Kayung Totem Pole – British Museum, Bloomsbury, London, England

The Kayung totem pole is a 12-metre (39 ft) totem pole made by the Haida people. Carved and originally located in the village of Kayung on Graham Island in British Columbia, it dates from around 1850. Before being sold to collectors, the pole was located in a village called Kayung on Graham Island in British Columbia’s Haida Gwaii archipelago. Kayung had been an important village for the Haida before European contact. After the population was decimated by successive smallpox epidemics in the late 1800s, Henry Wiah, the town chief, encouraged the remaining population to move to nearby Masset.