More Mr Lincoln, Springfield, IL – 3 JUN 2011

I found a couple more (strange) Lincoln items. The Lincoln on a totem Pole:

Proud Raven Totem Pole stands outside the Illinois State Museum.

  

One story says: Yahl-jeeji, Tlingit Chief of the Raven Clan (Tongrass Island, Alaska) commissioned a carver, Thelda, to make a totem pole commemorating the fact that a member of his (The Chief’s) family was the first in the area to see a white man (around 1883). The pole was to have a clan emblem, the raven, at the bottom and a white man at the top. The carver used a picture, from the Commanding Officer of the local Army post, as the model for the white man…Voilà, Abraham Lincoln.

  

Another story says: The ancestors of the clan tribe had been captured and taken into slavery by another Indian tribe at the time of the Civil War. Shortly after the capture, Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation and when the captors learned about it they thought it applied to their Indian slaves and promptly released them. In memory of their liberation they erected this totem pole and the carving on it was the first statue to be erected to Abraham Lincoln.

 

I vote for with the first story because contrary to the expression (low man on the totem pole), in native culture, the lower an item on a totem pole, the higher the status (and the better the carving)…this would explain why the raven is on the bottom and the white man is on the top.
I also found a very thin, tall Lincoln out side the State Fair Grounds.