PREFACE 
Our knowledge of the totem poles of the Gitksan was obtained at first- 
hand among the tribes of the upper Skeena, in the course of four seasons 
of field research for the National Museum of Canada, from 1920 to 1926. 
The photographs utilized here are ours, unless it is otherwise stated. A 
few drawings by the artist, Langdon Kihn, of New York, are reproduced 
with his kind permission. Mr. Kihn was associated with us in our ethno- 
graphic work during the summer and autumn of 1924. 
This monograph on the totem poles of one of the three Tsimsyan 
nations — the Gitksan — is the first of a series that will eventually cover 
the complete ethnography of the Tsimsyan and will embrace their social 
organization, history, mythology, and aesthetic arts. 
The following description and analysis of totem poles is restricted 
to one of the several nations of the North West Coast that are known to 
have practised the art of carving and erecting tall wooden memorials to 
their dead. Yet the scope of our study is implicitly wider, since the art 
of the Gitksan is merely a local variation upon a theme that is, in geo- 
graphy and history, more comprehensive. Our conclusions and compari- 
sons for this reason are bound to shed some light on the growth and expan- 
sion of this aboriginal art on the whole North West Coast, and to invite 
the readers’ attention to the problem of diffusion of culture all around the 
rim of the Pacific ocean. 
