A sort of canoe. See 1846.
1819. At Wheeling … we purchased a small canoe, called here a “dug-out,” or “man-drowner.”—Claiborne, ‘Life,’ i. 42. (N.E.D.)
1826. There are common skiffs, and other small craft, named, from the manner of making them, “dug-outs.”—T. Flint, ‘Recollections,’ p. 14.
1836. They flogged him [a gambler cheating at faro] almost to death, added the tar and feathers, and placed him aboard a dug-out, a sort of canoe, at twelve at night; and with no other instruments of navigation than a bottle of whisky and a paddle, set him adrift in the Mississippi.—‘Col. Crockett in Texas,’ p. 103.
1837. The second expedition of our hero was undertaken by water. Having packed his family across to the Tennessee river, and exchanged his ‘nag’ for a canoe, or ‘dug-out,’ he embarked in his long and devious voyage to the Mississippi.—Knick. Mag., x. 409 (Nov.).
1846. We labored industriously the entire day, in making “dug-outs.” Two large cotton-wood trees were felled, about three and a half or four feet in diameter. From these canoes were hollowed out, twenty-five feet in length.—Edwin Bryant, ‘What I saw in California,’ p. 63 (N.Y.). (Italics in the original.)
1847. About evenin’ I got my small dug-out, and fixin’ my rifle carefully in the fore eend, and stickin’ my knife in the edge whar it would be handy, I jest paddled over the drink.—Robb, ‘Streaks of Squatter Life,’ &c., p. 105 (Phila.).
1850. I did not awaken until the canoe striking against the bank, as it landed at Mik’s pre-emption, nearly threw me in the bayou, and entirely succeeded with regard to my half-drunken paddler, who—like the sailor who circumnavigated the world and then was drowned in a puddle-hole in his own garden—had escaped all the perils of the tortuous bayou to be pitched overboard when there was nothing to do but to step out and tie the dug-out.—H. C. Lewis (‘Madison Tensas’), ‘Odd Leaves,’ p. 169 (Phila.).
1855. [The Indians] were occasionally met with in those canoes called ‘dug-outs,’ fish-spear in hand, poling up and down the river, intent upon their dinners.—Knick. Mag., xlv. 563 (June).
1857. I larned one thing, stranger, that mornin’, and it’s this, never to try drownin’ a bear by runnin’ him under with a dugout. It won’t pay.—S. H. Hammond, ‘Wild Northern Scenes,’ p. 213.
1857. You’d better scull your dug-out over the drink again, and go to splittin’ oven wood.—J. G. Holland, ‘The Bay-Path,’ p. 137.
1866. Prouder to see him than a monkey-show, I paddled the dug-out over in double quick and bid him welcum in the name of the eternal city and its humble inhabitants.—C. H. Smith, ‘Bill Arp,’ p. 125.
