Mathews native Russell Reed of Williamsburg, recently finished making an authentic dugout canoe based on the ones that were being made by Native Americans during the time of initial European contact.

Using traditional, hand-made stone axes and adzes, along with the technique of burning parts of the surface, Reed hollowed out a pine tree he cut down on his grandmother’s property in Onemo in order to make a smaller version of the seaworthy canoes once used by tribes that were native to Eastern Virginia.

Reed has both a personal and professional interest in primitive technologies. As an anthropologist and assistant site supervisor for the Jamestown Settlement Museum’s Paspahegh Town Site in James City County, he wanted to bring a new level of authenticity to the primitive technologies being demonstrated by workers for museum visitors.

But beyond that, his father’s family from Louisiana is native, so he’s always had an interest in native peoples and traditional practices. While in college at Longwood University, he said, he served as president of the Primitive Technology Club, and he and some friends made a dugout canoe using traditional tools. Ever since then, he had wanted to make one that he could use personally for fishing in the Chesapeake Bay. His grandmother, Charlotte Crist, gave him permission to use a tree on her property, and he visited her on and off over the past year to work on it. His friend John Miles of Mathews helped him, and the canoe was finally ready to launch in June.

Reed said that, while the canoe he and Miles made will hold two people and their gear, the canoes that Native Americans were using when the English landed were much, much larger. The average canoe would hold 20 men, he said, while the large ones would hold 40 men in two rows of 20. There is no longer local timber that’s large enough to make a canoe that size, he said, since Europeans timbered and destroyed the forests “to feed Europe.”

Recently, Reed hauled his canoe to Jamestown, where it will remain for the time being. A new U.S. Army National Guard recruit, Reed is now undergoing six months of training, but when he’s done, he will return to his position at Jamestown, where he’s in charge of staffing, programming, and overseeing special events and hands-on projects at the Paspahegh Town Site.