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| THE TOTEM POLES - In the Anthropological
Building was the model, over fifty feet long, of the village of
Skidgate, British Columbia, giving the method of building the street,
and displaying the history of the family on carved timbers, or poles.
Outdoors, on the borders of the South Pond, where lay the Whaler
Progress, was built a real camp or village of the Quackuhl Indians,
with these same totem poles in their actual condition, as brought
from the Northwest. The tribal conditions of savage, or semi-savage
men, are now the same as when the Jews left Egypt, or the Mayas and
Incas dwelt in Central and South America. The tribe divides into
phratries, or brotherhoods, and the phratries into gentes, but a geno
or family is always more numerous than a family in civilized life.
No man can marry into his own phratry, hence his history always
included that of two phratries. These poles are carved at much
expense, and the richest member of the village gives the longest
history in the highest pole, telling many incidents in the career of
his ancestors by means of the strange and hideous faces carved
thereon. A man's face carved at the base will signify the Brown
Bear, and so conventional are the signs that they rarely possess any
resemblance to the thing they stand for. On top of the pole usually
perches the raven, vulture, or other bird which names the phratry.
The Quackuhls, at the Exposition, lived in these huts shown in the
photograph. |
