Totem Poles
A great deal of mystery has been thrown around these pictographic carvings, due to the ignorance and misconception of some writers and the reticence or deliberate deception practiced by the…
From: Unknown To: 1872 C.E.
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
Totemic columns.— These are the very tall ones erected in front of the houses, and are generally surmounted by the clan-totem of the chief occupant. Those below may represent the totem of his wife (and hence of his children), or illustrate some legend intimately connected with or referring to the totem of the owner. Some columns are purely legendary, but refer to the totem of the owner, and are in this sense totemic.
Amongst the Tlingit the phratry totem often surmounts the column with the clan and other totems represented below it. None but the wealthy can afford to erect these carved columns, and the owner of one is thereby invested with so much the more respect and authority that he becomes, as the head of the household, a petty chief in the village. As heretofore and hereafter described, the ambition of a life centers in the endeavor to accumulate enough property or wealth to enable a free-man to rise to this dignity of a petty chief.
A great deal of mystery has been thrown around these pictographic carvings, due to the ignorance and misconception of some writers and the reticence or deliberate deception practiced by the Indians themselves. They are in no sense idols, but in general may be said to be ancestral columns. The legends which they illustrate are but the traditions, folk-lore, and nursery tales of a primitive people; and, while they are in some sense childish or frivolous and at times even coarse, they represent the current of human thought as truly as do the ancient inscriptions in Egypt and Babylonia, or the Maya inscriptions in Yucatan. The meaning of a few of these columns may, by inference, be taken to represent the general character of all.
In Plate xxxv, Fig. 179, is a carved column in front of the model of a Haida house. The surmounting figure represents Hoots, the brown bear, which is the totem of the head of the household who erected it. At the bottom is Tsing, the beaver, the totem of the wife and children. Above it is the figure of the "bear and the hunter," already alluded to.
According to Judge Swan, the hunter Toivats on one occasion visited the house of the King of the Bears, who was absent. His wife being at home, he made love to her. When the bear returned he found his wife in confusion and accused her of infidelity, but she denied it. She went regularly to get wood and water, and the bear, still suspicious, one day fastened a magic thread to her dress. On following it up he found her in the arms of the hunter, whom he forthwith killed, as in the pictograph. Whether or not this legend originated in the confusion arising from a failure to distinguish between one of the bear totems and a real bear, it is impossible to say, but for our purposes as a carving it illustrates three points: first, that as a legend it refers to the bear totem; second, that it warns wives to be faithful to their husbands; and third, it indicates a belief, on the part of these Indians, in the possibility of human relations with animals, which, as shown in Chapter iii must of necessity precede a belief in totemism itself.
Above the "bear and hunter" is Tetl, the great raven, having in "his beak the new moon and in his claws the dish containing fresh water, illustrating the common and familiar legend of the creation: Tetl, the benefactor of man, stole from his evil uncle Kaunk, the enemy of man, the new moon, Kung, which he had imprisoned in a box, and also got fresh water by strategy from the daughter of Kaunk, to whom he made love, and, deceiving her, stole a dish of fresh water and flew with it out the smoke-hole of Kaunk's house.
Above the raven are four disks called skil. These appear also on the top of several ceremonial grass hats and wooden helmets and batons, illustrated in the accompanying plates. Their exact significance is uncertain, but the number of these skil disks is in general an index of the rank, wealth, and standing of the chief or owner. It is stated on some authorities and disputed on others, that each disk commemorates some meritorious act of the owner, such as the giving of a great potlatch, or the gaining of a victory over an enemy. In this sense it indicates the right of the owner to the enjoyment of the respect and esteem of the tribe.
It is also stated that the holes pierced in the lobes of the ear and the disks worn on the ceremonial hat also correspond to this same number. The difference of opinion is doubtless due to the variation in the custom amongst different stocks. The form of carving may be borrowed without the significance being understood or remembered. The weight of evidence would seem to favor the belief that each disk or skil had the significance indicated, that is, of commemorating some deed of prowess of the possessor.
Plate LV., Fig. 292, represents another column which may be taken as a type. It is found at the Kaigani village of Kasa-an, Skowl Bay, Prince of Wales Island, Alaska. The top group represents the head of a European, with whitened face and long, black whiskers, flanked on either side by two figures representing children in sitting posture, wearing tall hats. These hats in Kaigani are called Hat cachanda, and each have four skil. The group represents the following legend, either commemorating an actual occurrence or else being a nursery tale originally invented to frighten refractory children, becoming in time, through repetition and misconception, a veritable tradition.
Many years ago the wife of a chief went out in a small fishing canoe, with her two children , near the summer camp to get the pine boughs, on which salmon spawn is collected. She drew up her canoe on the beach, and warned the children not to wander off. On her return they had disappeared. She called to them, and they answered her from the woods with voices of crows. Always when she sought them, two crows mocked her from the trees. The children never returned, and it was said that the white traders had kidnapped them and carried them off in their ship. The face with the beard represents the trader, and the two figures the kidnaped children.
The figure next to the top, with the instrument in his claws across his breast, represents the crane (he ko), and the legend, or rather an incident in a legend, is roughly as follows: The crane was formerly an expert with tools, but they were stolen from him by a mischievous character, (T’skan-ahl), and ever since he has been bewailing his fate. The cry which the crane now utters is, "I want my tools."
The next figure below is hoots, the bear, holding between his paws the butterfly. At the creation, when the great Tetl, the benefactor of man, was looking for fair land for man to occupy, the butterfly hovered over his head as he flew. When he came to the country now occupied by the Haida, the butterfly pointed with his proboscis to the good lands, and said: "Where the bear is there are salmon, herbs, and good living;" so that accounts for how the Haida came to the Queen Charlotte Islands, and why bears are so abundant. This is similar to the story told Judge Swan by Edniso of Masset, British Columbia.
The next figure is the giant spider sucking the blood and killing a man. One of the numerous adventures of T’skan-ahl was to kill the giant spider, which was such a mortal enemy to man. T’skan-ahl overcome the spider and threw him into the fire, but instead of burning he shriveled up and escaped as a mosquito, carrying away with him a small coal of fire in his proboscis. Now instead of killing men he can only suck a little blood, but in revenge he leaves a coal of fire in the bite. My informant, a Kaigani, stated that it would take three days to relate all the adventures of T’skan-ahl. The lowest figure is Koone, the whole representing the totem of the owner of the column.
The key to all the carvings is found in the legends of the Indians. Often their significance is lost; often individual eccentricity leads an Indian to make a carving of which he alone knows the meaning; often only the older Indians are well informed enough to tell off-hand what a carving means. These causes, combined with the indifference of the younger generation and the sensitiveness and reticence of the older makes it extremely difficult to arrive at the significance of the figures. Often they concoct stories to mislead an inquirer, and laugh in their sleeve at the credulity shown. Until a general collection of the legends of the coast is made we must remain content with selecting a few types, as in the foregoing, to illustrate the motive and significance of these remarkable carvings.
Commemorative columns. — There are two classes of these (1), commemorative proper and (2) mortuary. It has been explained, in the description of Fig. 292, that the upper group of figures commemorates a real or supposed incident in the kidnapping of two Indian children by the white traders. It is the generally accepted opinion that these columns are in no sense historical, but purely ancestral or totemic. This claim is entirely too sweeping.
Fig. 293 shows the details of a column erected in front of the feast house of the famous Kaigani Chief Skowl at Kasa-an. This is in the rear of the living house, on the back street, so to speak. In front of the latter is his totemic column, a tall, slender, finely carved one, surmounted by his totem, the eagle, resting on seven disks or skil, as shown in Plate III. The feast house column (Fig. 293) is surmounted by Skowl's crest, the eagle. Just below it is a carved figure of a man with right hand uplifted and index finger pointing to the sky. It signifies that in the heavens God
dwells—the God of the white man. Below this is the representation of an angel as conceived by the Indians from the description of the whites, and then comes a large figure intended to picture a Russian missionary with hands piously folded across the breast.
This group of the figure with uplifted hand, the angel, and the missionary, commemorates the failure of the Russian priests to convert Skowl's people to their faith, and was erected in ridicule and derision of the religion of the white man. Below this group is a magnificent carving of a spread eagle, and at the bottom of the column a figure intended to represent one of the early traders on the coast. Skowl was always an enemy to the missionary and resisted their encroachments to the last, being remarkable for his wealth, obesity, and intemperate habits. He weighed at the time of his death, in the winter of 1882-'83, considerably over 300 pounds.
As a young man, his physical prowess, wealth, and family influence, made his tyrannical rule at Kasa-an one long to be remembered, as he did much to keep his people to the old faith and to preserve amongst them the manners and customs of his forefathers. Plate LXVii is a sketch of this chief lying in state in his lodge at Kasa-an Village, from a photograph taken by the writer in 1885.
To illustrate further the nature of some of these commemorative columns, it may be well to mention here the case of Chief "Bear Skin," of Skidegate, Queen Charlotte islands, British Columbia, as cited by Judge Swan. "Bear Skill," on his return from a visit to Victoria, British Columbia, had erected in front of his house two wooden effigies of Judge Pemberton of that city to show his contempt for him as a magistrate for putting him in the lockup at Victoria. In the Berlin Museum is a small slate carving, illustrated in Fig. 275, Plate LI, which commemorates the prowess of a certain medicine man who came up to Skidegate from Klue village to work his charms on two dead men. He was observed by numerous witnesses to squat upon their graves, and by invoking the power of his yakes with rattles, masks, and songs, to raise them from the dead. Coming to life, they clung to him as in the image. This incident is of course vouched for by reliable witnesses, but no further testimony is needed to insure its acceptance as gospel by the
Indians than that it should be thus carved in slate. It lifts the story to the first rank as a tradition to be handed down as long as the image shall recall it or the Indian mind cherish the recollection of it.
It can not be claimed that a good case has been made out in the illustrations here cited to show that these columns and carvings are ever historical in the strict sense of the word, but they are, nevertheless, at times commemorative of certain real or supposedly real incidents, and the statement that they are never historical at least needs qualification.
Mortuary columns. — A broad distinction is drawn here between columns that in themselves form a mode of sepulture and those which are commemorative and erected at some distance from the site of the grave in Which the body is interred. The former are described in detail in Chapter XII, on Mortuary Customs; the latter are in imitation of the former, and preserve the shadow of the primitive mode of sepulture just as to-day the funeral urn on a modern grave is symbolical of the old custom of cremation. These are illustrated in Fig. 1, Plate ii, Fig. 179e, Plate Xxxv, and in Plates lv, lxiv, and lxix, as well as in the general views of Kasa-an village. They are erected usually near the corner of the house at one side, and consist, as a rule, of a short stout post or column surmounted by a carved representation of the crest or totem of the deceased.
The erection of these takes place at the ceremony known as the " glorification or elevation of the dead," described in Chapter xiil. After the body has been entombed it is incumbent on the heir of the deceased, if the latter has been a person of any importance, to make a feast and erect one of these commemorative columns. In the southern part of the Queen Charlotte Islands a very common form of this column is a short stout post with a sign-board-like square formed of split planks carved on the outer face. This kind is rare to the north, and not seen at all amongst the Kaigani, as far as known to the writer.
The decay of totemic carving. — Amongst the northern Tlingit these carved columns of all kinds have largely disappeared. At Sitka only the stumps of the ancient ones are now found. Wherever the missionaries have gained influence with these Indians the totemic columns have gradually disappeared and the old ways been given up. Of the Tlingit villages which have retained many of the primitive customs Tongass (Tunghaash) is the most representative. Kasa-an stands at the head of the Kaigani and Skidegate of the Haida villages in this respect. Wars, epidemics, and emigration have reduced the population to such an extent that former sites have been abandoned and the Indians are gradually concentrating into a few villages. Graves, ruins, decaying houses, grass-grown village sites, graphically picture the results of the contact of the coast Indians with our civilization.
Bancroft, Hubert Howe. Native Races of the Pacific States. Vol. 1, Appleton, 1874.
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