Carved head missing from courthouse totem

Published 8:32 pm Sunday, May 24, 2009

BELLINGHAM — A totem pole in front of the Whatcom County Courthouse in Bellingham is missing a head, and county officials are asking the person who took it to give it back.

In March, the carved head of Russell Peabody was broken off from the bottom of the totem pole where he and a carving of Captain Henry Roeder sit between two Lummi Indian chiefs in a canoe. Peabody and Roeder built a sawmill along Whatcom Creek in 1852.

In 2007, the county spent $40,000 restoring the 22-foot cedar pole, which was originally created by Lummi carver Joseph Hillaire in 1953, to commemorate the meeting of Roeder and Peabody with Lummi leaders 100 years earlier.

Anyone who has Peabody’s head is asked to drop it off at the Whatcom County Courthouse, no questions asked.