Re: Amerindian navigators and Eurocentrism in scholarship

[ronhl@juno.com (Ron Hopkins-Lutz)]

In article <341C06D5.5CF0@fuse.net>, zippy@fuse.net wrote:
}Ron Hopkins-Lutz wrote:
}> 
}<snip>
}> Oh if you don't know about coracles, then you're missing a really fun
}> subject!
}> 
}> Coracles are circular:  not even elliptical. Navigating them is as hard or
}> easy as navigating an inner tube, depending on how good you are with inner
}> tubes. I've always been amazed they can make it more than three feet at a
} time
}> in a given direction in them.
}> 
}> They were in use in deep water for at least a few hundred years. Amazing
}> tribute to human tradition that. Made of hide too. Some fellow tried to show
}> that St. Brendan could have made to the Americas across the Atlantic in a
}> coracle, per some Irish sources. Don't remember if he actually made it, but
}> seems to me he did, or got so far to the West as to make no matter. Of course
}> since they'd probably hit North America somewhere between New Jersey and
}> Boston, one wonders why anyone would have bothered coming back to North
}> America once they did? (That's a joke.)
}> 
}<snip>
}
}I think you may have confused two different types of traditional Irish
}hide vessels, the coracle and the curragh.
}
}The coracle is as you describe it. Very small, coracles were used for
}personal transportation on inland waters, rivers and lakes. I have not
}heard that coracles were used at sea.
}
}The curragh was also an open hide boat, constructed of leather over a
}wooden frame, but larger than a coracle and boat-shaped (length 3 or 4
}times the beam, and pointed at the ends). Many curraghs carried a mast
}and sail. The curragh was similar to the Eskimo umiak. Curraghs were
}sea-going vessels, used for fishing and trasportation.
}
}The "Brendan Voyage" was an experimental archaeology project, no doubt
}inspired by Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki and Ra voyages, carried out in the
}1970s. A team attempted to sail a curragh, not a coracle, from Ireland
}to North America via the Faeroes and Iceland. They made it most of the
}way, but abandoned ship off the coast of Newfoundland, I think because
}they ran into pack ice.
}
}I'm no expert on this subject and the above is from memory, so feel free
}to correct any errors I've made.

You're right about my mixing up the coracle and the curragh. I still think it 
almost requires divine intervention to get a coracle to go where you want it 
though.  :-)

=====
Ron Hopkins-Lutz = ronhl@juno.com
If anything I have said offends you, I'm glad because it means you actually read this, which is not a given. KILLFILES RULE!