The totem pole, thought to have originated with the Haida Native American peoples in the Pacific Northwest region of America, is now seen around the globe. Here, Hilary Burke charts the history of the decorative timberwork and highlights the work of chainsaw carver Simon Jackson, who has created three totems erected in Northumberland National Park.
SIMON Jackson has recently been awarded a commission. Son of well-known Hexham-based forester Mike Jackson, Simon spent his time wielding a chainsaw in the woods and then progressed to his forestry management qualifications. He found he had an artistic eye, however, and developed a skill fashioning sculptures and now spends most of his time carving out finely decorated features with Makita and Echo chainsaws.
Simon has been asked to style three totem poles on behalf of timber products manufacturer Egger (UK) Ltd, Forestry England and the Northumberland National Park.
As a work of decorative timberwork the totem pole is thought to have originated in the Pacific Northwest; specifically with the Haida Native American peoples. The United States purchased the territory of Alaska from Russia in 1867 and while the virgin timberlands of Sitka spruce and western hemlock eventually provided an economic reward for the deal, the culture and traditions of the American Indians remained undervalued and largely ignored.
The Great Crash of 1928 and the ensuing economic slump saw attitudes change in the US and a radical democrat, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was elected president. FDR (as he was to become known) was able to persuade Congress to support his plans to inject huge amounts of cash into the US economy in major public works. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a particular favourite of FDR and was set up with 250,000 unemployed single young men assigned to local rural projects.
Almost all the CCC works were within the National Park and National Forest systems. By the time the scheme closed 3.4 million young men had planted 2 billion trees, cut in 13,000 miles of logging trails and upgraded 125,000 miles of dirt tracks. The Tongass National Forest up in Alaska was never going to be the most popular posting but some of the lads from the lower 49 states shipped out to the camps in the territory. A few would learn their woodworking skills with the native inhabitants, carving the intricate and intriguing designs of the traditional totem poles into freshly felled timber.
The CCC work in opening up the timberlands was to prove invaluable when war broke out in Europe a few years later, but FDR was broad-minded in his approach. Writers could write, artists could draw, photographers could capture the scene for posterity. The traditional culture of the American Indian would be valued as part of the rich heritage of the United States of America.
While the ancestors of the Haida people are known to have been in North America for 15,000 years, most of the Haida remain in what is now British Columbia as First Nation Canadians. Current thinking suggests that the Haida who raised their totems in the Alaskan Islands arrived only a few hundred years ago in the form of very aggressive seafaring warriors. The totem poles carved with the Makita and Echo chainsaws of Simon Jackson – woodcutter, forest manager and now carving artist – were erected in the autumn of last year and continue a similar tradition; albeit, one of just half a century.
The west Northumberland village of Stonehaugh was constructed in the early 1950s to house forestry workers. At that time, a massive expansion of the coniferous plantations just south of the Scottish border was part of the new post-war government’s vision to provide employment for both ex-servicemen and workers now no longer doing their duty in restricted occupations.
Most of those who had seen military service were quite at ease turning out to be transported by small trucks to the end of the rough tracks, shouldering their kit to dig drainage ditches or plant conifer seedlings on the bleak fellside. A few of the workers from the pits and shipyards of the North East – or more often, their wives – found the rural isolation too much to bear.
Nevertheless, a community flourished and the pioneering forestry culture brought locals and incomers together. The Warksburn picnic site at Stonehaugh was established around 1970 and one forest officer drafted in to Wark Forest (as it was known at the time) had the idea to enhance the public attraction with a set of totem poles. FC chainsaw operators Joe Potts and Allan Hutchinson – later involved for many years with timber harvesting contractor TPH – were invited to design and execute the crafting of the first Stonehaugh totem poles from locally grown Scots pine stems.
With the standard issue Husqvarna felling saws of the day, Joe completed the decoration on one pole and ‘Hutch’ on a second. The third was a collaborative effort by the pair. Inspiration for the designs was drawn from comic strips, cowboy films and the local fauna – Joe picked out the twisting form of an adder with the nose of the guide bar on his totem. The artistic nature of the task in hand, he remembers, entailed a considerable amount of thinking time.
The poles certainly put the forestry village on the visitor map of Northumberland and when after ten years the bases of the pines were showing signs of decay, they were felled and replaced with a set fashioned by Joe’s brother Jimmy, who had chosen to stay with the Forestry Commission. The saw used was, Jimmy thinks, a Husqvarna 180 or 380, and the timber was again Scots pine. A third set of poles was fashioned by Jimmy Potts in the 1990s from Sitka spruce – the native tree of the Pacific Northwest that was now the main timber producer in the Northumberland plantation forests.
The primary purpose of the plantation forests remained timber production and the investment was starting to yield dividends. The earliest woodlands established were now supplying timber that allowed existing sawmills to expand and new facilities to be constructed. The Airscrew Weyroc chipboard mill at Hexham, now one of the Stonehaugh totem pole sponsors in the form of Egger (UK) Ltd, was guaranteed supplies of raw material to develop its business plans. Produce was also moving out of the area – notable destinations for smallwood being Thames Board Mill’s facility in Workington and Bowater’s paper mill on the North Wales border.
In the l930s, when the decision was made to restore and preserve the totem poles of the indigenous peoples of Southeast Alaska, priorities in the Tongass National Forest were similar. Timber production from the old-growth forests was increasing rapidly. Experienced Alaskan lumbermen, together with time-served loggers from the lower 49 states, harvested the big trees, yarded them down to the waterside and built the Davis rafts that would be towed to the Alaskan sawmills or south to British Columbia or Washington State.
Most young enrolees in the CCC fulfilled their work experience in infrastructure projects; building the lumber camps, cutting in haul roads and constructing timber drops that could transfer wagon-hauled timber to the water. In the later years of the scheme, some CCC volunteers took their shifts in the Alaskan sawmills as the spectre of another impending world war clouded the horizon and production targets were revised upwards.
The trail roads established by workers engaged in Roosevelt’s New Deal projects were to prove essential in the production of aircraft spruce. The highest-value material the Tongass National Forest could deliver for the war effort was judged to be the clear, light boards of sawn Sitka spruce used for complementing or replacing aluminium in aircraft production. Selective harvesting of the best quality spruce stems and extraction by crawler tractor and timber arch was deemed to be the most effective way of concentrating production capacity.
From the start, however, one group of CCC enrollees were given the opportunity to learn traditional skills in the service of the US Government. Older craftsmen of the Tlingit tribe were invited to play a key role in reconstructing and conserving the custom of the totem pole and passing the skill on to younger generations. Professional architect Linn A. Forrest, employed by the US Forest Service in Oregon State, moved north to Juneau, Alaska, in 1937 to oversee the project.
In the 19th century both the US and Canadian governments, as well as Christian missionaries, had been keen to suppress the culture of the Native Americans. No effort was spared to discourage the carving and erection of free-standing totem poles, particularly common in the Pacific Northwest area. By the start of the 20th century the project had all but succeeded as the indigenous inhabitants were forced or persuaded to adapt to the norms of European civilisation.
In Southeast Alaska alone it had been thought that around 600 totem poles had been standing at the start of the 20th century. Forrest and his district rangers located around 200 in the late 1930s as examples to be used in the restoration and replication project – most were well weathered and showing signs of decay. None appeared to be less than 30 years of age. The native craftsmens’ woodworking skills were on the verge of being lost altogether.
Some experts have put forward the idea that the carving of totem and similarly decorated house poles was once an exclusive tradition of the Haida tribes living on what was to become British Columbia’s Queen Charlotte Islands. They also conclude that trade between the branch of the Haida that migrated to Alaska’s Prince of Wales Island and the local Tlingit and Tsimshian natives spread the practice of monumental woodcarving throughout the territory.
One fact is known for certain. The arrival of the white settlers led to a huge boom in carving amongst the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest. Previously the task had been painstakingly difficult and slow; the Native American carver’s toolbox was restricted to sharpened stones and animal bones. The edges of the iron tools brought by the Europeans greatly eased and accelerated the projects. Even the humblest of the tribal houses were now able to proclaim their heritage and record their history in timber by assigning a few men for a few months to the carving tasks.
Across in Northumberland, Simon Jackson, equipped with his Makita and Echo chainsaws, was able to carve his designs into the three larch poles in a matter of a couple of weeks. Measures have also been taken to ensure the new totems will last longer than Stonehaugh’s previous sets. While it is now quite possible to extend the lifespan of the timbers, both below and above ground, by various methods of preservation, permanency would be another break with the cultural tradition.
Totem poles commemorated the history and cultural relationships of the peoples who created them. They even related the aspirations, fears and disappointments of the communities. It is believed, however, that they were never intended as eternal monuments. While they could bind four or five human generations with common social traditions, the natural elements were allowed to take their toll on the oldest poles. Newer designs, reflecting the changing world, were constantly taking their own places at the heart of the society. When the driving wind and rain of a Pacific winter storm overpowered the crumbling bases of the old-timers, they were left undisturbed where they had toppled. The western red cedar poles had served their purpose and had to be permitted to return to the earth from which they had grown.
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