Elizabeth Cook-Lynn: Tribes maintain sacred relationship with cottonwood trees

Friday, April 5, 2019  

Now that spring is nearly upon us… the cottonwood trees are just beginning to bud.

They will bloom and then by late summer catkins produce the cotton tufts that my non-tribal neighbors begin to complain about, as clogging the city flower gardens and leaving unsightly white “stuff” on the yards and lawns. Lewis and Clark “discovered” these trees along the Missouri River and jotted their descriptions in their journals in 1805 but said little about them.

The Sioux have known these soft trees and have considered them relatives for thousands of years. Tribal people have a sacred, symbiotic relationship with these trees and often in the past times when the people found good camping places along the rivers they treated them with great care…..even pruned them, pushing down the early branches in piles to feed their horses who loved to nibble on the bark and edible buds.

Early settlers paid attention to these camping sites, too, as known places where they might encounter native groups. They noticed places stacked with small white logs and when they saw them, they knew Indians were near, and could avoid unpleasant encounters. The white piles were evidence of the pruning of the cottonwoods done by riders who knew how to tempt the great herds of horses that accompanied their families.

We all know that these are the trees used in the annual sun dance for lots of reasons…but one important reason is symbolic: if a limb is cut from a tree appropriately, there can be seen a perfect star on the inside limb reminding the people of the connection between the stars and the earth and the sky and the universe.

Groups of Indians (among them my grandfather), mourned the loss of these trees to the dam builders who wanted hydro power….these trees were the white skeletons which stood all along the length of the Missouri River in the mid-20th century when the river was assaulted and changed forever in the 1950’s for hydropower dams. There is very little evidence of the lush forest along those places now when one drives from Fort Thompson into Chamberlain and on to I-90.

This grandfather, a man born and raised on the Yankton Indian Reservation, lived much of his married life along the Crow Creek which was a tributary to the river, and he knew the place as a good home for the sacred Cottonwood.

Contact Elizabeth Cook-Lynn at ecooklynn@gmail.com

Copyright permission Native Sun News Today