Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Student Showcase: Essays on Totem Poles




The Importance of Totem Poles
by N.G.

 Long ago people made up an idea to make something to tell stories, and do many other things with. The idea was that a totem pole could do these things. They made them up of different shapes and sizes and all different colors, depending on the story or the reason for making the totem pole. Making a totem pole is not a must it’s a choice.
You did not have to make totem poles, but if you chose to they were a lot of work. Totem poles are were used to tell stories, to honor the deceased members of a clan, and many more things. They are usually made from a soft smooth tree called a cedar that usually has no bad knots in them. They usually take up to moths, days, years depending on design, color, and height. All this stuff about totem poles is very important to a lot of native people, and is a lot of hard work so they usually have many people work on a totem pole.



How Totem Poles are Made
By C.M.

A totem pole is a cedar pole that represents shame or happiness. They were highly respected and “supernatural”. Tribes brought this art to Washington. They loved this idea and they used it quickly.
To make a totem pole they split cedar to the desired length and hollowed it out for colors. Red came from hematite, green from copper ore, and black from graphite. The chief almost always commissioned totem pole. If you weren’t a chief and you commissioned a pole you were of great wealth. That is how a totem pole was made. 

No comments:

Post a Comment