Hoosiers and other Midwesterners may well be proud of the interesting
trees of their states. These giants of the forest are interesting
because of closely connected historical events or because of special
facets of their own histories. Indiana and her neighboring states have
produced great trees worthy of special mention.
The fame of a tree is perpetuated and frequently exaggerated or altered
during its lifetime. The natives consider the tree as a landmark; they
proudly point it out and relate its history to strangers. All too often
when the tree dies and is felled, it is unfortunately forgotten. The
legend also dies for succeeding generations.
The citizens of Indiana are indeed fortunate that their most famous
tree, the Constitution Elm, has not been allowed to sink into oblivion.
Delegates met at Corydon, Indiana’s first capitol, on June 10, 1816, to
draft the first state constitution. The weather was unseasonably warm;
the heat may have influenced the committee to adjourn to the shade of a
huge elm on the lawn of the Statehouse. Under these sheltering branches
spreading over one hundred feet, the delegates met each day until they
had completed that historic document on the twenty-ninth of June in that
memorable summer. The elm perished in 1925 from a fatal root disease,
phloem necrosis, but the trunk was preserved and set in a sandstone
monument.
Another elm connected with the political history of Indiana grew at
Plainfield. In 1842 Martin Van Buren toured the West, and his itinerary
included Indianapolis and Terre Haute with a stop en route at
Plainfield. Although 1842 was not a presidential election year, Van
Buren undoubtedly had in mind the coming nominations of 1844, for he
made speeches at every stop and gave his political opinions freely. In
Indianapolis he was given an enthusiastic reception by his friends and
admirers. But he also had political enemies in Indiana. The owners of
the stage coach lines were incensed because he had not favorably
received legislation for road improvement.
[Illustration: the Constitution Elm ... Corydon, Indiana]
These enemies planned to mar his arrival at Plainfield and had little
trouble bribing the driver of Van Buren’s coach to effect it. The
National Road led into Plainfield, and beside it towered an ancient elm.
The massive roots of the tree extended across the road. As the coach
approached the tree, the driver whipped up the horses instead of slowing
them down. The wheels struck the obstacle; the impact upset the coach,
and Van Buren landed in the muddy road. His political foes succeeded in
spoiling his arrival at Plainfield and doubtlessly impressed him with
the urgent need for highway improvement! The local chapter of the
Daughters of the American Revolution has since marked this elm with a
plaque.
The patriarch of Fort Wayne’s apple trees was bearing fruit long before
General Wayne appeared on the scene. When Chief Richardville of the
Miami Indians was born in a hut near the tree in 1761, the apple tree
stood in the midst of the Miami village, Kekionga. The city grew and
prospered; late in the nineteenth century the venerable tree perished at
an estimated age of one hundred and fifty years. Although the exact
location is unknown, it stood in the Lakeside residential district of
Fort Wayne. An article in the May, 1862, issue of HARPER’S NEW MONTHLY
MAGAZINE reveals that the trunk of the ancient tree measured twenty feet
in diameter in 1860.
New Harmony, Indiana, the scene of two remarkable social experiments,
had two trees worthy of mention. In 1803 the Harmonists, under the
leadership of George Rapp, separated from the Lutheran church in Germany
and migrated to Pennsylvania. In 1815 the sect moved again; the members
decided on a site which they called “Harmonie” on the Wabash River in
Indiana. Upon disembarking at their destination, they slept under an oak
tree, which was later named “The Rappite Oak.” Rapp built his own house
near the tree. The Harmonists were so successful in their communal
living experiment that jealous neighbors made life unpleasant for them,
and they returned to Pennsylvania in 1824. But the oak survived until
1900 and outlived all of the Harmonists, whose numbers dwindled rapidly
because of their strict adherence to celibacy.
Robert Owen (1771-1858), another social experimenter, purchased the
settlement from Rapp and renamed it “New Harmony.” Unlike the
Harmonists, Owen and his followers were humanists. Their community did
not flourish long, but while in existence it was the home of a brilliant
group of scientists. Among them were Thomas Say, a noted zoologist,
Thomas Nutthall, a botanist, and William Maclure, one of the world’s
outstanding geologists. All three men are commemorated by an Osage
Orange tree planted in New Harmony in 1826. Say planted the tree and
Nutthall conferred its scientific name, “Maclura pomifera,” in honor of
Maclure. The tree was still alive in the 1920’s, a memorial to an
experiment, which, although short lived, has had a lasting influence
upon American democracy.
Several trees in the Great Lakes area were famous for their connections
with treaty negotiations between the white settlers and the Indians.
Just two days after the signing of the Declaration of Independence,
Alexander and William Macomb purchased Grosse Ile and several smaller
islands at the mouth of the Detroit River. The Fox and Potawatomi
Indians signed a treaty ceding the islands in return for tobacco,
blankets, and a small sum of money. The document was signed under a
linden tree, which survived the event a century and a quarter. It was
felled by a violent storm on July 3, 1901; the site has been marked by a
tablet.
Relations between the Indians and settlers were not distinguished by a
high code of honor; the unprovoked murders occasionally committed by
both white and red men are probably the ugliest testimony of that fact.
Chief Logan of the Mingo tribe has immortalized an elm tree by his reply
to just such a treacherous mass murder. In the course of Dunmore’s
campaign against the Indians in 1774, Colonel Cresap had killed all of
Logan’s relatives in spite of Logan’s unblemished record as a friend of
the whites. After this unwarranted cruelty, the embittered chief joined
the battle against the settlers. The Indians were finally forced to make
peace. Logan, standing beneath an elm tree in Pickaway County, Ohio,
made his famous and moving appeal to Dunmore’s representative:
[Illustration: patriarch of Fort Wayne’s apple trees]
“I appeal to any white man to say if he ever entered Logan’s cabin
hungry, and he gave him not meat; if he ever came cold and naked, and he
clothed him not? During the course of the last long and bloody war,
Logan remained idle in his camp, an advocate for peace. Such was my love
for the whites that my countrymen pointed as I passed and said, ‘Logan
is the friend of the white man.’ I had ever thought to have lived with
you but for the injuries of one man. Colonel Cresap, the last spring, in
cold blood and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan, not even
sparing my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the
veins of any living creature. This called on me for vengeance. I have
sought it. I have killed many. I have fully glutted my vengeance. For my
country I rejoice at the beams of peace; but don’t harbor a thought that
mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn on his
heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one.”
In Webster County, Kentucky, a tree acquired a sinister reputation
because of its association with an infamous criminal. Two notorious
brothers, Micajah and Wiley Harpe, came to Kentucky from North Carolina
in 1799. Commonly known as “Big Harpe” and “Little Harpe,” the men left
a trail of murder and plunder as they moved across the state. Arrested
and imprisoned for murder, the desperadoes escaped and killed a boy and
three men. They finally climaxed their crimes by murdering an entire
family of women and children.
The outraged citizens, led by Captain Leeper, organized a posse and rode
in search of the outlaws. One of the party was Mr. Stigall, the husband
and father of the last group of victims. The posse overtook the brothers
in Webster County, at a point near the junction of Union and Henderson
counties. Captain Leeper shot and wounded “Big Harpe,” and Mr. Stigall
killed him; but “Little Harpe” escaped unharmed.
The incensed men decapitated Harpe, and impaled his head on a sharpened
sapling growing nearby. The tree continued to grow, branching around its
shortened trunk. Underneath the head, a face was later carved into the
bole of the tree. The sculptured effigy remained clearly visible until
the landmark was hewn down nearly a century later. The tree grew beside
the intersection of roads from Henderson, Hopkinsville, and Morganfield,
and the crossroads became known as “Harpe’s Head.”