Carving – AMERICAN CONTACT

Erected in the early 1880s by a Tlingit leader, barely a decade after the United States had claimed Alaska from Russia, this pole became popular with white Alaskans who read it as a memorial to Abraham Lincoln.

Creators: Original pole carved by Thleda (Nisgaʼa) for a patron from the Gaanax.ádi Raven clan of the Taantʼa kwáan (or “Tongass”) Tlingit; replica carved for the Saxman Totem Park by Charles Staastʼ Brown (Saanya kwáan Neix.ádi)

Date of Creation: Original c. 1882; replica June 1940

Place of origin: Kadukguká, Tlingit village on Tongass Island, Alaska

Physical measurements: Approx. 40ʼ high

Materials: Red cedar, paint

Process by which it was made: Carving, painting

Current location: Replica of entire pole in the Saxman Totem Park, Saxman, Alaska; original “Lincoln” finial in the Alaska State Museum, Juneau, Alaska

Information contributed by Emily Moore.

A great cliff in Alberta, Canada, featuring a 1500 year-old petroglyphic record.

Creator: Blackfoot People of the Great Plains

Date of Creation: 500 CE – 2020 CE

Place of origin: Alberta, Canada

Physical measurements: 4.35 miles long and 115 feet high.

Materials: Sandstone

Process by which it was made: Carving and pecking

Current location: Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park, Alberta

Further Reading

Writing-on-Stone and its “Rock Art”

James D. Keyser and Michael A. Klassen. Plains Indian Rock Art. Seattle: University of Washington Press, and Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2001

War Robes

Arni Brownstone. War Paint: Blackfoot and Sarcee Painted Buffalo Robes in the Royal Ontario Museum. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 1993.

Garments, Objects, Womens’ Artifacts, Contemporary Indigenous Work

Gaylord Torrence. The Plains Indians: Artists of Earth and Sky. Skira Rizzoli and Musée du Quai Branly, 2014.

Winter Counts

Candace Greene and Russell Thornton, eds. The Year the Stars Fell: Lakota Winter Counts at the Smithsonian. Smithsonian Museums and University of Nebraska Press, 2007.

Ledger Books

Castle McLaughlin, A Lakota War Book from the Little Bighorn: The Pictographic “Autobiography of Half Moon.” Cambridge, Mass: Houghton Library and Peabody Museum, 2013.

Information contributed by Germaine Warkentin.