When you carve out the totem-poles (Fig. 256 or 262), the log had better
be put on an elongated sawbuck arrangement which will hold it free from
the ground and allow one to turn it over as the work may require. Fig. 259
represents a peeled log. On this log one may sketch, with chalk, the
various figures here represented, then begin by notching the log (Fig.
258) according to the notches which are necessary to carve out the totem.
Figs. 260, 261, and 262 show different views of the same totem figures.
Fig. 257 shows how to make a variation of the totem-pole. Paint your totem
heads and figures red, blue, and yellow, and to suit your fancy; the more
startling they are the better will they imitate the Indian totems. The
weather will eventually tone them down to the harmonious colors of a
Turkish rug.
In "The Boy Pioneers" I have told how to make various other forms of
totems, all of which have since been built by boys and men in different
parts of the country. Mr. Stewart Edward White, a member of the Camp-Fire
Club of America, woodsman, plainsman, mountaineer, and African hunter and
explorer, built himself a totem in the form of a huge bird twelve feet
high from the plans published in "The Boy Pioneers," and I anticipate no
great difficulty will be encountered by those who try to totemize a log
cabin after the manner shown by Fig. 258. It will not, however, be a small
boy's work, but the small boys who started at the beginning of this book
are older and more experienced now, and, even if they cannot handle the
big logs themselves, they are perfectly competent to teach their daddies
and uncles and their big brothers how to do it, so they may act as boss
builders and architects and let the older men do the heavy work. But
however you proceed to build this house, when it is finished you will have
a typically native building, and at the same time different from all
others, as quaint as any bungling bungalow, and in better taste, because
it will fit in the landscape and become part of it and look as if it
_belonged there_, in place of appearing as if it had been blown by a
tornado from some box factory and deposited in an unsuitable landscape.
Fig. 256. Fig. 257. Fig. 258. Fig. 259. Fig. 260. Fig. 261.
Fig. 262.
[Illustration: Totem-poles and how to make them.]
You must understand by this that unsuitable refers to the fact that a
bungalow _does not_ belong in the American landscape, although many of the
cottages and shacks, miscalled bungalows, may be thoroughly American and
appropriate to the American surroundings despite the exotic name by which
some people humble them.