Totem Poles and the Potlatch of the Pacific Northwest
Quality reviewed September 2026
- Grades
- Grades 9-12
- Time
- About two 50-minute class periods
- Includes
- 11 ready-to-teach files
- Format
- Word (.docx) · PowerPoint (.pptx)
- Slide deck
- Guided notes
- Guided notes teacher key
- Activity + answer key
- Quiz + answer key
- Exit ticket + answer key
- Teacher guide
- Teacher presentation notes
What students do
- Decode what a carved crest column tells a viewer about a family's rights and rank
- Compare three ways the Pacific Northwest coast kept a record: the columns, community testimony, and outside ethnography
- Read Franz Boas and George Hunt's 1897 account of the potlatch and rule on what a witnessed ceremony could actually prove
- Explain how blankets functioned as the coast's unit of value in Boas's 1897 record
What it covers
- What a crest column records, and who has the right to raise one
- How a potlatch turned a family's claim into something a whole village had witnessed
- Why George Hunt is credited as a co-researcher rather than a mere informant
- What an 1897 ethnography can and cannot settle about a coast with no alphabet
Learning targets
- Explain what a crest column records and who has the right to raise one.
- Explain how a potlatch claimed and confirmed standing in front of witnesses.
- Use Boas's own words to describe how property worked as a record.
- Name who set a record down, when, and from what standpoint.
- Judge what these records can and cannot settle about the coast.
Peek inside
The Pacific Northwest Coast runs from Alaska south to northwestern California.
The Tlingit, Haida, and Kwakwaka'wakw nations live along that coast.
Kwakwaka'wakw was historically written "Kwakiutl" in older reports.
None of these nations used an alphabet or wrote on paper.
They still kept exact track of rank, family, and story.
The Coast and the Nations Along It
The Pacific Northwest Coast runs from Alaska south to northwestern , at its southern end.
The Tlingit, , and Kwakwaka'wakw nations live along that coast.
These nations still kept exact track of rank, family, and with no alphabet.
1. A raven carved near the top of a column is a figure that one clan, and no other, owns the right to display. A figure of that kind is a .
Why this matters
Ask a class what a totem pole means and most students will say it tells a story, which is close but not quite right. A crest column is closer to a legal claim carved in cedar: it records a family's rights and rank, and a potlatch is the ceremony that made a whole village witness and accept that claim.
I like that the source here credits George Hunt alongside Franz Boas, because his name on an 1897 ethnography is its own lesson about who really did the work of recording a coast that kept no records on paper. Once students see blankets functioning as the coast's actual unit of value, they stop picturing potlatch gifts as generosity and start reading them as evidence.
From one teacher to another
This is the lesson I built to retire the "totem pole tells a story" line for good. Students learn that a crest column is a claim carved in cedar, and that the potlatch is what made the claim stick, since accepting a gift in front of witnesses meant accepting a family's rank. I like that the reading comes from Boas and Hunt together, because George Hunt's name on that title page is its own lesson about who actually did the work of recording a coast that didn't keep any records on paper.
Every file in this toolkit
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Activity (Student)
A crest column gets decoded for rank and rights first, then three ways the coast kept a record, the columns, community testimony, and Boas and Hunt's 1897 ethnography, get set against each other. Works solo, in pairs, or as a station.
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Activity (Answer Key)
What separates a defensible reading of a crest column from a guess gets spelled out here, alongside grading notes for the three-record comparison the activity asks students to build.
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Exit Ticket (Student)
Students spend the last five minutes of class judging what an 1897 ethnography can and can't settle about a coast that kept no written records at all, wrapping up right before the bell rings.
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Exit Ticket (Answer Key)
Boas and Hunt's 1897 account gets weighed against a reader's overreach in this key, so the totem pole exit ticket grades in a couple of minutes instead of eating into your prep period.
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Guided Notes (Student)
Crest columns and the potlatch fill these fill-in-the-blank notes in slide order, so students build their own record of what a carved pole records and who actually has the right to raise one.
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Guided Notes (Teacher Key)
Every answer on crest columns, witnessed gift giving, and blankets as a unit of value sits filled in here, in the order the slides present them. Keep it open while you teach or hand it to a substitute cold.
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Quiz (Student)
What a crest column claims, how a potlatch confirmed it, and how blankets worked as value make up this paper quiz, drawn only from the notes and slides already covered that period in class.
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Quiz (Answer Key)
Totem pole and potlatch quiz answers land here, from what a crest column claims to how blankets worked as the coast's unit of value, laid out one question at a time so grading takes a single pass.
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Slides
A single crest column is the first image students see, and from there the deck covers the potlatch, blankets as value, and Boas and Hunt's 1897 ethnography, in the same order as the guided notes.
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Teacher Guide
This guide flags where students usually get stuck decoding a crest column, how to pace the potlatch section, and how to frame Boas and Hunt's 1897 ethnography once students reach it.
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Teacher Presentation Notes
Slide notes for the totem pole deck cover how to open with a single crest column before the potlatch, then how to introduce George Hunt once students reach the 1897 ethnography section.
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