142 
with human faces. Gip-ranaa'o and Larh’ayseorh, ancestors of the Kit- 
wanga Eagles, assisted the Kitsalas people in overcoming and killing the 
monster. After they had drawn its body to the shore, they cut it in 
two parts, thus dividing it among themselves, half for Gitsemrselem and 
the other for Kitsalas. The Beaver thereafter became the crest of the 
captors. Sometimes it is shown complete, in a sitting posture; at other 
times, as once on the taller pole here, it is represented split in two halves. 
It is usually represented, at Kitsalas, its head down and with human-like 
faces all over its body. 
FUNCTION 
The older of the two poles was one of the first erected at Kitwanga, 
many years after the people had moved down from the Ta'awdzep fortress. 
It fell about 1912.^ Chief Semedeek (from seventy to eighty years of age) 
does not remember when it was erected. It stood there when he was a boy. 
Alfred Sinclair (over fifty years old) states that it was erected during his 
father’s lifetime. And the owner herself, Mrs. Wells, believes that it was 
erected in memory of Legee’naehle’, then the chief of the family, slightly over 
seventy years ago. Her mother was then a young woman, and she is herself 
middle-aged. We may safely conclude that its erection took place about 
seventy-five years ago, perhaps a few years earlier, possibly somewhat 
later. Kitwanga could not have been on its present site earlier, since it is 
its second location after the removal from Ta’awdzep, which may have 
taken place as late as 1831. 
The newer and later pole was erected less than fifty years ago (Mrs. 
Wells, in 1924, said that it was from forty to forty-five years old).- 
CAKVERS 
The old pole is one of the most valuable relics of the kind on the 
Skeena. From it we may form a fair idea of what one of the earliest poles 
looked like, about eighty years ago. It w'as made from half of a large cedar 
log, the other half and the core having been removed. Two other poles of 
the same type w^re still in existence on the upper Skeena, in 1926, one at 
Gitwinlkul (that of Plaidzemerhs, which still stands), and another on the 
old village site of Gitenmaks (the present Hazelton), which was destroyed 
in 1926. The pole of Sqaj'sen was not a true totem pole as we now know 
them, but really a house-front pole, w’hich served as a ceremonial entrance 
into the feast house. It stands about 15 feet high, that is less than half the 
length of the newer pole, erected over forty years ago. The diminutive 
holes in the Bear’s den crest above the entrance show^ that at that date 
the figure was already old enough to have become conventional and stylistic, 
and to be represented as a crest independently of its actual function as a 
ceremonial device. 
The newer pole was carved by Negutsi'acl, of the family of Taku (in 
the Larhsail phratry), of Kitwanga. It is a moderately good carving of 
iTlic first Kitwanga village site was slightly above the present location; that is, at the edge of the river, near 
the point where now stands the station. The removal from Tu'nwdzep dates back, in the opinion of some informants, 
to the time when the white people first came to this country; and, according to Alfred Sinclair, to the time when 
the Hudson’s Bay Company established its post at the mouth of the Na-ss (1831-33), 
*The old chief was under the mistaken impression that it was only about twenty years old. 
