Trail Trees: Living Guide-Posts to the Past
January 12, 2016 10:05 AM Subscribe
There are three main methods for using the trees to find your way. We can look for how the tree’s growth is influenced by the sun and how their shape is altered by the wind. The third method is to use a tree's preferences to work out the nature of the terrain ahead of us.Now let's add a fourth: follow trail marker trees, those trees that were purposely bent by Native Americans as navigation aids.
Among the variety of trail markers and trail blazing signals, bending saplings or intentionally scarring trees to shape them has produced trail marker trees that have retained their distinctive shape for centuries. Various forms of this practice can be found throughout North America, guiding people as they traveled east and west, north and south. Trail trees have been found throughout the eastern portion of the US, up in Ontario, and down in Texas.
One man is dedicated to trail trees, finding inspiration from Dr. Raymond E. Janssen, a geologist from Illinois (PDF) who studied bent trees in the 1930s and 1940s. Dennis Downes is the founder and president of the Great Lakes Trail Tree Society, and has visited such trees around the US. Jannsen wasn't the first person to study the trail trees and markers of the Illinois, as seen in Some Indian land marks of the North Shore, a book that touches on trail trees and other land marks, published in 1905.
But trees die of old age, are felled by disease and natural occurrences, as well as being cleared for agriculture and development, so finding and protecting these living artifacts can be hard. With that, the Mountain Stewards' Trail Tree Project, which is accepting submissions to expand its database (previously).
Back-tracking to the earlier mention of blazing trails, a final branch: oak trees in (southern) California have a marked history of their own, with some oaks being marked with a cross, like the former Charter Oak, namesake of Charter Oak, CA. And there's a cross carved into oak tree in Paso Robles with a semi-fictitious history, possibly mixing up bits of history including Spanish Lt. Colonel Juan Batista de Anza's other carving. Most tree carvings from the Spanish forays into California have disappeared or largely grown over, lending more value to the practice of more significant re-shaping of trees as navigational markers.
I think we have one of these in the woods behind our house in Massachusetts. Which seems insane. I'm at work or I'd go and look more closely, but it looks like the ones in the pictures, although it could be naturally occurring. It's super freaky looking though. It didn't even occur to me that people did this. If it's 'real' I wonder what it points to.
I couldn't find much documentation on the practice in New England but this is fascinating--thanks so much for this cool post.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 10:38 AM on January 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
I couldn't find much documentation on the practice in New England but this is fascinating--thanks so much for this cool post.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 10:38 AM on January 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
This is great!
I was recently in Sri Lanka, touring the gardens and some of the hotels built by (one of? the?) their most famous architects - Geoffrey Bawa - and he really liked trees to have twin trunks. So he would split the saplings to "twin" them and then shape the halves as the trees matured.
It's a weird experience to stroll through a landscape that is filled with individually natural-looking twinned trees, but then look around and see so many twinned trees in key locations and realize that every one of them was artificially shaped that way.
posted by janell at 11:02 AM on January 12, 2016 [3 favorites]
I was recently in Sri Lanka, touring the gardens and some of the hotels built by (one of? the?) their most famous architects - Geoffrey Bawa - and he really liked trees to have twin trunks. So he would split the saplings to "twin" them and then shape the halves as the trees matured.
It's a weird experience to stroll through a landscape that is filled with individually natural-looking twinned trees, but then look around and see so many twinned trees in key locations and realize that every one of them was artificially shaped that way.
posted by janell at 11:02 AM on January 12, 2016 [3 favorites]
Yet another wholly new field of human activity that I could't have thought up in a thousand years. All kinds of pleasure centres lighting up in my brain! This is why i luv metafiltaaaah.
posted by runincircles at 11:11 AM on January 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by runincircles at 11:11 AM on January 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
The natural navigation books by Tristan Gooley (whose website is linked in this great post) are fantastic - plants, animals, Sun, Moon, stars, land and water. Well worth picking up.
posted by plep at 11:30 AM on January 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by plep at 11:30 AM on January 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
If it's 'real' I wonder what it points to.
That's an interesting aspect to these trees that is as likely to get lost in time as the trees are. Sacred places are forgotten or removed, or line of sight is blocked by buildings, trails grow over or are replaced by roads, lakes are drained or go dry, and whole habitats change over time for any number of reasons, but a few of these trees remain. Then people take photos of the trees, often posing next to them, but that only provides the information that "this tree existed." That's why the Mountain Stewards' Trail Tree Project is so neat - they're trying to identify locations of the trees, as well as the direction they point. Zoom out, and it looks chaotic, but if you were to add in other landmarks and features, and records of important and sacred sites and I'm sure you'd start to see the trails.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:34 AM on January 12, 2016 [3 favorites]
That's an interesting aspect to these trees that is as likely to get lost in time as the trees are. Sacred places are forgotten or removed, or line of sight is blocked by buildings, trails grow over or are replaced by roads, lakes are drained or go dry, and whole habitats change over time for any number of reasons, but a few of these trees remain. Then people take photos of the trees, often posing next to them, but that only provides the information that "this tree existed." That's why the Mountain Stewards' Trail Tree Project is so neat - they're trying to identify locations of the trees, as well as the direction they point. Zoom out, and it looks chaotic, but if you were to add in other landmarks and features, and records of important and sacred sites and I'm sure you'd start to see the trails.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:34 AM on January 12, 2016 [3 favorites]
Is it the 'elbow' that does the pointing? Or is it dependent on the tradition? I think there are a couple of others on the land behind our house (not our land; just undeveloped land, not useful for agriculture or building--steep, rocky, and weird compared to land in other places in the area that were flattened and made into awesome farmland by periodic floodings of the Connecticut river).
The tree I'm thinking of is at the lowest point of our yard. Some of it is wetland and there's a seasonal stream about fifty feet further back.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 11:58 AM on January 12, 2016
The tree I'm thinking of is at the lowest point of our yard. Some of it is wetland and there's a seasonal stream about fifty feet further back.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 11:58 AM on January 12, 2016
This explains some of the strange trees I've seen in the Michigan woods. Thanks for posting.
posted by JoeXIII007 at 12:18 PM on January 12, 2016
posted by JoeXIII007 at 12:18 PM on January 12, 2016
The aspens in the Santa Fe National Forest have been regularly gouged by folks walking along the trails and wanting to leave their mark. They found a one engraved by Kit Carson near Pagosa Springs, CO. Naturally, they cut it down.
It's a sad commentary that the location of some of these trees is kept secret to prevent damage.
posted by jabo at 12:47 PM on January 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
It's a sad commentary that the location of some of these trees is kept secret to prevent damage.
posted by jabo at 12:47 PM on January 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
There is a tree exactly like this on Putney Mountain in Vermont, not in the Mountain Stewards database. I have to say I'm skeptical about these claims. At least that particular tree is less than 200 years old, and 200 years ago this was well- developed country in which any remaining Indians would not have had to go around bending trees to find their way. I put this into the same category as the many unsubstantiated claims about old houses with odd cellars that were assumed to be Underground Railroad way stations.
posted by beagle at 3:31 PM on January 12, 2016
posted by beagle at 3:31 PM on January 12, 2016
Here's a nice one which is along an easy hike near Akron OH. Also has discussion of the open questions of origin and intent.
posted by TreeRooster at 5:32 PM on January 12, 2016
posted by TreeRooster at 5:32 PM on January 12, 2016
I'm afraid I'm skeptical about "Indian trail trees" too. I was an environmental educator in New England and now work with history and Native American history, and I've never heard of this, either from scholars, outdoorsfolk, or old-timers. It has that uncomfortable ring of Colonial Revival storytelling and the romantic Noble Savage who "lived in complete harmony with Nature," as one link notes.
The Wikipedia entry on Trail Trees mostly draws citations from 1940, 1941, even 1911. The scholarship was not good then. There's a long, informed comment on this link that provides a lot of caution and hedging, which I appreciate.
I like the term "culturally modified tree." It certainly happens, but most of the sources supporting that entry have to do with things like harvesting bark for food or basketry, or carving faces on trees. But what also makes me skeptical is that these tree-forms are common and do have natural explanations that add up in every way. An excellent source on that (specific to New England) is the book Reading the Forested Landscape by the natural historian Tom Wessels. He describes the different forms trees can take due to heaves, hurricane downfalls, succession, etc. The bends like the ones being promoted as trail markers occur naturally when trees fall on young suckers or saplings, which rather than die, grow out and around and back upward past the interfering trunk, which might take a decade to decay completely.
posted by Miko at 5:51 PM on January 12, 2016 [6 favorites]
The Wikipedia entry on Trail Trees mostly draws citations from 1940, 1941, even 1911. The scholarship was not good then. There's a long, informed comment on this link that provides a lot of caution and hedging, which I appreciate.
I like the term "culturally modified tree." It certainly happens, but most of the sources supporting that entry have to do with things like harvesting bark for food or basketry, or carving faces on trees. But what also makes me skeptical is that these tree-forms are common and do have natural explanations that add up in every way. An excellent source on that (specific to New England) is the book Reading the Forested Landscape by the natural historian Tom Wessels. He describes the different forms trees can take due to heaves, hurricane downfalls, succession, etc. The bends like the ones being promoted as trail markers occur naturally when trees fall on young suckers or saplings, which rather than die, grow out and around and back upward past the interfering trunk, which might take a decade to decay completely.
posted by Miko at 5:51 PM on January 12, 2016 [6 favorites]
A lot of this seems to circle around a couple books, one titled Mystery of the Trees, by Don and Diane Wells, and one called Great Lakes Trail Marker Trees by Dennis Downes, neither of whose credentials inspire massive confidence. Indian Country Today has reported on this a lot, but they generally take a wide-open stance on issues like this especially where there are Native participants in the projects, but the fact that it seems that most of the storytelling and fascination and cataloguing and media-making about these trees has originated in the past century from white communities rather than Native ones, I'm really not so sure there is an ancient tradition. . Here's a video by a guy showing how young trees can take this form, in an attempt to debunk it.
I also tend to wonder how important trail marking would have been in pre-colonial times. Most early ways, especially ones important enough to work on, were pretty deeply and well worn. It wasn't a howling wildnerness, it was well tracked and people mostly knew where they were going and knew the surrounding landscape. It was Westerners that needed trails, not Natives. Maaayyybe some trails that marked sites you'd only access once a year or so would need a lot of additional marking - maybe.
Also in areas that were frequently foraged or hunted or lived in, the people who lived there didn't tend to let the forest go so much that there were a lot of deadfall trees in every windstorm. Yes, forests are full of deadfalls today and that creates this kind of tree, but the prevalence of deadfalls is more of a post-colonial-era thing that comes from letting secondary-growth forests go unmanaged.
This link has a disclaimer that reads:
Anyway, like most of these sorts of things, the stories themselves (and their surprising prevalance, apparently especially in the Southeast and lower Midwest) are every bit as interesting as the history they are claiming to relate. It's one of those interesting glimpses that says a lot about how settlers of recent generations have thought about the people who were here before. And you put a lot of work into the FPP and surfaced an interesting fascination that consumed a lot of people's time and imagination. It's interesting.
And then there are witness trees, a pretty well-established thing (previously on MetaFilter).
posted by Miko at 6:16 PM on January 12, 2016 [4 favorites]
I also tend to wonder how important trail marking would have been in pre-colonial times. Most early ways, especially ones important enough to work on, were pretty deeply and well worn. It wasn't a howling wildnerness, it was well tracked and people mostly knew where they were going and knew the surrounding landscape. It was Westerners that needed trails, not Natives. Maaayyybe some trails that marked sites you'd only access once a year or so would need a lot of additional marking - maybe.
Also in areas that were frequently foraged or hunted or lived in, the people who lived there didn't tend to let the forest go so much that there were a lot of deadfall trees in every windstorm. Yes, forests are full of deadfalls today and that creates this kind of tree, but the prevalence of deadfalls is more of a post-colonial-era thing that comes from letting secondary-growth forests go unmanaged.
This link has a disclaimer that reads:
The idea of "trail trees" is controversial, however, and not well documented in primary source records. Said one writer, as early as 1970: "It is very possible that many old trees we might think were Indian trail markers or thong trees were really casualties. That is, their deformities were caused by natural occurrences such as ice storms or tornadoes." See also "The Thong Tree Myth: Images and Realities," by Lynn Morrow. You can read an interesting discussion of the matter on this bulletin board. Make sure to read all the way to the comments at the end. You can read Wells' answers to the skeptics by clicking here.)Unfortunately, all those links are dead, but you can Google around and find traces of skepticism (and very little contribution to the discussion from geographers, Native scholars, historians, etc). I would want some primary visual or documentary sources to believe that this overspread the land as an intentional trail marking strategy.
Anyway, like most of these sorts of things, the stories themselves (and their surprising prevalance, apparently especially in the Southeast and lower Midwest) are every bit as interesting as the history they are claiming to relate. It's one of those interesting glimpses that says a lot about how settlers of recent generations have thought about the people who were here before. And you put a lot of work into the FPP and surfaced an interesting fascination that consumed a lot of people's time and imagination. It's interesting.
And then there are witness trees, a pretty well-established thing (previously on MetaFilter).
posted by Miko at 6:16 PM on January 12, 2016 [4 favorites]
I agree that there can also be natural explanations for bent and shaped trees, but it sounds like the Texas Historic Tree Coalition talked to someone who has more direct knowledge of marker trees:
posted by filthy light thief at 7:24 PM on January 12, 2016
According to tribal elders of various Indian nations, individual tribes had different styles of selecting and bending marker trees. For example, Indian marker trees found in Florida may be from the Seminole tribe, where trees found in Alabama may be Choctaw or Chickasaw. The form and function of each tree can vary considerably, but all of them served an important purpose that may not be clear without researching the surrounding area for clues and checking with various experts. As an example, the California Crossing Marker Tree, in Dallas, signified a good area to cross the Trinity River with shallow water, an important fact to know many years ago.On the other hand, it's very vague and sounds to some degree like they're just identifying the tribes that inhabited the various regions, not actually referencing people of those tribes.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:24 PM on January 12, 2016
I don't really see a citation there. As you say, "according to tribal elders of various" nations is not really a source. And the statement at the end:
This is also the article that contains a variation of the statement "Native Americans understood, celebrated, and lived in complete harmony with all aspects of our natural world." It's all so wishful and romantic; that's a stereotype. And that coalition is just a small ad hoc self-organized volunteer group of people, not an official state agency or anything. The Housman guy who wrote that piece is also the same guy who "authenticates" the tree for their registry - that's not what you could call a disinterested review. One of his criteria is that Native artifacts are found "in the area" - well, there's just about nowhere in Texas or the Southwest or Southeast that you can't find Native artifacts.
I'd be wary of passing on this stuff as true.
posted by Miko at 8:49 PM on January 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
To the skeptics that say nature, not Indians, created these trees, I would pose a simple question: How could nature create two trees near each other (termed “doublets”) or even three trees close together?Well, this is just sort of ...dumb when you visualize one large tree falling across many saplings, which would produce exactly the same effect.
This is also the article that contains a variation of the statement "Native Americans understood, celebrated, and lived in complete harmony with all aspects of our natural world." It's all so wishful and romantic; that's a stereotype. And that coalition is just a small ad hoc self-organized volunteer group of people, not an official state agency or anything. The Housman guy who wrote that piece is also the same guy who "authenticates" the tree for their registry - that's not what you could call a disinterested review. One of his criteria is that Native artifacts are found "in the area" - well, there's just about nowhere in Texas or the Southwest or Southeast that you can't find Native artifacts.
I'd be wary of passing on this stuff as true.
posted by Miko at 8:49 PM on January 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
Crooked Forest, Poland/former Germany.
posted by pracowity at 2:34 AM on January 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by pracowity at 2:34 AM on January 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
Does any contemporary culture in the world shape trees? If not, then the idea this practice arrived once in human history is shaky.
posted by iamck at 5:48 AM on January 13, 2016
posted by iamck at 5:48 AM on January 13, 2016
pracowity: Crooked Forest, Poland/former Germany.
That was my first thought when I read about these "trail trees," and it gives credence to the idea that two bent trees aren't really that unlikely.
Miko, you've moved me into the strongly skeptical category on this. Thanks for your insights and inquiries.
iamck - there's bonsai, topiary, espalier, pleaching and the more coarse pollarding, which generally deal with visual appeal. Then there's the amazing and practical living banyan fig root bridges of Cherrapunjee, India. And there are a lot of individuals who do tree shaping, though it's mostly artistic and semi-practical ("living chairs" and whatnot). But in my mind it wasn't too far of a stretch to imagine people deciding that trail blazes weren't visible enough from a distance or permanent enough, and upon seeing naturally bent trees thought "ah, we can do this ourselves." Dennis Downes of Great Lakes Trail Marker Tree Society is carrying on this "tradition," as seen in his gallery of trail trees.
But all that doesn't really answer your question regarding this specific practice, or anything similar to it, being done at a community or cultural level.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:12 AM on January 13, 2016 [3 favorites]
That was my first thought when I read about these "trail trees," and it gives credence to the idea that two bent trees aren't really that unlikely.
Miko, you've moved me into the strongly skeptical category on this. Thanks for your insights and inquiries.
iamck - there's bonsai, topiary, espalier, pleaching and the more coarse pollarding, which generally deal with visual appeal. Then there's the amazing and practical living banyan fig root bridges of Cherrapunjee, India. And there are a lot of individuals who do tree shaping, though it's mostly artistic and semi-practical ("living chairs" and whatnot). But in my mind it wasn't too far of a stretch to imagine people deciding that trail blazes weren't visible enough from a distance or permanent enough, and upon seeing naturally bent trees thought "ah, we can do this ourselves." Dennis Downes of Great Lakes Trail Marker Tree Society is carrying on this "tradition," as seen in his gallery of trail trees.
But all that doesn't really answer your question regarding this specific practice, or anything similar to it, being done at a community or cultural level.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:12 AM on January 13, 2016 [3 favorites]
My bet on the crooked forest is that someone wanted to use the curved trees for boats or furniture or something like that, but they never got around to harvesting their crop. This page says they were probably planted in 1934, which, if correct, puts them near the Polish/German border before WWII. Anything could have happened to their planters.
posted by pracowity at 10:01 AM on January 13, 2016
posted by pracowity at 10:01 AM on January 13, 2016
filthy - I guess my question is if tree shaping is used to create paths through the bush, anywhere. If it was that evident, seems like it would be used somewhere? I've spent lots of time in West Africa deep in the country and never heard of tree shaping to navigate. Stars, yes. Purposely shaped trees, not so much.
posted by iamck at 12:53 PM on January 13, 2016
posted by iamck at 12:53 PM on January 13, 2016
There's a shipbuilding timber called the knee, a curved timber that links the side of the interior hull to the decking on the level above. It's best made out of a natural bend in a tree, because the grain follows the bend, which it wouldn't if you pieced it together, and that's much stronger than a joint. Here's a UK website talking about trees being "chained" to create more knees. I could see something like that giving rise to the crooked forest.
That said I've spent a lot of time around shipbuilding and boatbuilding in the US and only know of knees cut from naturally occuring bends. There was never much of a shortage of timber in the US so it's always been relatively easy to find natural knees. I'm not aware of anywhere in this country people were chaining trees to create this type of timber purposefully, but it could have happened here sometime I suppose.
posted by Miko at 7:24 PM on January 13, 2016 [2 favorites]
That said I've spent a lot of time around shipbuilding and boatbuilding in the US and only know of knees cut from naturally occuring bends. There was never much of a shortage of timber in the US so it's always been relatively easy to find natural knees. I'm not aware of anywhere in this country people were chaining trees to create this type of timber purposefully, but it could have happened here sometime I suppose.
posted by Miko at 7:24 PM on January 13, 2016 [2 favorites]
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And a final tangent on cross-marked trees of California - I could have sworn there was a trail of 300+ year old oaks, all marked with crosses, but I can't find a reference to this online. I know one was found in Central Coast California, but it wasn't publicly announced for fear that the tree would be vandalized.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:06 AM on January 12, 2016 [2 favorites]