Ketchikan, Alaska

Ketchikan is built along a steep hillside with sections of the town built over the water on pilings. It’s history starts in 1883 when a man named Snow built a salmon saltery. By 1900 with the fishing trade flourishing, Ketchikan was in business, had a population of 800 and the town was officially incorporated.

Around 14,500 people live there now, although with the tours we took in both the morning and early afternoon, we didn’t have much of a chance to look around the city centre. As we were taken from the ship to our first stop we saw many totem poles around town which made for great viewing, particularly for those interested in Native art.

Saxman Native Village

Saxman was our first stop of the day and we were driven in from the wharf in a bus a short distance out of Ketchikan to the Native Village.

We were greeted by descendants of the original Tlingit (the other descendants who lived nearby but not of this area are the Haida and Tsimshians) and watched a 20 minute video of their history and of the legends and stories of totem poles. There are 32 standing totem poles, the oldest dating back over 100 years.

We learnt and how and why they were made – mostly they represent the family history or significant moments in their lives. Traditionally as a family became wealthy, they would plan and throw an enormous party (I’ve forgotten their name for this “party”) inviting the entire village to join them in a feast and offer gifts to everyone who attended. The cost of these parties was huge and they normally would expect to spend almost their entire savings.

In return, the family would look forward to a party held by another family where they could also expect to be offered expensive gifts and food. These parties could last anything from 1 to 3 days and each family would hope to throw their own party about once every year or two. Records of these parties would be reflected in a section of the totem pole.

If someone did not return the honour of throwing their own party, we were shown a special totem pole which was erected of a man (representing the family?) who, as an enormous sign of disrespect had his eyes, nose and ears painted red.

Totem poles are still made today by craftsmen who continue the rich traditions handed down by their forbearers. We were invited to the Carver’s Shed to watch them carving and their charges for full sized (not the miniature tourist versions, sadly displaying “Made in China” logos) totem poles is certainly not cheap as the experienced craftsmen charge approximately USD 4000/5000 per foot!

Our group was also invited inside one of their family meeting rooms, a rather large enclosed room with a stage at front that smelt beautifully and very strongly of cedar, and we watched a group of Tlingit natives showing us typical dances in their native costumes. That was both interesting and amusing as the age range was from a crawling baby to a quite elderly gentleman, however a boy about 5 or 6 kept us all amused with his dancing prowess.

Lumberjack Show

The bus took us from the Saxman Village and dropped us to the Lumberjack show enclosed arena about 15 minutes prior to the start of the show.

There’s not a lot to write about the show itself, however it was both amusing and very entertaining. Four Lumberjacks were introduced to the audience and they were divided into two teams. Then the audience was also divided into 2 halves (teams) each barracking for their respective Lumberjacks.

We were all encouraged to loudly cheer and whistle for our “own” Lumberjack men and boo and hiss when the “others” were leading or winning.

There were different types of competitions, standing block, cross-saw, chain saw, etc just as you see anywhere in an Australian wood chopping competition, and each time a team one, one person from the audience was given a wood chip as their prize.

The last competition was log rolling and that provided lots of yelling, cheering, booing and laughter.

We only had 20 minutes left at the end of the competition to walk back a short distance to the ship before we set sail for Juneau.