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Dedication of the Pioneer Square Totem Pole occurred on 10/18/1899. Members of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce appropriated the totem pole in the vicinity of Fort Tongass on Tongass Island, AK, from a Kinninook village that the recovery group said was deserted. The Kinninook, or Raven Clan, belonged to the Tlingit Nation. The totem commemorated the death of an important woman in the village who drowned while trying to visit her ill sister and was executed c. 1790. Although Chamber of Commerce members claimed that the locals did not object to the totem being chopped down and sawn in two for transport, the Tlingit filed suit against the perpetrators, claiming theft. (Earlier, 17 totems had been taken from this village by the Harriman Expedition, a botanical and ethnographic collecting team organized and led by the Union Pacific Railroad's Director, Edward H. Harriman [1848-1909]. Harriman invited a star-studded group of naturalists, including John Burroughs [1837-1921] and John Muir [1838-1914], the photographer Edward S. Curtis [1868-1952] and writer Charles Keeler [1871-1937]. The group sailed from Seattle, WA, on 05/31/1899 aboard the Harriman's steamship, the George W. Elder, to begin its two-month circuit of the Alaskan Territory, and recovered a trove of specimens that were distributed to East Coast museums and universities.) The Tlingit received $500 for the sacred object, ($15,000 less than they had sought) and all charges were dropped against the wealthy and influential Chamber of Commerce members by a sympathetic U.S. District Court Judge. An arsonist burned the Pioneer Square Totem Pole severely on 10/22/1938, necessitating its removal. A replacement carved by ancestors of the Raven Clan members was erected in 1940.

Since its erection during the Klondike Gold Rush, the Pioneer Square Totem Pole was publicized as a major tourist attraction in Downtown Seattle, and was highlighted for tourists visiting for the 1909 Alaskan-Yukon-Pacific Exposition.

PCAD id: 4553