(water lapping) - The appeal of wooden boats is something beautiful that's functional.

That has, like, a very deep appeal to a lot of people, even if they don't know much about it, and they enjoy learning about how these things are made.

The Erie Canal, that has a mysterious appeal.

(chuckles) It's almost inexplicable, but people in upstate New York, they have a fascination with it.

It's got a lot of symbolism.

It's a waterfront where there was none.

It represents connectivity.

(slow whimsical music) (footsteps pattering) (child speaks faintly) - The first actual proposal we made for building a canal boat in downtown Buffalo was 1997.

We were involved with historic preservation and trying to redevelop the harbor, so this seemed like a great method or technique for doing it to build a canal boat, because this was a very much a piece of Buffalo's history.

(calm music) - Normally on a small project, you'll get six or seven volunteers.

And by the end of the project, you'll probably have three of the originals (John laughs) and maybe two or three new ones.

Here, we started out with maybe 45 volunteers.

And by the end of the project, 65,000 hours later, we have 218 volunteers working on this project over a three-and-a-half-year period.

And we put a lot of planks, over 200 planks on this boat, and those planks have to be put on there so they could keep the water out, and that was done by volunteers.

That is astonishing.

- [Greg] It took a lot of research to figure out even what type of boat it was and what it might have looked like.

And I think people are interested in that story because we're going back in time and taking all this research and compiling it into something that you can actually now see represented physically.

- When we first began, we wanted to build a boat to commemorate the Bicentennial of the Erie Canal, and we thought that we could lift up the craftsmanship of the day and bring it back into modern times.

But once we started lofting the boat and all that stuff, the whole project started to expand to take on the story of the Erie Canal and the narrative of the Erie Canal, and we started learning much more about it.

And that was largely inspired by the name of the boat, Seneca Chief.

(calm guitar music) It's been an education to work with this whole project, especially when it comes to the name now.

When we first started going, we were questioning whether or not even we should name the boat Seneca chief.

And, you know, with times being what they are and just understanding, like, why would they name this boat?

We wanted to find out.

We wanted to see if there was some history out there that said, "This boat was named Seneca Chief because."

- Brian and his team got ahold of me about five years ago, asking about the name.

And you know, I did my research on Clinton over my lifetime because that dispossession of New York, or it used to be Haudenosaunee lands.

And so, that dispossession of lands has kept me interested in state history when, in fact, I'm not really interested in state history.

I just need to know that to understand the story.

And so, when Brian got ahold of me, you know, it took me down another path of the Clinton family and trying to understand that and come to terms with like, "Yeah, why did they name it the Seneca Chief?"

And as far as we know, we don't know.

You know, I think it has something to do with it being built on Seneca Lake.

I think it has something to do with Clinton's interest in Indigenous cultures and flora and fauna of New York that he was also kinda given it a sense of, like, honor.

So, I think there's a little bit of everything in that.

That's kinda what I want to do in my role as a historian and cultural anthropologist, is to begin using those moments of the past to change our present and hopefully our future.

And that's what I'm excited about with Brian and the Maritime Center, is that they actually do that, and you don't see it a lot.

(lively traditional music) (foghorn honking) (lively traditional music continues) (person speaks faintly) (crowd cheers and applauds) - [John] Hello Buffalo!

(lively bagpipe music) - And the name came up again, where should we even use this name?

Well, we started realizing that, number one, the name was called Seneca Chief, you should not change history, right?

But we've chosen to make this boat and to build this boat.

Why did we do that?

Because we did understand that the Bicentennial is an important thing for the United States.

But this is an opportunity to talk and to broaden the perspective and broaden the narrative of the Erie Canal.

It's our hope that as we go down our 28 stops all the way to New York City, we are going to be connecting with communities all along the way in our ports to talk with them.

Not only about how we built this boat, 'cause I mean, we are a maritime facility here.

We're a maritime museum, we build boats, but we find ourselves in the front of this almost historical change that we're seeing here.

We're going to connect and have conversations, not only about what the Erie Canal is and was, but also about the role of Indigenous culture and history throughout this story as well.

- And so, if it's going to serve a symbolic purpose, then how do we make it more tangible for the other people who don't feel part of it?

And that starts with a discussion and a conversation, because this is a chance for us to learn from the past of where we weren't inclusive in the inclusion of other voices.

(calm music)