Gordon Newell - Totem Tales Of Old Seattle: Legends And Anecdotes

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Totem Tales of Old Seattle

Legends and Anecdotes

By

GORDON NEWELL

AND TOTEMIZER

DON SHERWOOD

Contents

ON READING TOTEM POLES AND WRITING HISTORY

Totem poles are the theme of this book about Old Seattle, a choice which was made for a number of reasons. In the first place, they seem to symbolize the colorful North-west Frontier city that was Old Seattle. Its true that the really expert totem-makers lived a bit further north, along the British Columbia and Alaska coast, but the amiable Puget Sound Indians who used to picnic along the shore of Elliott Bay did a little carving of their own. They did it the way they did almost everything...in a lazy, easy-going sort of way like old Henry Yesler whittling a white pine stick on his front porch in the summer time. Since they didnt amount to much anyway, it was sometimes easier to throw last summers totems on the fire than to go down to the beach in the winter rain for driftwood.

Most of Seattles present-day totem poles are imports from Up North, but that doesnt alter the fact that Seattle and totem poles just naturally go together, like steamed clams and melted butter.

Totem poles seemed especially fitting for this book, too, because they present the Indians version of history, which was highly informal and well laced with legend. Thats the kind of history this is, although some scholarly and well-meaning critics will probably deny that its any kind of history at all. In a way, perhaps, it isnt. History is something that you have to be able to prove in black and white. Legends are more fun; they dont have to be probed and certified, and in many ways, I think, they do a better job of bringing the past back to vivid life than does history itself.

It cant be proven that Doc Maynard saluted the infant city of Seattle with a square-faced whiskey bottle, that a Skid Road Socialist put Teddy Roosevelt in his place, or that World War I welders sealed their unpopular foreman up in the skin of the ship they were building, but surely such legends are as much a part of the fabric of Old Seattle as any cold facts in the archives of the city. They are much a part of this book, and for them I make no apology.

The third, and probably the most important reason for the totemic tone of this book is Don Sherwood, who drew the unique illustrations for it. Actually, this book tells its story twice; once in the text and again in Don Sherwoods totem poles. The cartoon totems are a bit different from the ones the Indians carved in wood, but basically they do the same job of telling a story in pictures rather than in words. Like real Indian totems, the Sherwood drawings may be confusing unless you have the key, and in this case the key to the totem is the chapter it illustrates. After reading the chapter it will be found that the accompanying totem comes into focus to tell its perfectly logical, if sometimes hilarious, story. For readers who like to check the answers to the puzzles theyve solved, theres an answer sheet in the back of the book.

Another thing about Don Sherwoods totems is worth mentioning. It may take an expert or a historian to appreciate it, but the details of each intricate drawing are entirely authentic, if somewhat exaggerated. Hours of research went into the assurance that everything from the glue pot that started the Great Fire to the corncob pipe of Mayor Hi Gill is drawn as it really was. This quality makes them somewhat easier to decipher than, say, the famous Pioneer Place Totem.

Of course even that becomes simplified with the knowledge that the top figure is a raven and that the top man on the totem pole usually identified the clan whose legendary history it tells; that the object in Ravens beak is the moon. Its fairly obvious that the blushing lady below is of the Raven Clan and that she has either married or been carrying on with a Frog Clansman. Admittedly, things get more complicated when we work down to Mink (Even Don Sherwood doesnt know how he got in the act) and his Raven pal, who went for a cruise in Killer Whale, an oily experience which turned Mink brown from rolling in rotten wood to clean himself.

The ubiquitous Frog clan is also represented on another famous Seattle totemthe one at Belvedere Place in West Seattle, whose likeness adorns the cover of the city telephone directory. Here, however, the gnawing, flat-tailed figure at the top shows that this is primarily the story of the Beaver Clan, who were mighty fishermen and killers of whales despite the weakening influence of the bothersome Frogs.

There are other interesting totems in Seattle and its vicinity, some old, like the one at Belvedere Place, some replicas of old ones, and some new, for totem carving is not a lost art. Indians like Joseph Hillaire of the Lummis and Chief William Shelton, who carved the tall totem which stands on the state capitol grounds in Olympia, have adapted their ancient trade to modern tools. And white men have learned the totemic art, too. The sweeping lines of the modern poles at Northgate Shopping Center and in the Bon Marche are the work of Dudley Carter, a Seattle sculptor who is quite un-Indianlike in everything but his handling of axe and adze. Yes, totems are a part of Seattles personality and it is right that they should help to tell the story of Seattle which, as in any great city, is part history and part legend...and partly a blending of the two.

A Seattle industry, the Skyway Luggage Company, distributes replicas of the Pioneer Place Totem Pole to friends and customers to attract attention to the firm and to the city. The firms head, Henry L. Kotkins, says, Ive found that people all over the world are fascinated by totem poles. I feel that totem poles reflect the personality of this area.

And that just about sums up the purpose of this book...to reflect the personality of a city with a fabulous past; to neither lampoon it or treat it with undue gravity, but to tell, a little in the manner of the Totem Tales of the Northwest Indians, the gaudy, primitive, laughing story of a frontier town that has never been entirely tamed...the story of Old Seattle.

GORDON NEWELL

Seattle, Washington