Groups Work to Identify Aging Trees Bent by American Indians to Mark Trails, Water Crossings

If you’ve ever spent significant time in the woods, you’ve undoubtedly run across these trees. I had always heard that they were made by the Native Americans, but didn’t know it was the truth, until now…

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By Associated Press, Updated: Saturday, March 31, 6:05 PM
DALLAS — The pecan tree, more than 300 years old, stands out from the others in a forested area of Dallas, a 25-foot segment of its trunk slightly bowed and running almost parallel to the ground before jutting high up into the sky.

It, like numerous others across the country known as Indian marker trees or trail trees, was bent in its youth by American Indians to indicate such things as a trail or a low-water creek crossing.

“If they could talk, the stories they could tell,” said Steve Houser, an arborist and founding member of the Dallas Historic Tree Coalition. The trees, he said, “were like an early road map.”

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