Tomols are plank-built boats, historically and currently used by the Chumash and Tongva Native Americans in the Santa Barbara and Los Angeles area. They were especially important as both tribes relied on the sea for sustenance.

The tomol is central to the Chumash heritage, constructed and paddled by members of the Brotherhood of the Tomol. The historic Brotherhood disbanded in 1834, but in 1976, a contemporary group built Helek, which means Peregrine Falcon, based on ethnographic and historic accounts of tomol construction. It was the first tomol built in 142 years and the modern paddlers travelled from San Miguel Island to Santa Rosa Island, and finally to Santa Cruz Island.

Tomols are sewn plank canoes 토토사이트 which are unique in North America. They were hunter-gatherers who not only were able to travel on land, but also utilized estuaries and the ocean for food and transportation, their story is a fascinating one. They were constructed of redwood if available, which is an excellent boat building material. Besides having a high strength to weight ratio, it is more rot resistant than most other woods. Straight grained and easy to work with, redwood can also be easily split into planks using an antler fashioned into a wedge.

In classical times, the Chumash were never a discreet linguistic or cultural entity. The people who have come to be known as the Chumash inhabited numerous relatively autonomous villages, each with its own internal political structure, the largest of which acted as capital cities for smaller village collectives.