The surrounding totems give the garden a group of vertical forms around Califia. Wikipedia's garden article describes eight totems between 11 and 21 feet tall, covered with stylised symbols, creatures and animals that have roles in the mythologies of Indigenous peoples. That published description establishes both their scale and their subject matter. It leaves room for careful looking, without requiring a visitor to supply a personal name or a fixed identity for each figure.
These forms can be considered as a surrounding group and as separate sculptures. The overall garden guide places them after the maze and within the courtyard; the central-group page considers the queen and eagle they surround. Reading those pages together keeps position in view. The relationship between a central form and nearby figures is part of the garden's arrangement, even when the figures are described without individual labels.
What the word totem carries
Wikipedia's article on totems explains the term as a being, object or symbol serving as an emblem for a group such as a family or clan. It also discusses variation in related ideas across cultures. This is important background for reading an artwork that uses the term. A word can bring a cultural history with it, while an artist's sculptural use of that word remains a particular use within a particular work.
The general definition is not an identification key for the garden. It gives a reader a reason to proceed with attention to context. Shape alone cannot establish a figure's community, story or sacred role. Where the garden article speaks broadly of Indigenous mythologies, the guide keeps that breadth. A detailed interpretation would need detailed evidence. In the meantime, it is possible to describe the published arrangement, the stylisation and the materials without turning uncertainty into an invented explanation.
A broad artistic reference
The garden article names Native American, pre-Columbian and Mexican art among the influences on its freestanding sculptures. Wikipedia's overview of pre-Columbian art covers the visual arts of Indigenous peoples across the Americas before the European conquests, including sculpture, metalwork, pottery and painting. It is a broad category of art, spanning different places and practices. The term supplies context for an influence; it does not mean that all of the cultures discussed made the same kinds of objects or gave them the same meanings.
That distinction matters in a garden bringing several influences into a sculptural environment. The references describe Niki de Saint Phalle's work as drawing on those materials and ideas. They do not establish every totem as a direct copy of a named cultural object. A careful description can acknowledge influence while remaining specific about what the reference actually identifies. The symbols page carries this approach into the eagle, serpent and rock-art motifs discussed elsewhere in the garden.
Looking at the group
A useful way to consider the totems is to move between silhouette and surface in the written descriptions. Silhouette concerns the outer line of a form. Surface concerns the mosaic that covers it. The same sculpture can be discussed in both ways, but the questions are different: how does a form stand in relation to the centre, and how do its materials divide or join the surface? These are questions of looking, not a claim to know the artist's intention for every mark.
Wikipedia describes hand-cut glass, ceramic and stone across the garden's sculptures. The material vocabulary helps a reader avoid using colour as the only descriptive tool. A mosaic is assembled from pieces, and an account can consider the way a surface belongs to a larger form. The mosaic guide explains that vocabulary. The making page considers the models and structural layers behind the finished forms, adding a different kind of context to their appearance.
The eagle in context
The garden article singles out the eagle as important in Native American and Indigenous Mexican legends, and as a recurring image in the artist's work. The general Wikipedia eagle article discusses associations with strength, courage and independence in heraldry. Those broader associations can accompany a reading of the central bird, while remaining background rather than a rule for the surrounding figures. The garden's group can be understood through the described relationships without assuming that a meaning in one tradition applies everywhere.
Attention to limits need not make a description thin. It gives space to the things that can be stated clearly: the surrounding arrangement, the use of stylised creatures and animals, the named artistic influences and the mosaic materials. A reader can then bring questions back to the whole circle. What changes when a figure is considered as part of the surrounding group? What becomes more visible when material is considered alongside outline? Those questions keep the totems connected to the garden while respecting the cultural depth of the term.