The Sheldon Jackson Museum August 2025 artifact of the month is a Tlingit miniature totem pole (SJ-I-A-461). The totem pole was carved by Tlingit artist Abner Johnson, a well-known carver from Aangóon (Angoon), a village on Admiralty Island, and traditional home to the Xootsnoowu Kwaan or “fortress of brown bears” people.
Johnson worked and taught in Sitka at the Southeast Alaska Indian Cultural Center and later in Washington at Everett Community College and Seattle Pacific College. Johnson may have carved the miniature pole at the Sheldon Jackson Museum as a maquette for the top figure on a larger, full-sized pole at Seattle Pacific College, now Seattle Pacific University. There are differences between the forms, notably the falcon on the larger pole has no teeth and the ovoids that form the falcon's eyes are different, but the similarities between the two carvings and the timing of Johnson’s works support this theory.
Seattle Pacific College's graduating class of 1971 commissioned Johnson to carve the twenty-five-foot cedar pole. According to the university’s website, he spent several years working on the pole in the art center lobby, where the campus community and the public could watch him carve. The website states: “Each figure on the pole has a symbolic meaning tied to Seattle Pacific. A falcon, the mascot of SPU, graces the top of the pole.” Today, the totem pole is located behind the Alexander and Adelaide Hall building on the school’s campus.
Johnson’s smaller totem pole, according to the small brass plaque at its base and the object file, was given to Sheldon Jackson College after students and their teacher, Professor Ken Tollefson, visited the school during the Spring Interterm in 1973 during a “Sitka Field Seminar.” A letter from Tollefson states that "Johnson, a distinguished carver presently residing in Seattle, Washington” served as co-director of the Spring Interterm Seminar: Anthropology 350 Field Experience in Anthropology. It is unclear if the students and professor commissioned Johnson to carve the pole or if he had already carved it, perhaps as a mock-up. According to museum records, Esther Billman and Alice Postell, curator and museum assistant at Sheldon Jackson Museum, and the President of the college admired Johnson’s fine work so much that they sent a check made out to Mr. Johnson as a token of appreciation for the carving.
Left: Abner Johnson carving at the Southeast Alaska Indian Cultural Center in Sitka, Alaska. Right: Full-sized pole by Johnson on the SPU campus.
The small pole is unpainted and carved in deep relief in a traditional style from a single piece of red cedar. It is signed and dated by Johnson on the back in pencil. The initials A.J. in Johnson’s characteristic script are carved deeply just below his handwritten inscription. The central figure in the carving is described as a falcon in correspondence from Seattle Pacific College but as a hawk in museum records. It has a curved beak, ovoid eyes, teeth, and wings that run down the length of its body on each side. In front of the body, just starting below the shoulders, is a tináa-like form with four split u-forms reminiscent of a tail feather followed by u-forms and ovoids.
The Sheldon Jackson Museum cares for two dozen miniature totem poles, including poles made of cedar and argillite and many poles made for the tourist trade. Visit the museum to see the August artifact of the month and other model poles. Summer hours are Monday–Friday, 9:30 am–4:30 pm, except holidays. Admission is $9, $8 for seniors, and free for ages 18 and under and active military and their families.
“”Seattle Pacific University: Ways to Engage”. Accessed August 18, 2025: https://spu.edu/diversity/land-acknowledgement/ways-to-engage.
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