[Loscho_enews] Q. Is the tradition of carving totem poles native to Western Washington?

[Snocoheritage]

>From the Burke Museum Blog which has lots of interesting activities and
historical information -

http://burkemuseum.blogspot.com/2010/08/q-is-tradition-of-carving-totem-poles.html

Q. Is the tradition of carving totem poles native to Western Washington?

A. Although totem poles have become a symbol of all Northwest Coast Native
people and their use has spread to neighboring tribes through the years,
they weren't always in the Seattle area. Tall multiple-figure poles known as
totem poles were first made only by the northern Northwest Coast Haida,
Tlingit and Tsimshian peoples in Southeast Alaska and British Columbia and
are not native to the people of Western Washington. Closer to home, the
Coast Salish people in Southern British Columbia and Western Washington
carved large human figures representing ancestors and spirit helpers on
interior house posts and as grave monuments.

Even though totem poles were not originally carved by people living around
the Puget Sound, references to totem poles can be found in many places
around Seattle, such as a totem pole in West Seattle
<http://westseattleblog.com/2010/05/checking-on-west-seattles-stolen-totem-pole-five-months-later>that
was recently stolen (and
returned<http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2010477609_totem11m.html>),
the Pike Place Market <http://www.pikeplacemarket.org/>totem pole, those
here at the Burke
Museum<http://www.washington.edu/burkemuseum/collections/ethnology/totem/>,
and of course, the long-standing totem pole in Pioneer
Square<http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=2076>
.
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