Gibban

A Chumash tomol . Painting by Robert Thomas. Click any image to enlarge. In our previous post, we looked at social and economic aspects of the California Chumash planked canoe or tomol . Now let's see how they were built. The primary construction materials were softwood for planking, asphaltum (i.e., bitumen) and pine pitch for sealing, and red milkweed for caulking and sewing. Redwood was the preferred wood, because of its light weight, durability, rot resistance, and ease of working. Redwood is not native to the Santa Barbara region where the Chumash lived, but a fair amount turned up as driftwood, primarily on the shores on the Channel Islands. Far less redwood driftwood was available on the mainland on the other side of the Santa Barbara channel. On the other hand, bitumen was easily mined on the mainland from exposed coastal cliff faces, so most tomols were built on the islands with bitumen imported from the mainland. But because of the economic importance of the tomol, they w...