Tomol

A tomol or tomolo (Chumash) or te'aat or ti'at (Tongva/Kizh) are plank-built boats, historically and currently in the Santa Barbara, California and Los Angeles area.

[2][3][4] The tomol has been described as "the single most technologically complex watercraft built in North America" and as being unique to "the New World.

When splitting the wood with whalebone or antler wedges the crafters would seek straight planks without knotholes, then sand them with sharkskin.

[1] Eva Pagaling (Santa Ynez Chumash) described the process of paddling in 2018: "During the crossing, a deep memory that’s shared among paddlers is that each pull of the oar is a prayer.

"[9] Cindi Alvitre, co-founder of Ti'at Society, described the boat in 2019 as "a vessel that allows humans to connect to the underworld."

The ti'at is like an observation point, it's like you're hovering over the heavens of the underworld and being able to still have that connection to that ancestral space, to the stars, to the Milky Way.

"[6] Tomols were an integral part of a widespread trading network between tribes who lived at what is now referred to as Point Conception, Santa Monica Bay, and the Channel Islands.

[1] In 1542, Spanish explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo recorded that he saw so many tomols hauled up at a particular wealthy village—a location eventually to be referred to by later settlers as Malibu—that he named it pueblo de las canoas or "town of canoes."

Scholars state that "three native Californian boat terms are argued to be Polynesian loans: Chumashan tomol(o), and Gabrielino tarainxa (or taraina) and ti?at.