Totem Pole (A)
.A pole, elaborately carved, erected before the dwelling of certain American Indians. It is a sort of symbol, like a public-house sign or flagstaff.
“Imagine a huge log, forty or fifty feet high, set up flagstaff fashion in front or at the side of a low one-storied wooden house, and carved in its whole height into immense but grotesque representations of man, beast, and bird… . [It is emblematic of] family pride, veneration of ancestors … and legendary religion. Sometimes [the totem] is only a massive pole, with a bird or some weird animal at the top … the crest of the chief by whose house it stands… . Sometimes it was so broad at the base as to allow a doorway to be cut through it. Usually the whole pole was carved into grotesque figures one above the other, and the effect heightened . . by dabs of paint—blue, red, and green.”—Nineteenth Century, December, 1892, p. 993.
