Chumash Daily Life: Tools, Homes, Food, and Money
Selected parts of the museum’s “Daily Life” page: canoes, baskets, shelter, bead money, dress, food, and tools. It leaves out the parts about sweathouses, later history, and what happened to Chumash baskets after Europeans arrived.
This page is a simplified version of the original text (leveled toward 800L). Photos, maps, and other images are not on this page — use the original link above to see them.
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Canoes
The plank canoe, or tomol, was eight to 30 feet long. It was made from driftwood or redwood. The heavy one-piece floor had three or four rows of planks added to build up the sides. Each row of planks was glued in place with yop, a melted mixture of pine pitch and hardened asphalt. After the glue dried, each plank was fastened to the one below it. People drilled holes on each side of the seam and tied the boards together with plant fiber string made from Indian hemp. The holes and seams were filled with more hot yop. Sandstone was used for sanding, and shark skin gave the final finish. Last, the canoe was painted and decorated.
The typical plank canoe held a crew of three people. Large canoes could carry as many as ten people. One member of the crew was the bailer, because seawater often seeped into the tomol. Sometimes a young boy was the bailer.
Basketry
Baskets played essential roles in all parts of Chumash life. People used them to gather, store, prepare, and serve food. They held water, kept money and other valuables, measured acorns for trade, and carried babies. They were used in gambling, as gifts, and for ceremonies. Even the Chumash house was much like an upside-down basket.
The Chumash wove their coiled baskets tightly enough to hold water. They even used some to cook in! Water or soup stirred in a basket along with heated rocks would soon boil. The Chumash have long been known for their excellent baskets. They exported them to other tribes even in pre-European times.
Shelter
The Chumash house, or ’ap, was round and shaped like half an orange. People made it by setting willow poles in the ground in a circle. They bent the poles in at the top to form a dome. Then they tied smaller saplings or branches on crosswise. To cover the outside, they added bulrush or cattails in layers, starting at the bottom. Each row overlapped the one below it, like shingles on a roof. This thatched covering kept out the rain. A hole was left in the top for air circulation. It was covered with a skin when it rained. In good weather the cooking was done outside. When it rained, a fire could be lit in the fire pit in the center of each house. This also gave warmth. The houses were 12 to 20 feet across. The chief’s house was up to 35 feet across.
Bead Money
The bead money was usually made from small disks shaped from the Olivella shell. The Olivella is also called the Purple Olive. It is a marine snail. The Indians who lived on the Channel Islands specialized in making the bead money, or ’anchum. They were the mint for the Chumash Indians who lived on the mainland. The name Chumash comes from the name that the mainland Indians gave to the island Indians. Chumash and ’anchum are related words. So the name Chumash apparently once meant something like bead money makers.
The value of the money depended on how much work went into making it and how rare the shell was. Disk beads made from the callus were worth twice as much as beads made from the wall of the shell. The callus is the thick part of the shell near its opening. Many more beads could be made from the wall, so they were less rare. People measured the value of a strand of beads by its length: how many times it would wrap around a person’s hand.
Dress
For everyday, the Chumash did not wear much clothing. Women usually wore a two-piece skirt of deer skin or plant fiber. It hung to about knee length. It had a narrow apron in front and a wider piece that wrapped around the back. Men and boys wore nothing at all. Sometimes they wore a belt or a small net at the waist. It was used for carrying tools they might need. In cold weather, people might wear capes of animal skins for warmth. A chief often wore a waist-length bearskin cape as a sign of his special status. For festival occasions, the Chumash wore more body paint and jewelry. Dancers and singers at ceremonies had special outfits with feathered skirts and headdresses.
Food and Cooking
The Chumash homeland offered a wide variety of food. Their livelihood was based largely on the sea. They used over a hundred kinds of fish and gathered clams, mussels, and abalone. They ate many kinds of wild plants and traded some among themselves. They also hunted both small and large animals for food. They did not plant corn or other crops as Indians elsewhere did.
The Chumash roasted meat and fish over the fire and made shellfish into soup. Acorns were the most important plant food. They took a long time to prepare. People ground dried, shelled acorns to a powder with a stone mortar and pestle. They poured water through the meal to remove the bitter tannic acid. Finally, they mixed the acorn flour with water in a tightly woven basket. They cooked it by putting red-hot stones into the liquid. As they stirred the mixture, the liquid soon boiled and thickened. The Chumash ate this acorn soup with every meal. They toasted other seeds and ground them to a paste.
Tools for Hunting and Fishing
The Chumash used the bow and arrow beginning about 1,500 years ago. Before that, they used the spear thrower. They also used a harpoon with a detachable foreshaft for spearing large fish. They made curved, circular fishhooks from abalone and mussel shells for catching smaller fish.
It is hard to say which tool was most important. Many tools were used in daily life, and all were useful. One of the most important was the plank canoe, the tomol. People used tomols for ocean fishing and to travel back and forth between coastal towns. Tomols were also very important in trade between the islands and mainland.