Instead, these tall multi-figured poles originated much farther north on the Pacific coast and represent the crests of clans and family histories of the indigenous people of Coastal Alaska and Canada. The appropriation of this symbol by Seattle dates to the late 1800s when entrepreneurial civic leaders sought to position Seattle as the “Gateway to Alaska” by installing an Alaskan pole downtown.

In August 1899, a group of Seattle businessmen sailed to Alaska in search of a pole. Their skipper took them to the Tlingit village of Tongass, which appeared abandoned because most of the residents were temporarily away for the summer fishing and cannery season. The Seattle group cut down a 60-foot-tall pole belonging to Chief Kininook's family and towed it to Seattle.

The pole was formally presented to the Seattle City Council on October 17, 1899, and raised at Pioneer Place the next day in honor of a woman named “Chief-of-all-Women,” but became known as the “Seattle Totem.” Images of the pole were featured on tourist information, and local curio shops began marketing model poles based on it. It was not until 1940 when University of Washington anthropologist, Dr. Viola Garfield, published a history of the pole that corrected decades of misinformation.