Tule Magnificent

For thousands of years, indigenous peoples throughout the current-day Bay Area used tule reeds to create a range of tools, clothing, and equipment, including variations of reed boats, mostly used for fishing and transportation.

While some of these traditions faded away as California’s Native Americans experienced the effects of colonization, Ohlone native and scholar Linda Yamane has spent more than three decades resurrecting many of the ancient technologies and sustainable ways of her ancestors. And her graceful reed canoes—like the 8.5-foot version commissioned by Santa Clara University’s de Saisset Museum—are among the most breathtaking of her creations.

Beginning with baskets

It was 1984 when she began working to revive some of their practices, beginning with Ohlone basket weaving, examples of which were hard to find because Ohlone traditionally burned the belongings of those who had died. The few dozen baskets known to exist worldwide had been acquired during the Mission Period by early visitors to California’s Central Coast. So Yamane traveled to museums in California, New York City, Washington D.C., London and Paris to study the old baskets in those collections.

“I’m a person who makes things with my hands, so it was natural for me to be interested in tangible objects, and learn about these various old-time technologies,” she says. So far, Yamane has created 24 baskets, as well as feather dance capes and headdresses, ear ornaments, abalone necklaces, musical instruments and of course, boats.

Her introduction to tule boat-making occurred in 1987 as part of a group effort at Coyote Hills Regional Park in Fremont. As they worked, she took photos, drew sketches and made notes about the laborious process.

Fifteen productive years went by, during which Yamane began learning the Rumsien Ohlone language and traditional songs. Through further research, she came across a number of traditional stories, some of which she compiled in two published volumes: When the World Ended, How Hummingbird Got Fire, How People Were Made (Oyate, 1995) and The Snake That Lived in the Santa Cruz Mountains & Other Ohlone Stories (1998 Oyate).

Then, one day in 2002, she decided she wanted to make a tule reed boat. “So I got out those old notes and said, ‘Oh yeah, now I remember!’’’ Yamane recalls.

Her initial attempts were awkward, she admits, and not as sophisticated as the ones that later became mainstays in museums. But boat after boat, her skills improved, and she has now produced 30, several of them commissioned by museums and visitor centers in the Monterey and San Francisco Bay Areas and Sacramento. (The de Saisset model is constructed to hold just one or two people, but larger ones could hold four or more passengers.)

“The process can be overwhelming, to be honest. It’s a lot of physical labor to harvest, transport and dry all the raw plant material,” says the active 70-year-old. “It’s a lot of work, and I’m not getting any younger.”

A painstaking process

The first part of her process begins in early July, after bird-nesting season ends in regional marsh areas, and she is able to harvest hundreds of the tall green reeds. Sometimes, friends will join her at a dry pond or lake’s edge to help cut the long stalks that will be bundled and carried to her car, and taken home.

Once there, she loosens the bundles and lays them out to dry, turning them daily for several weeks so their moisture evaporates, watching their color change from green to beige.

Then she bundles the dried reeds, binding them tightly together with rope, and begins to build the boat. While her ancestors would have probably used rope made from tule or cattail, Yamane says the amount of time it would take to assemble that much rope would be impractical today. So she uses commercially-made products, including sea grass, that resemble the handmade rope of the past. The entire process, from harvesting to finished product, takes about a month of consistent labor, but is spread over several months because of the drying time.

“It’s a graceful, elegant design, but with raw and spontaneous natural elements that come through,” says Baines of the final product.

At the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Yamane’s tule reed boats are actually deployed in the water during the site’s popular outdoor summer program, “Turning the Tide,” in which performers paddle Yamane’s crafts around the site’s Great Tide Pool before amazed tourists.

But when the program first began several years ago, the boats didn’t fare well after being left in the water for week after week without having a chance to dry in between use. Over time, water soaks into the boat’s interior and the moisture is unable to evaporate, leading to mold and mildew and a distorted size. The boats swelled to an estimated 750 pounds and required a small crane to lift them out of the water.

“The first boat was so heavy that the crane’s engine was overloaded and shut down,” recalls Yamane.

The second year, the aquarium asked Yamane if she could adapt the traditional design to the aquarium’s needs, and wondered if she could build the boat onto a substructure that wouldn’t absorb water. That would avoid the waterlogging problems of the first year.

They were still exploring solutions when a team member noticed some inexpensive surfboards for sale at Costco and wondered if the boards could be the answer. Yamane took a look, did some thinking, and came up with an idea that worked.

She figured out how to build a tule reed boat right onto the surfboard, which substitutes for the largest bundles that provide most of the buoyancy and weight of the boat.

“You can’t see it when the boat is in use,” she says, “but it eliminates a huge amount of plant material that would normally absorb water. It really helps.”

Yamane’s tule reed boat, among other Native American artifacts at the de Saisset’s new history exhibition, should also help visitors of all ages learn more about the Golden State’s imperfect past.

“I hope that the things I make will help visitors to consider and appreciate the experience of Ohlone peoples, how they lived in the past, and that we are still living and thriving here today,” says Yamane.

As for the Ohlone community itself, she believes her work “has brought knowledge and a feeling of cultural pride to at least some,” she says, “and can potentially help heal the wounds we have experienced through the traumatic events of history and the cultural loss that followed.”

Linda Yamane’s tule reed boat, along with several baskets and soap roots brushes commissioned for Santa Clara University’s de Saisset Museum, will go on permanent display as part of the museum’s renovated California history exhibition, “California Stories from Thámien to Santa Clara,” which will open in January 2020.