Still later Mr. Joseph B. Marvin was appointed special agent of the Alaska exhibit and was sent to St. Louis in December, 1903, to superintend the construction of the Alaska Building, to attend to all accounts with the Department, and to arrange for the installation of the exhibits as they arrive.

Mrs. Mary E. Hart was employed January 1, 1904, to assist in the securing of the exhibits in Alaska, especially in the Department of Education, and upon the opening of the exposition Mrs. Hart was directed to proceed to St. Louis, where she was designated as hostess and placed in charge of the bureau of information in the Alaska Building.  At the same time attendants were selected, whose duty it was to explain the exhibits to visitors.

The executive commissioner, the honorary commissioners, the hostess, all of the attendants, and those employed in collecting exhibits in Alaska were all Alaskans, the attendants being especially selected because of their acquaintance with Alaska and its products.

It was the desire of the executive commissioner that the utmost hospitality should be shown to all visitors at the Alaska Building, and the commodious and homelike parlors on the second floor of the building were free to the public, maids being employed for special attention to the wants of ladies and children.

The principal exhibits in the Alaska Building related naturally to the mining interest of the country.

One of the most impressive and significant exhibits was a gilded cube, about 3 feet in diameter, representing the size of a block of gold worth $7,200,000, which was the amount paid by the United States to Russia for Alaska, and beside it, inclosed in a brass railing, a gilded pyramid of blocks representing the amount of gold taken each year since 1882 from the Treadwell mine in Alaska, aggregating $21,800,000, a sum which is three times the amount paid for Alaska taken from one mine.

The ore exhibit, especially of gold and copper ores, was very large, filling a glass case 75 feet long and 5 feet high.  These ores were collected by an expert mineralogist employed by the Alaska commission, and included specimens from nearly all the mines in Alaska.

Following is a list of exhibits, showing the principal industries the country, as displayed throughout the building:  Marble, canned goods, furs, coal, oils, guano, vegetables and fruit, Indian basketry and curios, and mounted specimens of game and fish.

An interesting exhibit of Alaskan ethnology was made, twenty totem poles and two native houses and one war canoe being located about the building.  The totem poles came from different places on Prince of Wales Island and from two different tribes.  At an old village called Tuxekan four were obtained.  These represented the totem or heraldic sign of each family, and the back part of the totem was excavated to receive the charred bones of friends and ancestors of the man who raised it.  The Thlingits were in the habit of burning their dead, but carefully preserved all the charred embers from the funeral pile.  These totem poles were always erected on great occasions, and the bones were usually carefully wrapped in a new blanket and incased in the back part of the totem.