In my somewhat scattered re-reads of the two Disney titles wherein Carl Barks created his most distinctive work, UNCLE SCROOGE and DONALD DUCK, the latter series has usually seemed to show less potential for myth-mining. The Donald of the comics did become much more articulate than his animated forebear. But even when Donald went on wild adventures without his money-hungry uncle, those exploits didn't seem to spark Barks' imagination quite as much, as when the artist cooked up such bizarre entities as Magica DeSpell. The Larkies, and the inhabitants of Tralla La.
To be sure, with the selected story "Land of the Totem Poles," the main opponents faced by Donald and his resourceful trio of nephews aren't that distinctive. In fact, many modern readers would probably consider Barks' depiction of a primitive tribe of Indians in British Columbia to be condescending. But Barks' main theme in "Totem" revolves around his comic validation of American entrepreneurship, and so the Indians-- I'll name them after the punny river in their terrain, "the Kickmiquik"-- exist primarily to become his ambivalent customers.
Though in this story Donald Duck does show a great deal of determination in his pursuit of a hefty sales commission, though not that much common sense. Not only does he not research the area he's assigned to sell his goods in, he barely seems to have looked at the item he's supposed to sell. He tells his nephews that he thinks it's "some sort of pressure cooker," when the item he's supposed to sell to primitive tribes is a giant steam calliope. In contrast, the three kids bring along their own set of commission-goods, but those goods-- mostly makeup items-- are both sensible and easy to transport. After Donald fails to sell anything to his first prospect, while the kids succeed, he orders them to switch with him. Of course, the second customer, a remarkably hairy hermit, does buy what the kids are selling, so that Donald fails again. This trope, in which the kids frequently outpace their uncle in some way, was one Barks surely used to appeal to his kid-audience.
However, just so the Ducks don't have an easier row to how, the kids take the hermit's order but don't leave him their "sample case," being just as motivated as Donald to make a big score even in unlikely circumstances. However, just as the river comes to an end, the Ducks see smoke signals. Donald in his blind chauvinism assumes that primitive Indians will go gaga over his sample case of makeup items. Barks takes a slight jab at this assumption, since the Kickmiquicks have heard that all palefaces are "bad medicine" and try to avoid the intrusive salesman.
Donald does manage to rope in several tribe-persons with a demonstration of the makeup, but they start using the junk before he can make any explanations, and they turn on him.
By good fortune, the nephews luck onto a method by which they can drive the calliope to the Kickmiquik village, all unaware of Donald's flight from dissatisfied customers.
When the kids find out what's what, they try to rush to the rescue, but in so doing, they destroy the calliope. However, with typical Junior Woodchuck cleverness, they transfer some of the calliope's mechanisms to the natives' totem poles. And thus they again trump their uncle, for though at first the Kickmiquiks are terrified of their totems making horrendous sounds, they rapidly change their minds and become customers for a product that the salesmen never actually intended to market. You can't get a much better validation of entrepreneurship than that, even allowing for the many comic reversals in the story.
In closing I should add that Barks didn't just draw a bunch of stock Native Americans, as a lot of artists of the period would have in his shoes. Since Barks' story hinged upon the visual pun equating calliopes and totem poles, he clearly researched the attire and artwork of the Indians most associated with totem poles, those of the Pacific Northwest. So, even if the artist's treatment of the primitive tribe might not seem virtuous to many readers today, Barks certainly exerted himself to ground his story in the actual art seen in the real-life "lands of the totem poles."
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