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Someone on the forum recently asked: "What was the original design goal for the Buffalo Boat?" In response, I wrote the following: (on the forum) If you read the Lewis and Clark Journals (I have the DeVoto edition) there is a good story about the trip home. Lewis went north and Clark went south (or perhaps versa visa). Clark came down the Yellowstone river, which was Crow country. The Blackfeet were the most feared warriors. But the Crows were the best horse thieves. Clark posted watchmen all night but still found 2-3 horses missing every morning. The crows crept slowly up in the dark, slipped booties onto the horses’ feet, whispered magic words in their ears and led them off silently and unseen from 20’ away. Clark got desperate and sent two guys off with all the surplus horses. "Get them out here," he said. So two guys rode off ahead with 25 horses. The next morning they had two. And then they had none. There they were--alone and horseless on the banks of the Yellowtone in 1806. They did have their rifles. They shot two big bull bison and built buffalo boats, with hides stretched over willow branches. They’d been struggling with long tippy and hard-to-maneuver, canoe-like pirogues for two years. They’d seen buffalo hide boats, but not tried them ’til now. They were amazed. "If only we’d had these wonderful boats early on," they said. They drifted down river, poling and paddling to anywhere they wanted, completely maneuverable and stable. They saw Lewis and his party on a high bluff above the river a few days later, and joined his party for the trip down river to the planned rendezvous spot with Clark, where the Missouri and Yellowstone join. So that was the idea--build a Buffalo Boat: short wide and stable. Just right for two guys. The Rapid Robert looked like a good starting point. But I couldn’t get my head around the narrow pointy end (of a Rapid Robert), which seemed like a waste of buoyancy. Don Hill and Greg Tatman both had low-sided skiffs they built with the left-over side material from high side white water boats. But those boats you had to worry about in big water (yet another case of form follows available material rather than function). I wanted a short fat boat with high sides, so I wouldn't have to worry about where I took the boat. I chopped the ends off a Beavertail, more or less. And there it was. I love that boat. I've done many a deer season float in the Buffalo Boat, with the bottom awash in hairy, greasy deer blood. If I was going to build one today, I would use the bent-flexible stick trick (it’s on the website, under ’reducing rocker’) to take 3" rocker off the bottom, so it would float in shallower water.. |
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At Waterloo
Buffalo Boat/
Green one
Molded Glass BBoat
Old Blue One
buffalo boat
wood buffaloboat
Boat ramuda