Longwood University
11/17/2025 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 11/17/2025 10:35
Resurrecting a lost art, one canoe at a time
For more than a decade, Russell Reed '16 spent his days at Jamestown Settlement and Colonial Williamsburg hacking away at a series of 1,000-pound logs in front of curious spectators. His audiences came to the national historic sites to learn about Virginia's early colonies and were drawn to the spectacle of Reed-a descendant of the Louisiana-based Atakapa tribe and a Native American historical interpreter-turning felled trees into canoes with little more than a handmade stone axe and a small fire.
The laborious process left plenty of time for conversation and questions-one of which Reed heard frequently.
"People would ask, 'What would you do for a profession if you weren't doing this?'" he said. "I would kind of jokingly say if I could create a dream job, it would be traveling around and building dugout canoes for tribes and museums, resurrecting those skills because most tribes don't have them anymore."
Now Reed is doing exactly that. Leaving behind his career as a historical interpreter, at least on a full-time basis, the Longwood anthropology major is keeping an ancient tradition alive by building dugout canoes on a contract basis-still one swing of his axe at a time.
"I got out of the Army National Guard, and I woke up one day and realized I had all these canoe contracts," he said. "I was pretty much doing what I said."
Hired by museums, Native American tribes and even individuals in Virginia and the surrounding region, Reed now spends his days carving felled trees into functional canoes using the same tools and techniques Virginia's original inhabitants would have used hundreds or thousands of years ago. It's a job tailor-made for the Onemo, Virginia, native who, as a record-setting cross country runner for the Lancers, had never been one to shy away from physical exertion or the outdoors.
Made from hollowed-out trees, dugout canoes are among the oldest types of boats known to man. In Virginia, they were essential for Native Americans and English settlers through the 18th century, used largely for hunting, fishing and traveling along the commonwealth's rivers and coastal waters. So valued were high-quality canoes that English settlers typically paid a high price for them through trade.
But as technology evolved and settlers brought more efficient tools, as well as their own boatbuilding traditions, to Virginia, the original process of building dugout canoes became lost to time. For Reed, resurrecting and preserving those centuries-old methods are just as critical to his work and his finished boats that are now on display in museums and on Native land around the commonwealth.
"It's something I've always had an interest in," said Reed, who was president of Longwood's Primitive Technology Club as an undergraduate and also an organizer of Native American powwow demonstrations on campus.
"With the Primitive Technology Club, a couple of buddies of mine just out of the blue said we'd really like to build a dugout. It was somewhat of a success. I kind of caught the bug there."
Reed, however, is invested in more than just building the canoes. For more than a decade, dating back to his time as a historical interpreter, he frequently staged his builds as public demonstrations, describing the process and sharing history lessons with spectators as his fire and axe slowly turned tree to boat.
It's become a lost art due to many generations of legal and cultural oppression. There's not really many people to learn from. I know a couple other canoe builders, but they mostly use modern tools, at least for parts of the build.
Russell Reed '16"It's become a lost art due to many generations of legal and cultural oppression," he said. "There's not really many people to learn from. I know a couple other canoe builders, but they mostly use modern tools, at least for parts of the build."
Comparatively, Reed's work is often done as close to the process Virginia's Native American inhabitants would have used hundreds or even thousands of years ago. Many of his contracts include not just the finished dugout canoe, but ongoing demonstrations of the methods Virginia's original inhabitants would have used to create them.
That process is just as laborious and time consuming as it would have been centuries ago. To start, Reed sources a log, the largest of which can exceed 32 inches in diameter and a dozen feet long. Next, he uses stone axes-which he also makes himself, citing their superior cutting ability and durability-to debark the tree and cut a platform into the top.
"It's a full-size tree," he said. "People ask all the time when I'm building one, "How much does this weigh when it's done?' At which point I respond, 'Well, how much does your car weigh?'"
It's a grueling endeavor but one made moderately less difficult by incorporating one of the original builders' most important tools: fire. Harvesting from a fire he constructs for each build, Reed spreads burning coals and firewood on top of the flattened section of the log. The flames slowly turn the wood to charcoal that can be more easily chopped and scraped away, allowing builders to conserve energy and let the fire do much of the work for them.
"Fire is still faster than steel hand tools, by and large," he added.
Reed also noted that the use of fire, and the time-consuming process in general, held great communal influence on Native tribes as well. With most dugouts made away from the larger community, builders would likely congregate near the boat for hours to eat and share stories while the fire burned.
And while Reed most often works as a boat-building team of one, his fires also draw a crowd-just as they did when he was in full Native American attire at Jamestown Settlement or, even today, during his demonstrations at sites like Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia.
"Depending on the contract, sometimes I'm just building the canoe, but other times the educational component is a key part of the work," he said. "I prefer the latter. I just like teaching people about the craft."
Including his first boat-which he built with some fellow Lancers in Longwood's Primitive Technology Club when he was a student-Reed estimates he has built more than a dozen dugout canoes. The best of those include a "finishing" stage where he slathers the boat with a water-repellant animal fat, which soaks into the wood and waterproofs the canoe so that it's ready for voyage.
That technique is one of Reed, which he inferred from his own research and experience. However, most of what he learned and employs in his builds and demonstrations comes from a source he became familiar with as an anthropology major at Longwood.
Since you can't talk to canoe builders from hundreds or thousands of years ago, you can at least study what has survived.
Russell Reed '16"Most of what I've learned is from the archaeological reports based on what I kind of refer to as the 'Old Masters,'" he said. "Since you can't talk to canoe builders from hundreds or thousands of years ago, you can at least study what has survived. But while the actual survey work from some of these archaeologists and historians is great-diagrams, wood typing and all this kind of stuff-a lot of the theoretical things they assert are far from reality. At least that's what I've found after building a number of them."
Combining those historical records with his own experience digging out canoe after canoe, Reed is now on the forefront of historical preservation of the ancient art of dugout canoes. In addition to the growing number of his canoes that are now on display, his finished builds are water ready, and he frequently uses his own personal craft-a spacious 17-foot build-to fish and paddle around the waterways near his home in Mathews, Virginia.
However, the larger impact, Reed says, is sharing the history of a lost art in real time. That's a purpose he found at Longwood and one that he says he's fortunate to be able to pursue as a career.
"When I got to Longwood as a freshman, I was already interested in history and traditional skills, so I was just excited that there was something like a Primitive Technology Club," he said. "The connections I made at Longwood with professors like Dr. [Jim] Jordan definitely helped place me at Jamestown and kickstart the whole idea of working in public history."
Longwood University published this content on November 17, 2025, and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed via Public Technologies (PUBT), unedited and unaltered, on November 17, 2025 at 16:36 UTC. If you believe the information included in the content is inaccurate or outdated and requires editing or removal, please contact us at [email protected]