MakeeLearn
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I believe a bigger subject is being put on top of my original point. Encompassing it and steering it in a certain direction. Looking into Trail trees I see that there is large following of believing that a bent tree is a man made landmark tree. My point was concerning a more subtle use of of a tree sign and it's transition in folklore.
My original main point.
"A Cherokee, or any person of that time/place would alter a small tree, or it's branches to convey a "Sign" message, and if left in that position long enough it would grow into that position. And the sender or receiver would note it's altered growth over the years and tell it's tale. "
Landmark/trail trees are different from a sign tree and I was explaining how folklore could have happen.
I was trying to explain how a small tree used as sign could have been left in that position, the tale was told, passed as folklore so that those Landmark Trail mature trees now appear everywhere.
quote:
"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."
Well of course!!! That verges on being "Lawyer Grease", I've got all kinds of weird shape trees around me. Most natural, some I've done.
The majority of trees that exist today are skaggy pion trees compared to the trees that were here then. With multiple layers. Even in Rutherford's time, late 1700s, he tells of canopies of the same group of grape vines that covered over a mile.
To me a important point about longterm "Landmark Trail" trees, if made by the Indians it would been more than just a tree with a bend in it. It would have been a work of art... Medicine. That the Indians shaped trees for the long term I have no doubt, but just a bend?
quote:
"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. "
Most of those people you listed would not know a "tactical sign" from a hole in the ground. They could not fully understand the Indians much less convey it to a reader. Like music to someone who has a tin ear. Many Indian Signs would have passed under the radar for the majority of them. They were whites looking into the Indian world. So what they see and then describe has a chance of being out of context. Like music theory to someone who has a tin ear. In all study of Indian history it's best to learn as much as possible and then to see through the eyes of a detective.
If it is written "They looked for Indian sign..." it does not always mean just footprints and litter.
The Indians hung all kinds of things in trees, they decorated their world and each different meaning. Not every sign would have been for mass consumption. Nor would they want it easily seen. Not every Indian Sign was a neon sign.
I spent 2 years learning the art of the ambush in the tropics and Ive spent decades in the woods. I've tracked a bear by prints and signs for 2 years off and on until I found it. I can smell deer and snakes when the conditions are right. Ive learned the sounds of the animals around me and what they may be indicating. Once as we made our way Indian file through the jungle I noticed a elephant ear plant and one ear was hanging a little closer to the stalk than the others. "NEST" whispered in my head and as I creeped by I looked at the backside of the lower hanging leaf and there was a fist size bee nest. A awesome feeling - one with my surroundings.
All that, and having Creek blood, Point is... I see how the Indian world would have been on a different thinking plane than most white people in that era, except for those whites that had become as Indians. So expecting whites to correctly and completely comprehend and write about the Indians world of that time is a unrealistic expectation.
Have you read every account?
1770s is late.
Not reading the unabridged accounts of the DeSoto expedition is to build a house on sand, no matter how many or what other works are read no full understanding can be had without it.
Garcilaso de la Vega gives the best and first account of southeastern Indians.
I don't have access to the books I use to. At one time, having no AC in Alabama I lived in the Library Reference section and off shelf book room of the library and had access to many older books.
Some I can remember
-The original Desoto accounts. Symmetrical forests, trees shaped into the fortress walls of towns. Wood carvings in cut and living wood. And other use of Signs. The SCRIPTURE .
-Works and tales of Simon Kenton. Signs tree/rocks/etc use.
-Rutherford Survey Expedition. There is the landmark tree and maybe some other signs. He tells of Indian spirits they encountered.
-Works by the writer of the New Testament on Indian history - John Swanton(1920s). Lots of detail as he pulls from older writings and some first hand accounts of tribal history.
And two other books. Ive got stuff in boxes due to construction right now. Large compilation works:
~ "History of the Southeastern Indians"
~ "History and Culture of the Cherokee"
For those that don't know, as shown by the ~ sign Iam unsure of the exact titles. The second contains a lot of stuff that is the first, it was a gift to me from one of my group when I was a walk leader at a fitness spa.
quote:
"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)."
That's the point. Do you want a big Neon sign for every thing... "This way" or "I saw so and so in this area". Trade Paths, Peace Paths and War Paths... those are actual paths, some times you want the sign to be as discrete as possible.... noticeable only to those who know them. Reading Sign was only half, you had to find the sign.
quote:
"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."
To get back to bent Trail trees which was not the focus of my original point but is still interesting:
And that man was George H. Holt and though he admits to seeing the bent in the tree being naturally formed, that is not his best argument.
His statement that: "Any Indian who was so ignorant of woodcraft as to conceive of marking a trail by bending over a limb and fastening it to the ground in the manner indicated in this tablet, would have been the laughing stock of every other Indian." ... carries more weight in his protest of a simple bent tree.
And "George H. Holt was the only person to voice an opinion against the trail market tree research. He was in the lumber business, so he may have had other reasons for not wanting trees identified as historic trail marker trees."
And there is Valentine Smith's rebuttal to Holt.
"Trail Tree" Tablet. Chicago, Nov 15.
To the Editor: As chairman of the committee of the Chicago Daughters of the American Revolution which erected this bronze table, I have decided to reply to the criticisms of George H. Holt.
Mr. Holt stands alone in his contentions. I think he must have mistaken the tree, because his memory would be almost superhuman if he ever saw the pointing branch of that tree stand upright. We have not acted without consulting authorities. Frank R. Grover, vice president of the Evanston Historical Society, read a paper on Indian trail marks before the Chicago Historical Society on Feb. 21, 1905. His paper can be found on pages 267-8 of the publication of that society. He said that at various points along the north shore, following the old Indian trails, trees were still to be found which had evidently been bent and tied down with saplings to mark the Indian trails. The trees, he said, were invariably large, which indicated that they had been bent something over a century ago. One of the trees he mentioned was selected by the committee to support the tablet.
The "pointing branch' of this tree was not broken, but bent. The fiber of the wood leaves no doubt of this fact. The same even curve to be observed in the fiber was to be discerned in the bark before relic hunters stripped it bare. A whirlwind would not have left the tree in this condition.
Mr. Holt is evidently unaware of the existence of three other trees along the same trail from Lakeside station south to Hubbard's woods. Each tree has its pointing branch and all are white elms. They are arranged so systematically that they tell their own story. Moreover, the use of "trail" trees so marked is not doubted by Jens Jensen, landscape architect and member of the outer park belt commission, City Forester Prost and other experts."
< Message edited by MakeeLearn -- 2/25/2018 2:57:10 PM >
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