Top man on totem pole could get clothes back

Twisted tale
If it's true, as anthropologists say, that totem poles can tell a story, this one is a twisted tale.

The pole was a project of the Civilian Conservation Corps, a work program that was part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's 'New Deal.' It was launched during the Depression to put people to work.

In southeast Alaska, CCC jobs included the carving and repair of totem poles and the program is credited with breathing new life into a craft that was rapidly disappearing.

Though the pole's designer Benson was a carver, he was also a craftsman and an employee of the CCC.

And when it came time to do his own pole, he was already busy building a seawall for the park where the totem now stands. It seems no one else was available in Sitka, so the Forest Service sent the red cedar log to Wrangell, where the totem trade had flourished.

Carving knives
As a young boy, Dick Stokes, 83, used to watch his grandfather carve poles at the old mill site in downtown Wrangell. He said half a dozen men with carving knives and adzes would labor over a single pole, each working on a separate section.

They were paid a dollar plus room and board for a day's work, said Stokes, good money when ten cents bought you a loaf of bread.

He recalls many of the poles, which were often replicas of older works. For example, they copied a shame pole called "Three Frog," originally intended to cast ridicule on a man over an unpaid debt.

But Stokes doesn't remember the Sitka pole, though he's not surprised to hear about Baranov's birthday suit.

"It sounds like something they would do," he said with a chuckle.

Bob Sam won't speculate why the Wrangell carvers would have changed Benson's design, but he's convinced they did.

'Shameful'
Though controversy over the pole died down long ago, Sam revived the old stories when the community started discussing a memorial to honor the Tlingits. He believes a new pole would be a fitting memorial.

He'd like to see the old pole safely preserved but replaced with one that has a similar design. This time, however, Baranov would lose his top spot to K'alyaan, the Tlingit warrior, but get his clothes back.

"The local Tlingit community didn't want that to happen to Baranov," he said. "They wanted to make peace, but the Wrangell carver carved him naked and that was kind of a shameful thing to do."

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