Travels in Alaska 



I observed, carved into life-size figures of men, women, 

 and children, fishes, birds, and various other animals, 

 such as the beaver, wolf, or bear. Each of the wall 

 planks had evidently been hewn out of a whole log, 

 and must have required sturdy deliberation as well as 

 skill. Their geometrical truthfulness was admirable. 

 With the same tools not one in a thousand of our 

 skilled mechanics could do as good work. Compared 

 with it the bravest work of civilized backwoodsmen is 

 feeble and bungling. The completeness of form, finish, 

 and proportion of these timbers suggested skill of a 

 wild and positive kind, like that which guides the 

 woodpecker in drilling round holes, and the bee in 

 making its cells. 



The carved totem-pole monuments are the most 

 striking of the objects displayed here. The simplest 

 of them consisted of a smooth, round post fifteen or 

 twenty feet high and about eighteen inches in diameter, 

 with the figure of some animal on top a bear, por- 

 poise, eagle, or raven, about life-size or larger. These 

 were the totems of the families that occupied the 

 houses in front of which they stood. Others supported 

 the figure of a man or woman, life-size or larger, usu- 

 ally in a sitting posture, said to resemble the dead 

 whose ashes were contained in a closed cavity in the 

 pole. The largest were thirty or forty feet high, 

 carved from top to bottom into human and animal 

 totem figures, one above another, with their limbs 

 grotesquely doubled and folded. Some of the most im- 

 posing were said to commemorate some event of an 

 historical character. But a telling display of family 



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