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Įddie Malin has proposed that totem poles progressed from house posts, funerary containers, and memorial markers into symbols of clan and family wealth and prestige. The tall monumental poles appearing in front of native homes in coastal villages probably did not appear until after the beginning of the nineteenth century. By the late eighteenth century, the use of metal cutting tools enabled more complex carvings and increased production of totem poles. The process was slow and laborious axes were unknown. Before iron and steel arrived in the area, Natives used tools made of stone, shells, or beaver teeth for carving. Prior to the 19th century, the lack of efficient carving tools, along with sufficient wealth and leisure time to devote to the craft, delayed the development of elaborately carved, freestanding poles. Īlthough 18th-century accounts of European explorers traveling along the coast indicate that decorated interior and exterior house posts existed prior to 1800, the posts were smaller and fewer in number than in subsequent decades. Stylistic features of these poles were borrowed from earlier, smaller prototypes, or from the interior support posts of house beams. The freestanding poles seen by the region's first European explorers were likely preceded by a long history of decorative carving.
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Totem poles are the largest, but not the only, objects that coastal Pacific Northwest natives use to depict spiritual reverence, family legends, sacred beings and culturally important animals, people, or historical events. Noteworthy examples, some dating as far back as 1880, include those at the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, the Museum of Anthropology at UBC in Vancouver, the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, and the Totem Heritage Center in Ketchikan, Alaska. Because of the region's climate and the nature of the materials used to make the poles, few examples carved before 1900 remain. The poles are typically carved from the highly rot-resistant trunks of Thuja plicata trees (popularly known as giant cedar or western redcedar), which eventually decay in the moist, rainy climate of the coastal Pacific Northwest. Families of traditional carvers come from the Haida, Tlingit, Tsimshian, Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwakiutl), Nuxalk (Bella Coola), and Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka), among others. Totem poles serve as important illustrations of family lineage and the cultural heritage of the Native peoples in the islands and coastal areas of North America's Pacific Northwest, especially British Columbia, Canada, and coastal areas of Washington and southeastern Alaska in the United States. Totem poles and houses at 'Ksan, near Hazelton, British Columbia. Given the complexity and symbolic meanings of these various carvings, their placement and importance lies in the observer's knowledge and connection to the meanings of the figures and the culture in which they are embedded. They may embody a historical narrative of significance to the people carving and installing the pole. The poles may also serve as functional architectural features, welcome signs for village visitors, mortuary vessels for the remains of deceased ancestors, or as a means to publicly ridicule someone. The carvings may symbolize or commemorate ancestors, cultural beliefs that recount familiar legends, clan lineages, or notable events. The word totem derives from the Algonquian word odoodem meaning "(his) kinship group". They are usually made from large trees, mostly western red cedar, by First Nations and indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest coast including northern Northwest Coast Haida, Tlingit, and Tsimshian communities in Southeast Alaska and British Columbia, Kwakwaka'wakw and Nuu-chah-nulth communities in southern British Columbia, and the Coast Salish communities in Washington and British Columbia. Totem poles ( Haida: gyáaʼaang) are monumental carvings, a type of Northwest Coast art, consisting of poles, posts or pillars, carved with symbols or figures. A Gitxsan pole (left) and Kwakwaka'wakw pole (right) at Thunderbird Park in Victoria, Canada.