In Chapter 6, London uses an idiom alluding to the cultures of American Indian and First Nations peoples in the Northwest:
That winter, at Dawson, Buck performed another exploit, not so heroic, perhaps, but one that put his name many notches higher on the totem-pole of Alaskan fame.
A totem pole is a tall, elaborately carved structure that can hold significance in a variety of ways. It might tell a story, either mythological or concerning real people. It might be carved as an art piece, with aesthetic form in mind. It might appear outside the house of an important person or inside a house as part of its structural support. It might appear at a border or a grave. It might even be used as part of a justice proceeding, appearing in a prominent community location with carvings intended to publicly shame someone for wrongdoing.
European settlers have long misinterpreted and simplified the many and varied forms and meanings of totem poles. The idea that the most powerful and meaningful symbols appear at the top of a totem pole is one such simplification. There is not necessarily a hierarchy of symbols on a totem pole. If there is some kind of hierarchy, some cultures place the most significant symbols at the bottom, where they are supports for the rest of the iconography. European settlers have nonetheless often persisted in the idea that there is a top-down hierarchy to any totem pole's iconography.
This misunderstanding is in fact so persistent that, even outside the context of describing actual totem poles, the appropriative language of being "high on the totem pole" functions as an idiom meaning "powerful." The more common idiomatic (and equally appropriative) expression "low man on the totem pole" gained popularity a few decades after London wrote The Call of the Wild, when a comedian used it as the title of a book. This second expression is a way of ironically commenting on someone's low social status, and it is generally considered offensive. Likewise, London is using the language of being "higher on the totem-pole of Alaskan fame" in an idiomatic way to describe Buck's ascendance within a hierarchy. The idiom is thematic given that Buck is living and working in Alaska, which is often associated with totem poles, but there is no real totem pole at play in the novel. The expression relies on the reader's prior understanding (or, more precisely, misunderstanding) of how totem poles work.
