Mary Franklin, age 8, of Littel Rock, Arkansas, for her question:

Why did the Indians have totem poles ?

Some of the Indian tribes had very strange notions about their ancestors. They believed their families to have descended from a favorite animals bird, fish or tree. These distant relatives' are called totems   a word we learned from the Algonquin Indians,

These make believe totems were supposed to work magic for their human relatives   good magic if they were properly respected and you¬ guess what magic if they were insulted!  Naturally, it seemed a good idea to carve these powerful relatives on tall poles and place them where they could be seen. So, one above the other they were carved on totem poles,

This old custom may seem silly to us. We donut worry much about whether we have insulted a salmon or hurt the feelings of an oak true. But, we are told that this totem custom may have been popular among our own ancestors in the distant past.