Witness Trees
History’s Living Sentinels Connect Us with the Past
I never forgot the class trip we took in 5th grade. Nor have I forgotten the words our guide spoke.
“If trees could talk, imagine the stories they could tell us.”
Tippecanoe Battlefield in Battleground, Indiana. Many of the trees here witnessed the Battle of Tippecanoe and bear battle scars. Image: Ann Marie Ackermann
Witness Trees on the Tippecanoe Battlefield
We were visiting the Tippecanoe Battlefield near Lafayette, Indiana, to learn about our region’s past. The Battle of Tippecanoe, on November 7, 1811, altered the course of American history and opened the Midwest for white settlement. General William Henry Harrison defeated a confederation of indigenous nations organized by the Shawnee chief Tecumseh, who was away, travelling in the South to recruit allies, at the time the battle occurred.
Until our guide spoke those words, it had never occurred to me that the trees standing next to me had witnessed a time before white settlement, when Tecumseh’s village of Prophetstown had prospered at the confluence of the Tippecanoe and Wabash rivers just a couple miles to the east. Those trees had heard Shawnees, Potawatomi, Kickapoo, and people from other indigenous nations walking beneath their branches and speaking their own tongues.
Those trees also witnessed the Battle of Tippecanoe. They felt the impact of the musket balls and cannon fire as the lead sprayed their bark, broke their branches, and penetrated the wood of their trunks.
But one thing the guide told us was wrong. She said the trees still sport battle scars.
They don’t.
Mary Cutler, the Tippecanoe County Naturalist, says that’s a common misconception. Twisted, gnarled tree limbs are not signs of battle scars. They’re the result of wind and branches competing with each other for sunlight. Although musket balls have been found embedded in trees on the battlefield, you can’t see the damage today. Wood and bark eventually grow over the wounds.
But there are trees on the battlefield that are old enough to have witnessed the battle, she confirms. Based on their size and the aging of other trees with similar dimensions, she says quite a few of the trees on the battlefield actually did witness the battle.
The Sentinels at Prophet’s Rock
Nevertheless, the concept of witness trees remained with me. As a teenager, I often visited the area. It was a short bike ride from neighbouring West Lafayette – down Soldiers Home Road and up North River Road – to Prophet’s Rock. There, according to legend, Tecumseh’s brother, the Prophet (Tenskwatawa), chanted spiritual support during the battle to protect the confederation. My friend and I scrambled to the top of the rock and unpacked our lunches. We must have been sitting right where the Shawnee leader once stood. As I nibbled my food, I wondered what stories the trees there would tell me.
Prophet’s Rock in Battleground, Indiana. The Prophet (Tenskwatawa) stood here and chanted spells to protect Tecumseh’s confederation during the Battle of Tippecanoe. Image: Ann Marie Ackermann
Witness Trees — a New Federal Project
Trees like these that lived through significant historical events are called witness trees. A pilot project called the Witness Tree Protection Program, led by the National Park Service, has identified 24 historically significant trees in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. The goal is save written histories and photographs of the trees.
Examples include the Jackson Magnolia trees on the south side of the White House. President Andrew Jackson planted them in 1829. The War of 1812 Willow Oak in Maryland witnessed the Battle of Bladensburg in 1814. And the White Oak Witness Tree at the Manassas National Battlefield Park in Manassas, Virginia, survived two Civil War battles.
The War of 1812 Willow Oak. Image: Jet Lowe, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (2006), public domain as an image created by the government.
It is often hard to identify witness trees because dating them involves taking a tree ring sample, which could damage the tree. Tree ring dating is often done only after a tree falls. In some cases, examination of old, fallen trees in battlefields has yielded bullets embedded deep in the wood.
Witness Trees in Germany
Close to where I live in Southwest Germany, we have an odd sort of witness tree that’s possible to date without a tree ring sample. According to local history, someone left their motorcycle on a tall construction trailer next to an apple tree. By the time they moved the trailer, branches had already grown through the motorcycle and the owner couldn’t dislodge it. The motorcycle is a Simpson S51. That model was produced between 1980 and 1991 in former East Germany. German reunification happened in 1990 and this tree symbolizes that event.
Motorcycle tree in Cleebronn, Germany. This is an East German motorcycle lodged in the branches of a West German tree. There is certainly a story to tell here! Image: Ann Marie Ackermann
German witness trees stand sentinel along the eastern shore of Lake Starnberg in Bavaria, site of one of Germany’s greatest unsolved mysteries. King Ludwig II and his physician, Dr. Gudden, walked down this very path in 1886, just hours before both were found floating dead in the lake. Was it an accident, murder, or suicide? If only these trees could talk, they could tell us.
These trees on Bavaria’s Lake Starnberg could tell us what happened to King Ludwig II. Image: Ann Marie Ackermann
And in England
In North England, the Sycamore Gap Tree witnessed marriage proposals, the scattering of loved ones’ ashes, and the filming of Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood before vandals cut it down last year. My co-author Marie Powell and I were among the last people to see it standing and wrote about it a few weeks ago.
Sycamore Gap Tree, Pixabay Content License
Do you know of any trees that have experienced significant events in history? We would love to hear your story.
If you visit the Tippecanoe Battleground
If you visit the battlefield today, there are several things worth seeing. You can stroll around the battleground. An iron fence marks the lines of Harrison’s soldiers the night before the battle, and there’s also a prominent monument and a few graves of fallen soldiers.
There’s a battlefield museum next to the battlefield with good interpretive exhibits and a small gift store. As a bird watcher, I particularly like the Wah-ba-shik-a Nature Center right on the battlefield grounds. It displays exhibits of local wildlife and features a bird feeing station behind one-way glass, so you can observe the birds up close without them seeing you.
If you feel like hiking, the Wabash Heritage Trail starts here. Eighteen miles long, it follows Burnett Creek to the Wabash River, crosses through Lafayette and West Lafayette, and continues south to Fort Ouiatenon, an 18th-century French trading post.
Just to the east, Prophetstown State Park boasts reintroduced tallgrass prairie and a reconstructed indigenous village. The visitor’s centre on State Road 225 also has interpretive exhibits.
Honey-butter pork: A recipe from the Hoosier frontier
My family members all praised me for my honey-butter pork when I recreated the recipe. The sauce is outstanding. Image: Ann Marie Ackermann
One question I never asked myself while growing up in Indiana was what the Indiana militia had been eating in the days approaching the Battle of Tippecano. My interest in recreating historical recipes galvanized me to look at a different aspect of the the battle. What did Harrison’s army eat?
The diary of John Tipton, an officer in the militia, offers the best overview of the army’s food supply. He foraged and hunted to supplement the army’s meagre rations of corn, beef, and whiskey. He describes collecting and shooting:
· squirrels
· “bee trees” with up to 10 gallons of honey at a time!
· fish
· venison
· pigeons – according to Dr. Barny Dunning, an ornithology professor at Purdue University, they were “undoubtedly” the now-extinct Passenger Pigeons.
· pheasant – these were probably Prairie-Chickens. Dr. Dunning says the Ring-necked Pheasant was not introduced to Indiana until 1899.
· walnuts
· corn harvested from what was presumably an indigenous cornfield, and later 6 wagons of corn from Prophetstown after the village was abandoned
· turkey
But it’s the food Tipton was served when he returned to Vincennes after the battle that made an impression. He delighted in the “honey-butter pork” he was served in a private home, a welcome relief from the army fare.
Although it sounds like a Midwest meal, honey-butter pork is actually an ancient recipe.
The first European cookbook, De re coquinaria, published by the Roman cook Apicius in the fifth century, includes several recipes for pork and honey. The Youtube channel Tasting History even has short film on how to make one of Apicius’s recipes for pork with honey. And the Byzantine physician Anthimus published a cookbook in the 6th century for honeyed pork with lentils.
These ancient recipes, however, include ingredients that would have been hard to obtain on the Hoosier frontier: Sumac, grape most, fish sauce, and bay leaves probably weren’t ingredients Tipton’s hosts could pick up at the local grocery store. To recreate the honey-butter pork he ate, I used the Roman and Byzantine recipes as springboards and simplified them as much as possible.
Here’s what I did. It’s so easy – and delicious, too!
Ingredients
Pork roast. I used Schweinebraten in Germany. Tenderloin or pork shoulder would work well (in fact, Apicius even has a recipe for the latter).
Salt, pepper, garlic, and mustard seed to taste.
1/2 cup butter for the sauce, 2-3 T more for browning the meat
1/2 cup honey
Starch to bind the sauce
Method
Trim your cut of meat from all visible skin and fat.
I made a dry rub of salt, pepper, mustard seed, and garlic powder. These are probably ingredients the frontier housewife of Indiana would have had, except that she might have had to grind fresh garlic and the mustard seeds in a mortar and pestle first. Here’s what my pork looked like after the dry rub.
Pork roast with dry rub. Image: Ann Marie Ackermann
Then I browned all the sides of the pork in a skillet with melted butter. Heat up the butter just to the point that the bubbling slows down, and then add the meat. Be careful not to burn it.
A frontier housewife would have probably finished cooking her pork for hours in a clay or iron pot in a wood-burning oven, but I used my slow cooker. I melted the remaining butter, combined it with the honey, and poured the mixture over the pork first. I made sure to turn the meat every hour so that all sides would pick up some honey flavour.
After four hours’ cooking time, I removed the meat to a platter to let it rest. Then I poured the leftover liquids from the slow cooker into a pot and thickened it with starch (I used carob flour, but you could use any white flour or cornstarch). Add salt and pepper to taste. Mine tasted quite sweet in the beginning and really needed some salt and pepper to round out the taste.
Thickening the sauce. Image: Ann Marie Ackermann
Then I sliced the pork and poured the sauce over it. My family really liked this one – I got unsolicited compliments from both my husband and son.
If you try this recipe, please let me know how it turned out. And if you happen to try it in Indiana, you can ask the trees if this is the recipe they remember.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Dr. Barny Dunning of Purdue University, Dr. Trey Gorden of the Tippecanoe County Historical Association, and Mary Cutler, Tippecanoe County Naturalist, who offered me invaluable background information for this post.
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This idea of witness trees fascinates me, too. Thanks for introducing me to this global movement.