<P> The meanings of the designs on totem poles are as varied as the cultures that make them . Some poles celebrate cultural beliefs that may recount familiar legends, clan lineages, or notable events, while others are mostly artistic . Animals and other characters carved on the pole are typically used as symbols to represent characters or events in a story; however, some may reference the moiety of the pole's owner, or simply fill up empty space on the pole . The carved figures interlock, one above the other, to create the overall design, which may rise to a height of sixty feet or more . Smaller carvings may be positioned in vacant spaces, or they may be tucked inside the ears or hang out of the mouths of the pole's larger figures . </P> <P> Some of the figures on the poles constitute symbolic reminders of quarrels, murders, debts, and other unpleasant occurrences about which the Native Americans prefer to remain silent...The most widely known tales, like those of the exploits of Raven and of Kats who married the bear woman, are familiar to almost every native of the area . Carvings which symbolize these tales are sufficiently conventionalized to be readily recognizable even by persons whose lineage did not recount them as their own legendary history . </P> <P> Those from cultures that do not carve totem poles often assume that the linear representation of the figures places the most importance on the highest figure, an idea that became pervasive in the dominant culture after it entered into mainstream parlance by the 1930s with the phrase "low man on the totem pole" (and as the title of a bestselling 1941 humor book by H. Allen Smith). However, Native sources either reject the linear component altogether, or reverse the hierarchy, with the most important representations on the bottom, bearing the weight of all the other figures, or at eye level with the viewer to heighten their significance . Many poles have no vertical arrangement at all, consisting of a lone figure atop an undecorated column . </P> <P> There are six basic types of totem poles: house frontal poles, interior house posts, mortuary poles, memorial poles, welcome poles, and the ridicule or shame pole . </P>

What is the most important part of a totem pole
find me the text answering this question