Kris-- I was kind of looking at it the other way around. When Europeans got their hands on early kayaks and decided to try their hand at it as a sport, they seem to have gravitated away from the narrow-bladed paddles favored by native kayakers.

I've traced the Euro paddle back as far as Hans Pawlata, who "reinvented the kayak roll using a feathered paddle" in 1927. So I'm curious when and how the wide blade and feathered paddle came to be preferred over the Greenland-style original equipment paddle.

Mike