"By Foot"

January 17, 1974--Six-thousand years ago,when the Egyptian civilization was still "young", people in Central Asia were developing a tool which, some say, ranks in importance with the wheel. This tool was the snowshoe-ski, without which the aboriginal people would not have been able to expand over, and occupy, the northern hemisphere. Once this important contribution to technology had been made, certain human groups began their northern migrations which eventually enabled them to move from a central point somewhere in Asia into what are now known as Scandinavia, Siberia, and the Americas.

This prehistoric snowshoe-ski was the origin of the many modern-day varieties of snowshoes and the increasingly popular touring and cross-country skis. The evolution of the snowshoe and ski from the ancient snowshoe-ski occurred as a part of the migrations of the people who used them. Those who migrated westward across northern Europe and into Scandinavia developed the ski. Those who migrated eastward and made the crossing to North America developed the snowshoe. Why the westward travelers developed skis while the eastward travelers developed snowshoes is something we are unable to ascertain.

Here in the New World, skis were vary rare until sometime in the late 1800's, and their phenomenal rise in popularity did not begin really until the 1930's. Furthermore, the type of ski which became most widespread was the alpine or downhill type which is utterly useless as a means of transportation.  The cross-country ski, which is what Europeans and Asians developed as a counterpart to North America's snowshoe, did not begin to become popular here until the 1960's.  Just as skis were rare here until the present century, snowshoes were likewise scarce in the Old World. In fact, snowshoes are still a novelty in a number of European countries.

While the Norseman of Scandinavia were perfecting their skis, the American Indians were perfecting snowshoes.  The real experts in the field of snowshoe design were the Athapascan Indians of the Canadian and American west coast and the Algonquin Indians. They brought the snowshoe to the greatest peak of perfection. Starting with the basic bearpaw design, they introduced hundreds of variant patterns suited to all possible conditions. Before the horse was reintroduced to America by the Spaniards, even the Plains Indians used snowshoes to hunt Buffalo and it could truly be said that one common cultural characteristic of all the Indian tribes in any region where snow covered the ground in wintertime was the snowshoe.

Many of these variant patterns still are in use today, from the stubby "bearpaw" of the Northeast to the seven foot long "whales" of Alaska. Every region has a snowshoe which fits its terrain. In our neck of the woods, that snowshoe is the Green Mountain or otter bearpaw, an elongation of the standard bearpaw design. With these on our feet, we can go places where cross-country skis would be little more than a nuisance and where a snowmobile would be just plain out of the question. This is why most of our winter by foot is actually by snowshoe. This is also why the snowshoe, unlike so many other of man's inventions, will probably be in use for a long time to come-maybe even another 6000 years.

Lake Placid News 

Aurora Ramsay works in the Brewster Research Library at the Adirondack History Center Museum in Elizabethtown. 

ADIRONDACK HISTORY CENTER MUSEUM
ESSEX COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
PO Box 428, 7590 Court Street
Elizabethtown, NY 12932

Phone: (518) 873-6466
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