their pointy ends, 
spray skirts, and long skinny paddles.  To this day few know of their 
actual brutal history of development.  This also account for why so few 
native Alaskans use kayaks any more.

I would offer you to go out and verify this for yourself but, other then 
the evidence I cited above, you will not find much.  Even the old Priest 
was not concerned that I should spread this story because he and other 
Aleuts would just say to you the same thing he told me,  be very skeptical 
of anything said about the natives of Alaska unless it comes directly from 
them. So I am sorry I can not offer you any proof.

So there you have it.  Clearly other considerations went into the kayak and 
paddle design than good cursing performance.

DISCLAIMER:  Many parts of the above story are actually true, but not all 
of it.  It is up to you to decided for yourself what is true and what is 
not!

Peter Chopelas

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