Canoes were developed over the course of thousands of years primarily by the native people of North America. The actual word we know today as "canoe" originated from the word Kenu meaning "dugout." Other story is that the word canoe comes from the word canoa, which is said to originally come from the native people (the Arawaks?) in the Caribbean via Columbus to Europe. (But there are also comments that canoa was already an existing word then in the Portuguese language for a feeding trough...). These dugout canoes, essentially large tree trunks that were shaped and hollowed, were used by the Caribs to travel between islands.
Canoeing began to meet the simple needs of transportation across and along waterways. Canoeing was the primary mode of long-distance transportation at one time throughout much of North America, the Amazon Basin, and Polynesia, among other locations. As a method of transportation, canoes have generally been replaced by motorized boats, airplanes, railroads and roads with increasing industrialisation, although they remain popular as recreational or sporting watercraft.
