More Trails, More Tales by Bob Henderson

More Trails, More Tales by Bob Henderson

Author:Bob Henderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2014-10-30T00:00:00+00:00


At the Kingsville marker tree site.

Trails drawn on a 1791 map by Crown surveyor Patrick McNiff are almost certainly connected to these trees. It appears that early Native trails-turned-settler trails crossed the Wigle and Puce rivers. One can surmise that the trees served to mark choice river crossing sites. Rivers generally had more volume in those days. The Kingsville oak is on a trail following the Lake Erie shoreline, continuing around the Detroit River and then along Lake St. Clair, joining up with a Thames River trail. The Thames is connected to the Grand River and then to Lake Ontario. The Shagbark hickory at Maidstone is likely on a trail loosely following Route 3 between present-day Leamington and Windsor. McNiff’s survey shows a sandy ridge with swamp country on either side. The Puce River appears to flow across the trail just after the sandy ridge. It’s a guess, but a good guess, and adds meaning to the distinctive trees.[3]

Only a month earlier, I was paddling by Red Dog Mountain on the Keele River in the Northwest Territories, a noted site for the local Dene to leave ritual offerings on their travels walking and rowing (in moosehide boats) to and from the inland mountains to the Mackenzie River. I am familiar with northern travel, but rarely think of the walking trails of the north. Clearly, given the Dene peoples’ seasonal patterns on the Keele River, there were established walking trails with their own marks. Perhaps stone cairns. Now here I am in the most southerly town in all of Canada again experiencing a significant site for Indigenous peoples. North or south, people travel and need road signs and landmarks.

To close this discussion, I have been reluctant to use the term “Indian” marker trees. “First Nations” is too general a term for the variety of tribes who were likely involved in this practice of deforming trees for trail markers. Second, it is likely that early settlers adopted this same practice in some cases. That said, the moniker Indian or Native marker trees will likely endure, and that isn’t a bad thing. Paul said it best: “The weight of history is not with colonial history, it is with aboriginal history.” I remember being asked to give a keynote talk to canoe paddlers on the history of canoe travel in Canada. Appreciating this weighting, I spoke of the pre-contact travel routes of Indigenous peoples before touching on the Mackenzies, Thompsons, and Franklins. I wish I knew about Native marker trees then.

More generally, there are records of significant trees that logically follow the re-shaped trail marker trees theme. One general category of significant trees is meeting trees. The majestic trading tree on Timothy Street in Newmarket, Ontario, is one. While not reshaped, it is certainly a marker tree on a busy Native trail system that unquestionably predates early settlers arriving in the 1790s. There was the trail running north–south paralleling Yonge Street, which replaced the Toronto Carrying Place along the Humber and Holland Rivers, but there were also trails heading north from the Rouge River and Oshawa Creek headwaters.



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