A GUIDE TO THE TOTEM POLES OF DOWNTOWN SEATTLE

Without a doubt, the most famous of the Seattle totem poles is the one in front of the Pioneer Building downtown. Known as the Seattle Pole, or the Pioneer Square Pole, it was originally carved sometime in the 1790’s and was known as the Chief_Of_All_Women Pole, in whose honor it was raised. It originally stood on Tongass Island, which is located right next to Canada, in the Southern Alaskan panhandle, at the mouth of the Nass River, in an area where the Tlingit and their ancestors live and have lived for thousands of years. Before it was stolen, the pole was already remarkable for being one of the few totem poles known to be dedicated to a woman. The information available to me about Chief_Of_All_Women is scant, except how she died. Downed in the Nass River, on a journey to visit an ailing sister. After she died, her loved ones organized a huge potlatch and raised the pole close to the shore, where it stood unmolested for decades.

Fast forward to 1899: the Klondike Gold Rush has changed everything for Seattle. The decade before, Tacoma, Seattle’s southern sister, had been chosen to be the terminus for the Northern Pacific Railway. While maybe not spelling doom for the Emerald City, it did make it seem like Seattle would be playing second fiddle to Tacoma, now destined to be the major metropolis in the upper left section of the nation. But things changed and when gold was discovered in Klondike Alaska in the mid-to-late 1890’s, an estimated 100,000 prospectors moved to the frozen North to get rich quick. And since you have to spend money to make money, Seattle profited as the last stop before venturing out into the great northern tundra. Folks from all over the country would take everything they had, travel from around the world then stop in Seattle to buy the necessary tools and equipment to live the harsh life of a far-north prospector. Few of these men became rich, many of them died alone and cold, but Seattle cashed in and grew into a major and important city. In 1899, as the rush was slowing down, the Hearst-controlled Seattle Post-Intelligencer paid for an expedition up to Alaska, to be undertaken by “leading citizens”, in order to increase trade and tourism and investment. On their way back, they stopped at Tongass island where they saw several poles and no people. They decided Seattle needed a pole for itself and that the Chief_Of_All_Women pole was the best-looking one. They chopped the pole down like a tree, cut it in two, and brought it back on the boat. The curved beak of the bottom figure, was broken in transit. After putting it back together, the pole was erected by cranes in Pioneer Square. The whole thing was a huge civic ceremony. A local poet read a poem, written from the perspective of the pole itself, claiming that this was the only “civilized” totem in the world. A member of the expedition talked about how they saved the pole from loss and destruction.

Of course, this was a lie. The town that the expedition members claimed was “abandoned” was not. Pacific Northwest Indians move throughout the year. Winter villages, like the one this pole was stolen from, are unoccupied during the summer months; this arrangement did not mean that all of the items the Tlingit left were free. Descendants of Chief_Of_All_Women were obviously furious and demanded the pole be returned. A grand jury in Alaska agreed with them and said that 8 men on the expedition should be indicted for stealing government property (at the time, all Indian property was considered government property) and the village should be paid $20,000. However, when a new district judge was assigned to Alaska, he stopped in Seattle on the way to his post. Apparently, the city fathers really wined and dined him, in the newly opened Rainier Club, since when he finally made it to Alaska he dropped the penalty to a $500 fine, which the Post-Intelligencer paid. By 1909 the pole was fully a part of Seattle history and identity. The pole was featured on the front page of the brochure advertising the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific exposition. The A-Y-P, a sort of World’s Fair, not unlike the famous World Colombian Exposition, itself was one of the first major events where Seattle tried to brand itself internationally. Seattle has always been a brand-conscious city. Totem Poles and the mysterious, lost cultures they’re supposed to stand in for, were a big part of that brand. Seattle was trying to present itself as the crossroads between the far east and the rugged PNW frontier. They literalized this desire by building a Torii (the stylized Japanese gate you see at the entrance of Shinto temples) where the pillars were carved like totems and the eyes of the totem’s animals were lit up with then-new electric lights. This association of Seattle and Totem poles continues well into the 20th century. The last professional hockey team in Seattle, the Seattle Totems, played their final game in 1974.

The Chief_Of_All_Women pole features, from top to bottom, Raven (holding the crescent moon in his beak), a woman holding her frog child, her frog husband, Mink (a somewhat rare figure to be featured on a pole), Orca with a seal in it’s mouth and, finally, Raven-At-The-Head-Of-The-Nass (sometimes known as Grandfather Raven, you can tell it’s him by the downturned beak). I don’t have the expertise to relay how these mythical figures fit into the complicated Tlingit cosmology, but rest assured all important mythological figures. In fact, this pole relays (at least) 3 myths: One about a woman who inadvertently marries a man who is actually a shape-shifting frog, one about Raven stealing the sun and moon from Raven-At-The-Head-Of-The-Nass and bringing light to the world, and one about Mink and Raven living in the belly of Orca for a while, cooking and eating the fish the whale swallows.

In 1938, an arsonist burned the pole badly. I haven’t found a source that even speculates as to the motivation of the arsonist(s). Drunken revelry? Anger at the theft of the pole? Just a mistake? Irregardless, no one in Seattle had the ability to fix it so it was sent up to Alaska to be worked on by Tligit and Haida carvers as part of a depression-era CCC project. The pole was re-raised in 1940 and has stood in Pioneer Square since.

Besides being stolen the pole also represents a style of artwork and woodcraft that is not actual indigenous to the area. Seattle, the city, sits on Duwamish land. The closest indigenous landmark to the pole is dzee-dzee-LAH-letch, a village formerly located roughly where King Street Station is today. The Duwamish, like all the tribes in what we now call Cascadia, were master wood-carvers. They built enormous wooden houses, sturdy canoes, beautiful boxes and baskets, all carved by hand out of the copious local lumber. The Duwamish, did not however, carve totem poles. Even the word “Totem” is not indigenous to the PNW; it comes from an Ojibwe word. While poles are traditionally, which is to say in the YT imagination, thought of as free standing columns, carved with a number of figures stacked on top of one another, this is not always the case. Often poles were used as functional architectural support in large houses, and/or positioned and carved in such a way that the mouth of the bottom figure is the door to the building. Other times the only a single figure is carved on the very top of the pole.The other totem poles downtown show some of this variety.

Not 3 blocks over, in Occidental square, there is another pole. This pole, which was made for the 1974 World’s Fair in Spokane, also depicts the legend of Raven stealing the Sun and Moon. You can see the bent-corner box they’re kept in at the bottom of the statue. This pole also highlights the Northwest Artistic practice of not always depicting Raven in a raven’s body, since the gods can shapeshift. The large statue just next to it shows a man riding the tail of an Orca, while the 2 statues facing each other nearby are of a bear and the Tsonoqua (it’s more typical to see this word rendered as “Dzunukwa”). Have you ever been camping in the vast Northwest woods? Heard that creepy wailing noise the wind makes through the trees? That’s the Tsonoqua. It’s why her lips are always rendered like she’s blowing out a birthday candle. She’s also known as the “basket ogress” for her habit of kidnapping children and carrying them in her basket to eat. Despite, or maybe because of this fearsomeness, she can also be a source of wealth, if you’re able to outsmart her, in some versions you have to steal her child. This is why the statue of her at the Burke Museum shows her holding a tináa, a copper shield that is often a symbol of wealth in Northwest Art. There’s another statue of her frozen in the act of pushing over a child’s play structure in University Playground, appropriate given her historical role as a killer and eater of children.

If you walk North on Alaska to get to the other downtown poles, you’ll pass Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, which also has a place in Totem Pole history. Ye Olde Curiosity Shop opened in 1899, the same year the Chief_Of_All_Women pole was stolen. The shop, run by “Daddy” Stanley, sold and sells Native art from around the PNW as well as weirdo shit from around the world (shrunken heads, fiji mermaids, etc). Obviously, a lot of this stuff was and is fake, though Daddy apparently did have some understanding, appreciation and expertise in Native sculpture. Eventually, he gained a reputation for offering good prices to reputable carvers, though he was never above selling a fake to a rube. Several museums, including the Royal Museum of Canada, the National Museum of the American Indian, as well as the University of Washington bought poles from Daddy.

Further north, past Pike’s Place, you can still visit Victor Steinbrueck Park and see 2 more poles. One is what YT-PLP typically think of as a totem pole, ie a vertical carving that has figures all the way down. On this pole, from the bottom up, we have bear holding a hawk, the head of Raven, Orca, a human head, a human holding a tináa and topped by Raven holding a Salish-style spindle. This pole was designed by Marvin Oliver a person of Quinault/Isleta-Pueblo decent and carved by James Bender, a non-native artist who specializes in replicating historic Northwest Coast art. The pole next to it was also carved by Bender but was designed by Victor Steinbrueck, the person the park is named after and someone who also isn’t native. The Pole is tilted, “Honored farmers-1984” and is smooth until the very top, where Bender carved 2 famers, a male and a female, standing back to back. I think the male farmer looks like Mario but it’s hard to tell if that’s on purpose.

This pole is something of a nod to the most famous pole in this style, the Lincoln Pole. The Lincoln Pole, now on Saxam Park, Alaska is the most famous example of a whole genre of pole. Here’s a quote about such poles from book about the cultural history of totem poles, “Early Alaskan tourists found one type of pole, largely confined to Prince Wales Island, especially delightful-those that depicted whites. While white observers assumed such images honored their subjects, some such poles, in fact, mocked them. These may have developed from existing traditions of erecting shame or rivalry poles to challenge other chiefs.” The most famous of these shame poles is of William Seward, the man who helped orchestrate the purchase of Alaska from Russia. Apparently, he was such an ungrateful dick during his visit up north that the locals thought it worthwhile to erect a pole ridiculing him and showing him as greedy piece of shit. Seattle YTs have a totally different view of the man, there’s a large revenant bronze statue of him in Volunteer Park and he’s the Seward in Seward Park. The Lincoln Pole is a little more complicated, I’ve found numerous conflicting backstories. The official story, which seems the least likely to me, is that the Tlignit, heard about Lincoln, who never travelled west of Kansas, they admired him and raised a pole in his honor. Another version says that they carved Lincoln version mockingly. Something along the lines of you freed the slaves but at the same time here we are, the Native inhabitants, being treated like slaves. A third version also has it as a shame pole but this time directed against Lincoln, a wooden metonymy for Federal government, for forcing the Tlignit to give up their slaves, which they were forced to do in 1867 when the US purchased Alaska. My favorite version holds that the pole has nothing to do with Lincoln, per se, rather the pole was carved and placed to commemorate an ancestor whose claim to fame was the first sighting of a YT man. When they asked with the local YT for a photo of a YT person to carve from, the only photos available were of Lincoln, in his famous stove-pipe hat, who as far as the original carver(s) were concerned, was just some YT man.

However the most interesting and powerful pole downtown is further north, in the shadow of the Space Needle. The Space Needle itself is somewhat an updated version of the Chief_Of_All_Women Pole. Both were built for World’s Fairs, or World’s Fair style events. Both are powerful symbols of how the city wishes to be seen. Originally, as a rugged frontier of mysterious and rich forests, with access to the vast wealth of Alaska and beyond. In the 60’s as a space-age jet city. The land of Boeing. They both draw the eye upward, to the sky. Both leave you wondering how the people who made this thing made it and why? Like the Chief_Of_All_Women Pole, this one was created in memory of an indigenous person who died tragically. Chief_Of_All_Women died crossing a river to visit a sick sister, John T. Williams was murdered by the Seattle Police. John T. Williams was a 7th generation Nuu-chah-nulth carver who lived in Seattle, Vancouver and Victoria Island. He was well-known downtown, frequently seen in Victor Steinbrueck carving beneath the poles there. Because he was always carving he carried specialized carving knives with him as he walked around downtown. In the afternoon of Aug 30, 2010, a police officer named Ian Birk noticed Williams crossing the street with something in his hand. Birk jumped out of the car with his gun drawn, yelled “put the knife down” and, 5 seconds later, murdered John T. Williams at the corner of Howell and Boren. For what it’s worth, Williams was hard of hearing and the knife he was holding was closed. Since William’s murder, the Seattle Police have killed 40 other people. The coward Birk, of course, wasn’t charged with anything though he did quit the SPD. As a sort of secondary tribute, the crosswalk at Howell & Boren was repainted with a white deer design that was common in William’s carving.

Because of their physical dimensions, raising a pole traditionally requires a large group of people. The cooperation required to get the pole into position acts as a sort of shorthand for the sort of collective group effort (and this effort could be directed towards honor, or remembrance, or shame) the pole represents. When Canada and the US outlawed Potlatches, the traditional gift-giving ceremonies that defined a lot of PNW indigenous life, in 1885, they effectively outlawed totem poles since the important part, the rituals and ceremonies that surrounded the poles were banned. To be clear, not all Potlatches involve raising Totem Poles, groups like the Duwamish who don’t historically carve totem poles still hold/held potlatches, but all traditional pole raisings were done in the context of a potlatch. So when the Chief_Of_All_Women pole was originally raised on Tongass, it was part of a feast and a ritual. When the YTs raised the same pole, they did so not as a group. but with a crane. The John T. Williams pole was raised by hand. John’s brother, Rick, carved the pole in public view at Waterfront Park. He did so less than 100 feet from Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, where his grandfather and great-grandfather had sold carvings. He carved Eagle on top and a mother and child Raven at the bottom. Between these two figures he carved his brother, a master carver, displaying his own carving. The figure that this wooden brother holds is a Salmon and Kingfisher design that was the personal signature of John and the design which originally elevated him to the status as Mastercarver. Hundreds of people joined the procession that took the 3500 lb red cedar log from the waterfront to under the monorail, next to the EMP and raised it in the traditional manner, with a mob of people working together.