THE TOTEM POLE — BARBEAU 493 



The village houses stood in a row along the waterfront, usually close 

 to the edge of the water, either in the coves or along the rivers. The 

 Tsimsyan were the only people of the true northwest coast nations 

 whose habitat consisted of rivers as well as of the adjacent seacoast. 

 The villages of two of their subnations (the Niskse and the Gitksan) 

 were situated exclusively on two rivers — the Nass and the Skeena — on 

 the Canadian side, close to the Alaskan boundary. It is only there 

 that we find totem poles away from the coast, up the rivers as far as 

 250 miles from the tidewaters. 



The detached poles stood in a row a few feet in front of the owners' 

 houses. They extended the whole length of the village, in an impres- 

 sive, though irregular, row of carved columns sometimes surmounted 

 by detached figures of birds, animals, and people. 



Totem poles until recently stood along the village fronts of only a 

 few nations in the north : the Haida of the Queen Charlotte and Prince 

 of Wales Islands, the Nass River people, the upper Skeena tribes, and 

 the southern Tlingit of Alaska. Elsewhere they were either nonex- 

 istent or very few, or very recent, as among the Kwakiutl. The only 

 way of showing the owners' crests where poles did not exist was 

 by means of painted designs on the house fronts, or a few carved 

 portals. 



A pole was left to stand as many years as nature would permit. 

 Sometimes two or three poles belonged to the same family, but had 

 been erected at different times as memorials to chiefs after their death, 

 one generation apart from the other. They stood side by side and 

 were part of the village cluster. Some of the poles leaned to one side, 

 ready to fall, sometimes supported by props. It was not the custom to 

 mend or transplant a pole, however precarious its condition. Once 

 fallen, it was pushed aside, if it were in the way ; it decayed gradually 

 or was cut up and burned as firewood. 



The totem poles of the Haida of the Queen Charlotte Islands and 

 Alaska, and of the Niskae of the Nass River, have mostly fallen and 

 disappeared, or they have been removed to museums and parks 

 abroad. Some of the Tlingit poles, on the Alaskan coast, have been 

 moved away from the old village sites to Ketchikan, Sitka, and other 

 modern towns and are being preserved there, usually under a gaudy 

 coat of modem paint. The only collection that is still fairly intact 

 is that of the Gitksan tribes, on the upper Skeena River, in northern 

 British Columbia. It consists of over 100 poles, in isolated village 

 groups of from a few to about 30, in the 8 tribal villages of the 

 upper Skeena. Some of these are also being preserved by the Cana- 

 dian Government and railways. 



The natives, many years ago, abandoned their old villages and 

 moved to new quarters. The old village sites are now deserted; the 

 plank houses have fallen in, and the totem poles were forsaken in 



