Indian Trail Marker Trees Lost Secrets of History

Our country is so beautiful, so vast, and yet so mysterious. So many questions, especially I'd like to ask. And have you ever just walked through the deep woods in these mountains, just walking around, just seeing the beauty here in nature, and come across stuff like this? Well, that's an odd-looking tree. I've asked myself that many a time when I was younger. Well, these just, this ain't made by nature. This is made by man. Why? Let's take a look at who made them, why they made them, and how they made them. But like I said, this North America, especially our country, it's just so vast, still so much wilderness, so much woods and mountains. And this goes from anywhere from Mexico all the way into Canada. And it's no surprise that these trail marker trees were made by Indians. Now, they come in here after the Ice Age and developed into the modern Indians. Here's their tribes around the country. Now, these people didn't just wander around this whole vast country aimlessly, lost just one place to another. They established trails, burial grounds, hunting grounds, warrior trails for battles between the tribes. And a lot of history has passed through here before any settlers ever touched this land. This is their country. These great people, they marked all these trails, all these locations, and this is how they marked these trees. Now, these marker trees were usually along significant marking points along the trail, like a crossing point across the river or a waterway or water sources of springs, watering holes, hunting grounds, where they hunted these rich lands of all the game. Now, way back, it was full of buffalo and elk everywhere in this eastern seaboard. And they marked places between the villages, Indian towns, and how to get between them. And they really marked their ancestral burial grounds of their people. They really held a significant source of ministry, spiritual. This is some of their burial grounds. And a lot of these old trails don't look like much, but this is their travel ways. They traveled between these mountains and bridges, hollers, and even the early roads were made to the same passes and same places that their trails was. Now, these Indian marker trees are in all shapes, all kinds of different formations. Now, what they stand for individually, it's lost in time. Only the Indian and their ancestors would know. And I hope it's passed on down. A lot of it is. Do you see the different shapes here? They stand for different things, watering holes or hunting grounds or trail markers for warrior's path. We don't know what they stand for, but there's something of significance around the area that marks this trail or this area. Most of them are shaped like this. And how they're made when they're young, like samples, you can see here in this drawing, they would bend them over with a bind or a strap, stake it to the ground in this shape. And they usually tie it back or break back the stem on the top of it so it would go straight up. And as time went on, maybe a year or so later, they would come back and re-tie it. Maybe not never come back to it, but the tree would develop this way and it would grow for a long time. So this is basically how it's shaped. Now how it's formed on the other shapes is basically the same thing, but different ties and different breakovers and stuff. But this is how it's formed. Now all around North America, as the settlers moved in, into these remote places, into the wilderness, mountains, prairies, all around this country, they've seen stuff like this. And they wondered yourself what it was. But a lot of them become friends with the Indians. They know what it was, and it was piestone down. But as time went on, a lot of them are just coming of age. They're just, they're just dying. Just dying off. They've reached their age of maturity and they're leaving. That history is going to be lost in time. I've even, I've even run up on some in the middle of nowhere in these old Tennessee woods. Right here, maybe this is 50, 60 years old. Not old enough for the days of the Indians, but somebody marked this tree this way. That's a mystery. And a lot of people that finds these trees are trying to preserve them. But they'll live out their life too. Every tree has its age and they die off. Now these great proud people of North America, they know all about this. And I'm hoping that most of it is passed down through generations. But their ancestors know every bit of it. They are proud people. They know to love this country. This place in America and these vast wilderness areas are so beautiful, so vast, but still so many mysteries in time and history are lost forever. I hope you enjoyed this little bit of the history of our country and the outer reaches of it. I want to thank y'all for watching and I'll see you next time.