Its sculptor was
Tony Hunt, the chief of the
Kwagu'ł tribe in
British Columbia, as a 1986 replacement for the totem pole that stood at the site since 1929. That pole was carved in 1893 for the
World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago by
George Hunt (
Tlingit), an ethnologist from Alaska who assisted Franz Boas at the fair and served also as a linguist and interpreter. He was Tony Hunt's direct ancestor. The first Hunt totem pole was purchased after the fair by
cheese baron James L. Kraft, the founder of
Kraft Foods and later donated to the city of Chicago. It was placed in the park in 1929. It suffered from poor maintenance, weathering and vandalism over the years, and was sent to the
Museum of Anthropology at the
University of British Columbia in 1985 for study and conservation. ==See also==