HistoryLink Essay: Seattle's Potlatch Bug (1912): "Seattle was decorated with 250 plaster totem poles which bore the same exaggerated features as the Potlatch Bug. The Bug was the festival’s ubiquitous emblem: a “grotesque from a totem pole,” as the Ad Club put it, “[that] grins and grins and grins, yet always with good nature.” The Bug was produced as an automobile emblem, made of enameled brass, and as a lapel pin, identifying the wearer as a Potlatch Booster. The Bug image appeared on stationery, posters, postcards, and banners -- even on local candy and coffee labels."
Seattle Spirit Soars on Hype
Excerpts from new titles « University of Washington Press Blog: "Between 1911 and 1914 and again in the 1930s, Seattle’s premier urban festival was the potlatch. Like the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition (AYPE), the Potlatch drew on symbols of the city’s northern hinterland and trumpeted the unique virtues that assured a great future for Seattle, its residents, and its investors. More than just another example of public relations, though, Seattle’s Potlatch festival was also a way for a certain class of Seattleites—specifically, the city’s new commercial elite—to tell stories about the city and its history. Called a “triumph of symbolism” by one observer, the Potlatch appropriated Native imagery to create a regional vision of civic development. In telling stories about the places that had been linked to Seattle through its imperial networks, Seattle’s Potlatchers crafted a new narrative about what it meant to be not just in this place but in this place that dominated other places: in the premier city of the Northwest Coast."
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