North American Totem Poles
The misnamed totem poles of the Pacific Northwest of North America are, in fact, not totemic in nature. Rather, they are heraldic. They feature many different designs (bears, birds, frogs, people, and various supernatural beings and aquatic creatures) that function as crests of families or chiefs. They recount stories owned by those families or chiefs, and/or commemorate special occasions.
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“Totem poles and wooden masks no longer suggest tribal villages but fashionable drawing rooms in New York and Paris.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Civilization does not engross all the virtues of humanity: she has not even her full share of them. They flourish in greater abundance and attain greater strength among many barbarous people. The hospitality of the wild Arab, the courage of the North American Indian, and the faithful friendships of some of the Polynesian nations, far surpass any thing of a similar kind among the polished communities of Europe.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“The battle of the North Atlantic is a grim business, and it isn’t going to be won by charm and personality.”
—Edmund H. North, British screenwriter, and Lewis Gilbert. First Sea Lord (Laurence Naismith)
“Even American women are not felt to be persons in the same sense as the male immigrants among the Hungarians, Poles, Russian Jews,—not to speak of Italians, Germans, and the masters of all of us—the Irish!”
—Mary Putnam Jacobi (1842–1906)
“Now defined as art, the totem has lost cult, taboo, and custom.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“The Poles do not know how to hate, thank God.”
—Stefan, Cardinal Wyszynski (1901–1981)