Synopsis:
Donald Duck takes a job as salesman without really knowing what he is supposed to sell. He is selling steam calliopes and his customers are penniless Indians living in British Columbia. Donald crisscrosses the province in the vain hope of making, at least, one sale of the infernal sounding instruments.

A few scattered remarks:

The nephews tag along with Donald in their own job as salesmen for a wide range of cosmetics.

In 1949 Barks journeyed to British Columbia in Canada to do photo research for authentic scenery. The impressive and realistic results were presented in the story.

The magazine was one of a few issues in which Barks made all the pages (6 works).

The story was published along with FC0263 Trail of the Unicorn that was placed last in the magazine although it was delivered sometime earlier to the publisher.

Barks made several stories that included extensive photo research. Two examples from his own family: During the 1950s Barks' daughter Peggy's husband managed a salmon hatchery close to Puget Sound in Washington State, and Barks made WDCS192 'The Kingfisher' in 1956 based on observations at the site. The couple had been acknowledged two years before, when Barks made his first duck story splash panel depicting a splendid view of the Puget Sound in WDCS167 'Salmon Derby', where the couple lived.

The story has never been perceived as one of Barks' most interesting. It took a full 34 years for it to emerge in Denmark!

When Barks was asked which adventure stories he was most fond of he would always mention the totem pole story among the top 3, as it had so many interesting ingredients.

Besides delivering a superb piece of competent artwork, Barks excelled in all sorts of oddities in the story. Examples are a measurement of irregular panels (which was a novelty back then), an unusual but plausible transportation invention, an invented Indian language (that Barks took up more times in later stories), and invented location names such as Chilled Foot and Kickmiquik River.

Presumably, Barks used several of his research notes and photos in later stories. At least, British Columbia is situated just south of the Yukon Territory, in which the gold miner stories starring Scrooge McDuck took place.

Several years later Barks made a basically similar story incorporating different main ingredients such as the selling of a gigantic object - a hangar heater. It happened in U$20 City of Golden Roofs from 1958.

Barks was not known for travelling abroad, in fact, many fans just know about his grand tour to Europe in 1994. And it is true that he preferred to remain at home making his stories, but he also managed to go on shorter or longer trips. Living quite close to the Californian/Mexican border for a number of years, he and his wife Garé would occasionally drive down south to take in some of the folklore.
But before they met each other Barks took a long vacation to British Columbia, the westernmost state in Canada situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. As usual he made extensive research for his comic book stories, which primarily happened by use of his cameras (Barks was a fine photographer all of his adult life), and he made sure that he had ample material for the totem pole story by photographing the vicinity and the folklore. This is a contributing reason for Barks to add the story among his top favourites.

Throughout his adult life Barks had an affinity for drawing real humanized characters, and he would occasionally incorporate them in his Disney comic book stories alongside the expected anthropomorphic characters. This had started in 1947 and it only stopped in 1951 when he was forbidden by his editor to pursue this line of work (see Barks' last and most famous story with humans HERE.)
In the totem pole story Barks made a very interesting distinction between real and anthropomorphic characters as he divided them into two major groups; the white Caucasian characters have button (dog) noses, while the native red Indians all have human, partly caricatured, features. This was done on several occasions in other stories; the first adventure story were FC0159 Adventure Down Under from 1947, in which all the Australian aboriginals are portrayed as humans.

Cutout from a bigger panel

Barks liked to mix surprising and funny scenes into his story panels, which bears witness of a dedicated artist that often went out of his way to give his readers that little extra, that was not part of his fellow artists' repertoires. Many of Barks' special ideas are of an understated nature which means that most of them are not even discovered on the first reading of a story (see examples HERE).
In the totem pole story Barks are in top form, and the panels are filled with peculiarities. Examples: A statue is taking a shower using a garden hose, an insect is chasing a frightened fish over the water's surface, not to mention a hilarious hermit who is totally covered in hair.