Saxman Totem Park, the Frog Tree - Saxman AK

City:: Ketchikan, Saxman, AK
Site Type:: Archaeology and History, Art Works, Sculptures, Historical Restoration
New Deal Agencies:: Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), Work Relief Programs
Started:: 1939
Completed:: 1941
Artist:: Tlingit Indigenous People
Quality of Information:: Very Good
Site Survival:: Extant

Description

Viola Garfield and Linn Forrest describe the visual characteristics of the Frog Tree totem pole in their 1961 volume, The Wolf and the Raven: “The Frog Tree (or Drifting Log) carving was brought from Cape Fox, where it had been dedicated to the memory of a woman of the Kiksetti clan. Her name was Two (Frogs) on a Drifting Log, hence the name of the pole. On the original carving a frog was shown emerging from the center of the upright support, to symbolize the woman emerging from the lake when her relatives came for her.

George Grinnell, who was in the village in 1899, wrote ‘Another [pole] which from its appearance seemed to have been standing for very many years for it was gray with weather, and long strings of lichen hung down from it consisted of the stout upright twenty feet in height, surmounted by an almost equally stout cross pole, on either end of which sat a large carved toad.’”

Source notes

Garfield, Viola and Linn Forrest, 1961, The Wolf and the Raven, Seattle: University of Washington Press, p. 13-56. Saxman Totem Park, National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form, 1979, accessed June 28, 2017.

Site originally submitted by Brent McKee on July 7, 2017.