Building a Wigwam - Part Two - Putting On a Covering

      Now it's time to put a shell over your framework.  It's time to turn this from something that looks like a piece of impractical playground equipment into a very viable and reliable shelter.  What you use as your sheltering cover will depend again entirely upon your needs.  I'll start here with the classic wiigwaas (birch bark).  

 

A modern birch bark wigwam

 

A picture of a wigwam from the mid-1800's

 
      Birch bark is hard to collect for a number of reasons, and there are also reasons that it's hard to work with, but its pluses far outweigh its detriments.  It is absolutely impervious to water.  for that reason it makes great water buckets (for keeping the water on the inside), and makes a great, lightweight, yet flexible canoe (keeping water on the outside).  For that reason it makes a great shelter. 
      Birch bark isn't easy to collect though.  It must be collected when the sap is running well through the tree, otherwise you will fight it trying to get it off the tree.  Also, trying to find sections that aren't full of woodpecker holes, or damage from moss or shelf mushrooms is also difficult.  Birch bark has the tendency to curl up when it dries too - and I'm talking about some serious curling.  It can curl itself right off of your wigwam.
      Trying to use the bark from deadfall will work for fire starting, but won't work for anything else, including making a shelter.    It has to be taken from a standing tree at least, and from a living tree if you don't want it full of holes.  A birch tree has two different layers of two different kinds of bark.  There is the outer skin that is white on the outside and orange on the inside and has a definite horizontal grain, and there is the softer, orangey, inner bark that has an almost cork-like texture.  As long as you only remove the skin bark layer, and leave the inner bark alone, the tree will live and continue to thrive (the inner bark can be dried up and ground to make a food for hard times - personally, I've never tried it though, because times have never been THAT hard for me).  The outer skin will never grow back though. 

      You will first need to select a tree that is wide enough to produce a decent enough size of bark, and has about a six foot section that is free of holes, branches, or damage (either that or one that has two lengths of about three good feet both below and above a branch).  Use a sharp tomahawk (or rounded edge hatchet) to make your horizontal cuts, and one vertical cut for each piece. 

      Then use the edge of your tomahawk to gently pry the skin away from the inner bark (this is almost impossible if you try to do it too late in the summer - mid June is the best time - the sap is till running then - it gets too dry later on in the year).

      Keep on prying around in both directions away from the cut.  Eventually it will just "pop" off (it will often make a popping noise too). 
      You will need a lot of bark to cover your wigwam.  Each chunk of bark will be only about three feet long.  Figure that out while you are collecting it.  You will basically need one piece for each square of the framework.  You will need to scour the woods to find trees thick enough to get some much longer pieces for the top covering.  If you will primarily be using your wigwam during the hottest weather it is okay to use bark with holes in it for the sides of the wigwam, especially along the bottom layer.  This will allow air to flow inside, and keep things cooler inside.  The light air flow will also help to feed the fire and draw the smoke upward through the smoke hole.  (note: just like for a tipi, the smoke will never draw right if the door/blanket is open.  You have to keep the door closed for the smoke to draw properly)
      When you see how long it takes to gather the bark you will understand why they took it and brought it with them to their next camp.  It can take several days to get enough bark collected, especially if you have to work all day first (just like they had to hunt and fish all day first).  
      After you think you have enough bark you can start tying the pieces on.  To do this you will need a bark drill, and of course something to tie it with.

        This picture is just about actual size.  The drill is made from 1/4" stock

      This is a bark drill.  I needed to make the modifications to it because after drilling a bunch of holes I ended up with a blister.  Taping two broken pencils (2nd picture) to the side of it gave me better leverage to spin the drill easier. 

      Start at the door and work your way around, starting with the bottom layer.  You will be putting the pieces on like shingling the roof of a house.  To make the bark more workable first of all when you harvest it you should roll it into a tube inside-out, with the white on the inside, and roll it with the direction of the grain.  Tie it up and store it that way.  Another thing you can do then is before you are ready to use it, you can lay it flat with something heavy on top of (put boards over it and rocks on the boards).  Lay the stack of flattened bark on very damp soil.  It will flatten out and even be bendable.  When it dries it will harden again and start to curl again too.
      Sometimes for the top you can use a different material  Occasionally heavily greased deer hides (tanned) were sewn together for a top covering.  Later on in history pieces of canvass were used sometimes for the top covering. 
      Even though the traditional summer wigwam was made of birch bark, and was intended to be moved from place to place, it takes many hours to get all the bark tied on.  It will take most of a day, and that's if you have help doing it.  The thing is though, they would stay in one of these for anywhere from a few weeks to a couple of months.
      The one I made out of bark I left set up for several years till the frame finally rotted at the bottom, and as too brittle to repair.  The bark was still usable though so I made a new frame and tied it all on again.  To set one up for just a weekend event, or even a week long event though, is very impractical to use bark.  This is where other materials come in.  These "other" materials are still traditional materials, so don't worry about your historical integrity.
      The sewn together canvass cover really isn't historically correct, as the government didn't give them to the Ojibwe.  It is correct for the Tipis because all the buffalo had been slaughtered, and buffalo is what the Lakota and other Plains peoples used for their tipis.  The Ojibwe used birch bark and other coverings till into the late 1930's and even into the 1940's. Using pieces of canvass however, that is acceptable.  That's what I use for setting up at historical events.  For the top pieces I use some oil cloth (canvass soaked in linseed oil).  That's what you can see in my background image (right click - view background image - left click).  And I use a wool blanket for my door.
      You can also minimize you bark use with reed mats.  They roll up nice and will fit in your car (good luck getting any actual gear in with you if you have to carry enough stacks or rolls of birch bark to cover a wigwam).

      You can either make your own reed mats with a type of a loom (how much time do you have?), or buy them at a store.  I'm not sure what they are sold as, but the rolls are pretty long; like 20 feet long.  Reed mats also allow enough air to get in for your fire and smoke drafting, as well as cooling in the hot summer months.  Canvass blocks all the air.  I find that I have to lift the canvass around the edges in order to get enough draft.  Otherwise it gets way too smokey in there.

           Wigwams with reed mats for siding - the black and white photos are from the 1800's, except for the last one which is from the 1940's.

      As I said above the birch bark will try to curl - right off of your wigwam if you let it.  To combat this, as you can see from the many pictures already, a series of ropes were thrown across the whole thing, this way and that way, as many as you need to make the bark behave, and stay in place.  Sometimes, heavy branches were laid across the sides.

      If you want a wigwam to go out to (and maybe bring the kids out there) in the middle of winter, you need a much heavier bark.  Elm bark was traditionally used, but due to Dutch Elm Disease, it is very hard to find today.  You need an inner liner too (Birch, reed mat, or even canvass), and you should stuff grass between the layers for insulation.  Connected tubes of birch bark need to be shoved under the walls to the outside (and cleared of snow) to bring in air for the fire, and you may want to close down the smoke hole so it's smaller, as long as it still draws the smoke.

                               A winter wigwam made of elm bark

     And then there is the tipi shaped wigwams.  I;m not giving directions for them here, but have uploaded several pictures of them below.