A pirogue on the Niger River in Mali.

A pirogue is a small, flat-bottomed boat of a design associated particularly with West African fishermen and the Cajuns of the Louisiana marsh. These boats are not usually intended for over-night travel but are light and small enough to be easily taken onto land. The design also allows the pirogue to move through very shallow water and be easily turned over to drain any water that may get into the boat. The pirogue's motion comes from paddles that have one blade (as opposed to a kayak paddle, which has two). It can also be punted with a pole in shallow water. Image File history File linksMetadata Size of this preview: 800 × 570 pixel Image in higher resolution (2474 × 1764 pixel, file size: 1. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Size of this preview: 800 × 570 pixel Image in higher resolution (2474 × 1764 pixel, file size: 1. ... Map of Niger River with Niger River basin in green. ...  Western Africa (UN subregion)  Maghreb[1] West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. ... A fisherman in central Chile A Long Island fisherman cleans his nets A fisherman (in recent years sometimes called a fisher to be non-gender specific), is a person who engages in the activity of fishing. ... This article is about an ethnic culture. ... Official language(s) de jure: none de facto: English & French Capital Baton Rouge Largest city Baton Rouge [1] Area  Ranked 31st  - Total 51,885 sq mi (134,382 km²)  - Width 130 miles (210 km)  - Length 379 miles (610 km)  - % water 16  - Latitude 29°N to 33°N  - Longitude 89°W... This article is about the boat propulsion implement, etc. ... Punting while dressed for Cambridge graduation This article concentrates on the history and development of punts and punting in England, for other usages see the disambiguation pages at punt and punter. ...

History

The word comes from the Spanish word "piragua." Traditionally, it was just another name for dugout canoes, but it came to refer to a specific type of canoe. In Indonesia and the islands around and on rivers in Madagascar they also use pirogues, often with an outrigger and a sail. Most of the polynesian islands were colonized by means of pirogues. Traditionally in Louisiana the boats were constructed of cypress, but due to unsustainable logging practices a hundred years ago suitable old growth timber is hard to come by. Plywood is a more common option for modern pirogues. A dugout is a boat which is basically a hollowed tree trunk. ... In a canoe or bangca, an outrigger is a thin, long, solid, hull used to stabilise an inherently unstable main hull. ... A gaff-rigged cutter flying a mainsail, staysail and genoa jib For other uses, see Sail (disambiguation). ... Carving from the ridgepole of a Māori house, ca 1840 Polynesia (from Greek: πολύς many, νῆσος island) is a large grouping of over 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. ... Colonization is the act where life forms move into a distant area where their kind is sparse or not yet existing at all and set up new settlements in the area. ...

Pirogue designs

There is not one pirogue design, but several. Besides small pirogues as seen on the picture, there are also pirogues that can hold up to ten men with paddles and also feature a main sail. These too, however, are not designed (and should not be used) for open waters. They are only (and best) used near shore.