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Uncle Wayne
01-16-2021, 10:40
Hello,

I need some help locating these two trees please. meaning I need the GPS cooridinates for each one. I'm trying to get them added to a national data base of marker trees and need the GPS coordinates to do so. I didn't have a GPS or digital camera when I hiked by them so I don't have an exact location.

If any one has them I would appreciate your help very much. The first one is located right on the trail south of Stecoah Gap and the second is just a few feet off the trail north of Blood Mountain I believe. Thanks.

gpburdelljr
01-16-2021, 13:30
Any Native American marker trees would have to be pretty old, and consequently pretty big. The Trail of Tears was about 180 years ago.

Slo-go'en
01-16-2021, 13:40
It is highly unlikely any of those trees still exist today. Although the trees pictured look strange, natural forces can cause that kind of growth and those trees are likely less then 50 years old.

PGH1NC
01-16-2021, 13:57
There is a marker tree on a trail I hike regularly, even this morning. It set right at a modern section marker. I'm thinking it might have been placed/grown there by early surveyors but a call to the county engineers office knows nothing about it.

Tuxhiker
01-16-2021, 14:11
Very interesting topic! I have never heard of marker trees before but I do pay attention to trees with unusual shapes. Thanks for bringing up this topic!

Uncle Wayne
01-16-2021, 14:34
Any Native American marker trees would have to be pretty old, and consequently pretty big. The Trail of Tears was about 180 years ago.

Yes that's right. Any of those that are less than approximately 180 years old are called descendent marker trees because they were formed / shaped by descendents of those forced from their homes by the removal. I've noticed they are usually not shaped as accurately as those of their forefathers. I've also seen evidence that size doesn't always equal age especially after the trees are modified. Thanks for your input.

Uncle Wayne
01-16-2021, 14:38
It is highly unlikely any of those trees still exist today. Although the trees pictured look strange, natural forces can cause that kind of growth and those trees are likely less then 50 years old.

Not true, there are hundreds of the "marker trees" scattered across the nation. As far as the age of these trees, I'm an old man, I took these pictures in the 1970's so the pictures are almost 50 years old. The trees much older. Thanks for your reply though.

Rasputen
01-16-2021, 15:02
Fascinating topic! Wish I had something to add. I will be following this thread.. Best of luck. Wonder if Tipi Walter has any info on this?

gpburdelljr
01-16-2021, 17:04
There is no way to know for sure if an unusually deformed tree, of the appropriate age, is a Native American marker tree, or if it was caused by something, or someone, else. I’ve seen trees like these that I knew were less than 50 years old. The Appalachians were heavily logged between 1880 and 1920, leaving very few old growth trees.

TJ aka Teej
01-16-2021, 17:26
"Trail marker trees" are a myth. Just weather damaged trees that city folks weren't equipped to understand.
Do you really think Native people needed to bend trees to find their way on land they'd lived on for many hundreds of years?

gpburdelljr
01-16-2021, 18:09
"Trail marker trees" are a myth. Just weather damaged trees that city folks weren't equipped to understand.
Do you really think Native people needed to bend trees to find their way on land they'd lived on for many hundreds of years?
Maybe, if they never traveled to a particular place before. People hiking the AT for the first time follow the White blazes. Driving to a city you have never been to, you follow the road signs.

Slo-go'en
01-16-2021, 20:23
Maybe, if they never traveled to a particular place before. People hiking the AT for the first time follow the White blazes. Driving to a city you have never been to, you follow the road signs.

Didn't they mostly use the rivers? Settlement next to the river, hunting grounds in the nearby forest. I believe there were some well defined paths which got turned into roads.

gpburdelljr
01-16-2021, 21:14
Didn't they mostly use the rivers? Settlement next to the river, hunting grounds in the nearby forest. I believe there were some well defined paths which got turned into roads.

Rivers would work for north-south travel, but they also traveled east-west across mountains. Daniel Boone traveled through the Cumberland Gap to parts of Kentucky and Tennessee, following old Indian routes.

Odd Man Out
01-16-2021, 21:57
I take pics of interesting trees. This one is on the AT in SNP. But I agree that to think they were all navigation aids is a stretch.47173

CalebJ
01-16-2021, 22:34
"Trail marker trees" are a myth. Just weather damaged trees that city folks weren't equipped to understand.
Do you really think Native people needed to bend trees to find their way on land they'd lived on for many hundreds of years?
This. Wild that the myth persists.

zelph
01-16-2021, 23:09
Trees that take a sharp horizontal bend a few feet off the ground, then shoot straight up again, are often trail trees. It was the Native Americans used this shape to point the way to everything from fresh water to encampments, or from the right place to cross a river to a more accessible terrain

47174..............Now that's what I call a trail marker tree :-)


https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/05/19/trail-trees-native-americans-would-bend-saplings-to-make-living-sign-posts/#:~:text=Trees%20that%20take%20a%20sharp,to%20a%20 more%20accessible%20terrain.

Alligator
01-16-2021, 23:48
You could core it and see how old it is.

Second picture looks like the tree on the right had its leader or a main branch pushed into the tree on the left. It didn't alter the upward directional growth of the left tree because the right tree was leaning along the bole somewhere under the main leader when the damage occurred. As the left tree grew larger (wider) the two trees grew together. You can see the bark from the left tree encapsulating the one on the right. Also, the trunk is fatter above the intersection point, it's possible the two leaders grew into each other. You'd see a double pith above that point if that happened.

Alligator
01-17-2021, 00:16
First pic, something came down on the tree and tore the bark off that face, never fully recovering on that section. Drove the leader down and may have stayed on top of it for a bit of time. The damaged leader may have grown into the tree on the right. There appears to be a seam connecting the two. The damaged tree sent up another leader. Hard to say what came down on it, but the tree itself is next to a big rock face.

The damage to the tree would be inconsistent with the intent of the practice IMHO.

Bianchi Veloce
01-17-2021, 05:32
I'm a Tree lover. Have you hugged your Tree today?

Uncle Wayne
01-17-2021, 07:52
Do you really think Native people needed to bend trees to find their way on land they'd lived on for many hundreds of years?

Yes, for many reasons; Ceremonial, healing sites, marking trails, burials etc.

Uncle Wayne
01-17-2021, 07:55
I take pics of interesting trees. This one is on the AT in SNP. But I agree that to think they were all navigation aids is a stretch.47173

And they weren't all navigational aids. As I replied in another post they had several different uses. The majority of the ones we've found in north Alabama are burial markers.

Traveler
01-17-2021, 09:13
Weather, snowfall, tree deadfalls, logging operations, can easily deform trees into unusual shapes. As they age and people find them, it would not be unusual that a path would develop to see some interesting tree shapes over time. I have a lot of photos of deformed trees I've taken along the way, though few are much older than 100 years, making them questionable as being "marker trees" used by native Indians.

When I was a young boy a few of my grandfathers pals would take glass whiskey flasks with a bit left in them and make a simple knot in a sapling with the bottle in it. The tree would grow around the bottle and make for an interesting photo or cut trophy for whoever ran across it. People have been shaping trees for centuries, which continues to this day along with weather and other natural circumstances that impact trees.

While I don't doubt Indians of 200 years ago or more used many different types of navigational markers but suggesting these deformed trees we see today were crafted by native Indians a few centuries ago is a bit of a reach. Determining which trees are descendant from a long gone "marker tree" is even more hazy.

Is there any science behind this?

SAWNIE
01-17-2021, 13:45
Cherokee historians might be a very helpful resource, especially those in the eastern locations.

Roll Tide
01-17-2021, 13:51
I grew up on a farm in Alabama and the woods was our playground. I remember pulling small trees over and placing a rock on it so it would stay bent. Recently I was walking these same woods and came upon one of the trees bent over with a rock embedded within it. The diameter of the tree was 2 1/2 to 3 feet. This tree is probably 65+ years old. A tree 100+ years old would be much larger which may cause someone to assume Native Americans did this.

Scaper
01-17-2021, 14:10
Most of the older trees in Shenandoah National Park that were not logged in the past 300 hundred years have died from disease. There used to be hundreds of 200-300 year old hemlocks in the White Oak Canyon area trails in the Shenandoah National Park but they have been dying off from disease since about 1988 and have either fallen or have been cut down.

hikermiker
01-18-2021, 08:21
I don't seem to be able to delete this post.

Traveler
01-18-2021, 08:31
"Now who can argue with that?" - Olson Johnson, Mayor of Rock Ridge