Clans take down Wrangell’s Three-Frog Totem on Shakes Island

Wrangell’s famed Three-Frog Totem on Shakes Island is no more. The clans involved in the pole’s history decided its purpose had long since passed. It was taken down in a ceremony on Sept. 6 in the Southeast Alaska community.

Kiks.adi clan mother Katherine Geroge-Byrd said the pole’s origins date back to the 19th century. A Naanyaa.aayí chief’s three sons were slated to wed Kiks.adi women in a series of arranged marriages. Instead, the three women instead fell in love with — and ran away with — slaves. For the Naanyaa.aayí chief, the Kiks.adi owed him a debt.

The clan erected a totem pole adorned with three frogs to represent the unpaid debt. Keeping in line with the tradition of shame totems, when the pole eventually fell down, the debt was to be forgotten and forgiven.

However, that is not how the totem’s story ended.

In 1940, a U.S. Forest Service-led initiative produced a replica pole on Shakes Island. Despite the fact that the debt was supposed to have been long forgotten, a version of the pole stood for the past 80 years. In addition to the Forest Service project, a Wrangell Cooperative Association project produced another replica near the end of the 20th century.

At the Sept. 6 ceremony, both clans said the pole should never have been replicated, and taking the totem down was long overdue.

George-Byrd said she will leave the pole’s two large logs on the ground at Shakes Island. The three-frogs piece from atop the pole, however, will be cremated.

The ceremony’s participants held cedar branches to dispel negativity as the Naanyaa.aayí and Kiks.adi took turns singing songs and thanking each other. Onlookers watched as the pole was pulled down by two ropes tied to the cross section atop the vertical totem. Cheers rang out when the pole crashed to the earth.

Richard Tashee Rinehart spoke on behalf of the Kiks.adi.

“Thank you for what you have done here. We very much appreciate everything you have done,” he told the Naanyaa.aayí.

The event was well attended, as many out-of-town visitors were already scheduled to be in Wrangell for the ku.éex’ that was scheduled to take place on the Saturday and Sunday following the Friday take-down of the Three-Frog Totem.

A ku.éex’ is a celebration that usually takes place a year after the death of a clan member. In this case, it was for two people: Hankie kaa Tsàas Hoyt and Chrstine Kahtle-et Jenkins. The multi-day festivities serve as a celebration of gratitude from one clan to the other, thanking their opposites for helping them through the mourning process following a clan member’s passing.

This year’s celebration brought hundreds of visitors to town for the weekend, so organizers purposefully scheduled the totem removal to coincide with the ku.éex.

After the pole came down, Lu Knapp, one of the ceremony’s leaders, spoke to the crowd.

“We will not speak of this again and the pole will not be put up again,” she said.

The Sentinel obtained the appropriate permissions to report on this event so as to not violate the clan’s wishes.

The Sentinel, which had used the totem in its masthead, website and logos since the 1970s, has removed the art from its logo and is in the process of reprinting envelopes, business cards and such to ensure that the Three-Frog Totem is never again used by the newspaper.

This story originally appeared in the Wrangell Sentinel and is republished with permission.