Canoerebel
Posts: 21100
Joined: 12/14/2002
From: Northwestern Georgia, USA
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quote:
ORIGINAL: MakeeLearn
quote:
ORIGINAL: Canoerebel
Regarding bent trees, neither the Cherokee nor their predecessors bent trees to mark trails or anything else. There is a large movement contending they did, but that movement is wrong scientifically and historically.
"is wrong scientifically and historically." Since you are so familiar with that tell us about it. And their teepees
....
The most important thing is to understand that bent trees are formed naturally and occur abundantly in the woods. I can go into the process if anybody wants to know it in detail but I think most of you who have an interest understand that bent trees are perfectly natural.
Those who claim bent trees are of American Indian origin originally claimed that they couldn't have formed naturally. They claimed that the sharp angles were irrefutable signs of the handiwork of mankind - angles that cannot be made by natural forces (I can send you citations to these contentions). So, years ago, these Bent Tree afficionados came across the bent trees, concluded they had to have been shaped by mankind, and came up with the theory that American Indians did the bending. When foresters, biologists and others pointed out that nature forms bent trees all the time, the Bent Tree afficionados dismissed these people as "naysayers and college elites." Eventually, the afficionados finally admitted that the shapes are natural (how else to explain the 5 gazillion bent trees everywhere in the woods and lawns and parks that are 25 or 75 or 150 years old - much too young for the Cherokee to have bent them). But this didn't change their underlying theory. They continued to posit that American Indians did all the bending of the trees of sufficient age - say 200+ years in the southeastern USA.
Then they ran into a historical record that is amazingly silent on the topic. Hundreds or maybe thousands of soldiers, explorers, government emissaries, mapmakers, surveyors, frontiersmen, hunters, adventurers, scientists, geologists, missionaries, and others trapsed the southeastern part of what is now the USA and left detailed diaries, letters, reports, etc. None referred to the practice of American Indians bending trees. For example, William Bartram traveled the southeast extensively in the 1770s and made notes about every little thing. But he didn't mention "trail trees"; he didn't mention the Cherokee or Creek or Seminole doing this kind of thing. Neither did Hawkins or Featherstonehaugh or scores/hundreds of others.
But Bartram noted all kinds of other ways the Cherokee marked trails - they nailed animals skins to trees, used hatchets to create blazes on trees, and cut notches into trees. In the historical records you'll find all kinds of references to "Two Notch Road" and "Three Notch Road" and "Five Notch Road" and so on and so on. But you'll find nothing about bent trees.
And why would Native Americans used bent trees when they occurred so naturally and abundantly? There'd be nothing more potentially confusing and misleading than to use as a "sign" something that occurred all the time, all over the place: "Hey, is that bent tree a 'sign tree' or is it 'natural'?" "I dunno, what do you think?" "I dunno."
Far quicker and more reliable to use an ax to create notches or blazes, or to tack skins to trees. Nature doesn't replicate those things.
But the Bent Tree afficionados disregard the scientific and historic record and continue to abide in the house built on the foundation of their original error that "bent trees must've been created by mankind." Instead of assuming the easy explanation (hey, they occur naturally all the time, so the odds are this one is natural), they do the opposite (hey, they occur naturally all the time, but let's assume this one is manmade even though there's no scientific reason to believe so and nothing in the historic record to suggest so).
Early last century, a man in Chicago wrote a letter to the editor about this. He noted that a historic marker had been placed by a bent tree commemorating American Indians forming it as a "trail tree." But he had been present when the tree was bent during a storm some 50 or 75 years previously. He knew it had been formed by natural causes. He called the notion that it had been formed by American Indians "a pretty conceit." Today's Bent Tree afficionados refer to his letter as "a well-known assertion by a naysayer, familiar to us all." They completely dismiss his firsthand account and continue to propound a theory contrary to science and the historical record. It is, after all, a pretty conceit.
< Message edited by Canoerebel -- 2/24/2018 9:07:29 PM >
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