Franks spoke privately to the carver for a few minutes. Then he turned to us.
“This is Billy James. He’s a master carver who’s come down from Canada to carve a canoe that can go on the ocean. It will be used for our tribe so we can participate in the tribal canoe journey this year. He’s going to explain a little about what he’s doing. Then we can watch him work.”
The carver told us that Native people of this area used red cedar trees that were more than three hundred years old to make canoes. He also explained about the traditional tools used for carving.
“Today, carvers use chain saws and steel tools for creating canoes and totem poles. Our ancestors would’ve used those too if they’d been available.”
He fired up the chain saw and finished shaping the front of the canoe. He roughed out a fairly sharp point that tilted upward. He said the front was called the bow.
His two assistants moved back to the sides of the log. They began removing more wood from the inside center of the log with their hand tools.
