From their nature totems are constantly undergoing change. Clans tend to become phrateries, split up into sub-phrateries; sub-phrateries decay and finally disappear. An individual becomes wealthy or otherwise distinguishes himself, and being one of the leading men of the tribe, his totem, or rather his crest or sub-totem, which may previously have been an obscure one, rises with him as he advances in importance in his tribe. Under his successors, the totem widens in its numbers and influence, and finally eclipses other clan totems, which in time melt away, or are incorporated with it.
A single system of totems extends throughout the different tribes of the Haidas. The principal totems found among them are the eagle, wolf, crow, black bear, brown bear and thrasher.
The sub-totem usually comes from naming the child after some natural objects from some accidental circumstance or fanciful resemblance, or in nick-naming in after life.
The Haida Indians of Houkan often repeat a legend of a great war between them and the T’Klinkets. While they were engaged in a great battle, which afterwards decided the contest, a flock of ravens flew over and perched on the side of the Haidas. And they being victorious, took “Yalth,” or the raven, as the totem of the Haida tribes.
The carved columns of the Haidas may be divided into two classes, the totemic and the commemorative. Those erected in front of houses are usually very tall ones, and are for the most part histories of the families who own them. The top figure is usually the clan totem of the chief occupant. Those below may represent totems of his wife and children, the children always taking unto themselves the mother’s totem. Sometimes it illustrates some legend closely connected or referring to the owner’s totem. Some of them deal with the history of the tribe, while others are purely legendary, but refer to the totem of the owner. None but the wealthy can afford to erect these carved columns, so that one who is rich enough to own one has a prestige that is so desirable among them. As the head of a household he becomes a petty chief in the village. With the Haida, to accumulate sufficient wealth to own a totem pole and rise to the dignity of a petty chief is the leading passion of his soul.
TOTEM COLUMN, NORTHERN INDIANS
Ensign Niblock, of the United States navy, in speaking of these totem columns, says: “A great deal of mystery has been thrown around these pictographic carvings, due to the ignorance and misconception of some writers and the reticence or deliberate deception practiced by the Indians themselves. One of those Indians will not tell his stories or explain his carving to any but the initiated, and then only when they are in perfect sympathy with him. Mr. McLeod, the trader at Houkan, was very successful in gaining information from them that would have been impossible for Mr. Gould, the missionary, or his wife, the government school teacher, to have obtained. Then they have their moods, and will rarely tell their stories either in daytime or during the summer season. But during those long winter nights which characterize that region the old Indian will build a fire and settle himself down in business-like manner and talk as long as the fire lasts. When the fire has burned down to a bed of coals and the dying embers begin to fade away, his story stops. Nor will he build another fire. Nothing more will be heard of the story that night. Thus it often requires a week or more for an old Haida to complete the narration of the story that is written on a single totemic carving.”
Ensign Niblock was quite right when he wrote of these totem carvings: “They are in no sense idols, but in general may be said to be ancestral columns. The legends which they illustrate are but the traditions, folklore and nursery tales of a primitive people; and while they are in some sense childish or frivolous, and at times even coarse, they represent the current human thought as truly as truly as do the ancient inscriptions in Egypt and Babylonia, or the Maya inscriptions of Yucatan.”
The totemic and commemorative carvings are for the most part symbolical of the objects they represent rather than imitations of them. There is usually some arbitrary mark by which one of the initiated distinguishes one symbol from another. Thus the brown bear is usually known by the peculiar shape of the ears, the beaver by the shape of his teeth, the raven by the sharpness of his bill, the eagle by the shape of his beak, the owl by the ears, the grampus by his great fin, etc.