[Totem Pole] For Native Americans in the northwest, totem poles often serve to proclaim a clan's status. The figures carved onto the poles symbolize a clan's mythological history, as well as the rights and privileges it enjoys.

On this pole the figures represent, from top to bottom, a man, a bear, and a frog. They signify the rights and privileges of the family that erected it near its residence in southeastern Alaska.

Courtesy of the National Museum of Natural History
Totem Pole, probably Tlingit peoples, Pacific northwest, mid-19th century A.D., wood and pigment

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