Thong Tree Clusters

Our recent post about Thong Trees has resulted in our finding several more examples of the living artifacts. Our good friend, Carla Jones from Melbourne e-mailed us last week to let us know that there were several candidates on her property near Knob Creek along Hurricane Creek. Because there were so many examples on the property, we were a bit skeptical. However, one example (the top vertical photo on the right, top photo on left)seems to confirm that these are actual marker trees. Another example (photo at very top), we are told by another friend of the site, Robert Tallbird Ryan, is very possibly what is known as a "shovel tree" which marks a Native-American homeplace or cache. The site of this thong tree "cluster" is situated above and along Hurricane Creek and would have been a great area to have been settled as it offered seclusion in a well-hidden hollow of Hurricane.

The three photos at the bottom left of the post are all from a seep-spring area on the River Bottom we visited near the site of John and Sarah Lindsay Lafferty's original settlement across the White River from Lafferty Creek in modern-day Stone County. We had seen one of these trees on our earlier trip to the area last month but found the other two examples when we stopped there this past Saturday. This site is located only about a mile from a large Indian burial ground on the wide beautiful river-bottom.

Our trip to the Buckhorn (White River Bottom once part of the Indian Land Grant of 1817 and area of the Lafferty Settlement) with Mary and Art Wilson, Mary Miller, Sam Younger, and Freda Phillips was quite rewarding and we will be bringing a full post about our adventure later in the week.

PLEASE - If you happen to know of any of these trees, let us know about them. We would like to add those we find to the database being built by the Trail Tree Project.