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Totem Pole
(A). A pole, elaborately carved, erected before the
dwelling of certain American Indians. It is a sort of symbol, like a
public-house sign or flagstaff.
“Imagine a huge log, forty or fifty feet high, set up flagstaff
fashion in front or at the side of a low one-storied wooden house, and
carved in its whole height into immense but grotesque representations
of man, beast, and bird. ... [It is emblematic of] family pride,
veneration of ancestors ... and legendary religion. Sometimes [the
totem] is only a massive pole, with a bird or some weird animal at the
top, ... the crest of the chief by whose house it stands. ...”
“Sometimes it was so broad at the base as to allow a doorway to be
cut through it. Usually the whole pole was carved into grotesque
figures one above the other, and the effect heightened
... by dabs of paint- blue, red, and green.” —Nineteenth
Century, December, 1892, p. 993.
Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894 More on Totem Pole from Infoplease:
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