Trail Trees

So-called trail trees, also known as “thong trees” or “signal trees,” are purported by some to be trees that were modified by Native Americans in order to indicate the path of a particular trail, or perhaps the direction in which fresh water or a burial site might be found. According to lore, Native Americans would tie part of a sapling down with something like a thong or strip of leather so that its trunk would be bent when it matured, thereby marking the trail in question. In Arkansas, such trees are often linked to Cherokee migrants through the Ozarks, with enthusiasts reporting trail trees at sites like Hobbs State Park-Conservation Area. However, such deformations of trees occur naturally, and according to most modern anthropologists, there is no evidence for this practice as having been common among Native Americans—at least not to the extent that proponents of the trail tree narrative believe. The origin of the myth of trail trees more likely lies, therefore, in the desire to recreate a physical (and romanticized) Native American past where little obvious remnant of Indian culture exists.

Scholar Lynn Morrow notes that local legends about so-called thong trees had circulated for some time, and that those seeking to validate this lore resorted to “importing American Indians from Oklahoma or finding resident Indian descendants in the Ozarks to assure modern folks of the genuine history, that is, Indian heritage, of thong tree functions.” Interest exploded during the American Bicentennial, and enthusiasts (including the Daughters of the American Revolution) documented trees that fit the pattern. Skeptics, however, pointed out that there was no overlap of thong trees with documented Native American habitations, that most thong trees were too young to have been created by members of any historic tribe that once inhabited a particular region, and that mention of thong trees does not appear in the accounts of any European explorers. For example, the accounts of the expedition of Hernando de Soto through the American Southeast, including Arkansas, contain no mention of such trees, and the explorers would not have needed any such markers, as the trails were often very well developed and quite visible.

Historical tribes have been documented manipulating trees for specific purposes, such as removing bark or using paint on a tree to mark territory. However, no documentation of bending trees to operate as signposts exists, especially as this would have been labor-intensive, a process lasting for years, when compared to more direct and immediate methods. In addition, many of the sites where trail trees have purportedly been documented are known to have been cleared for timber following the extirpation of Native American tribes, meaning that deformed trees could not have been modified by historical tribes. Nonetheless, broader cultural attachment to the idea of trail trees remains significant. The organization Mountain Stewards was formed in 2003 in Georgia and began, four years later, its Indian Cultural Heritage Project, which includes an initiative to document and map supposed trail trees across the country.

Anthropologist Ramey Moore of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, in a 2022 paper on the subject, asked why trail trees in the Ozarks have often been associated with the Cherokee, rather than the Osage, who inhabited the area more extensively and for a much longer period of time. He concluded that the trail tree narrative was “used to sustain and perpetuate replacement narratives romanticizing a lost Native American past and constructing a pure, modern, scientific ‘reality’ of White settler possession of the region.”

For additional information:
Feagans, Car. “Trail Marker Trees (a.k.a. Indian Marker Trees).” Archaeology Review blog, June 9, 2016. https://ahotcupofjoe.net/2016/06/trail-marker-trees-a-k-a-indian-marker-trees/ (accessed November 21, 2025).

Indian Trail Tree Project. Mountain Stewards. https://mountainstewards.org/indian-trail-tree-project/ (accessed November 21, 2025).

Jones, Steve. “Indian Marker Trees: Separating Folklore from Fact.” Steve Jones (Great Blue Heron), February 10, 2021. https://stevejonesgbh.com/2021/02/10/indian-marker-trees-separating-folklore-from-fact/ (accessed November 21, 2025).

Moore, Ramey. “Returning to the ‘Natural State’: Trail Trees and Settler Colonial Conservation in the Arkansas Ozarks.” Human Organization 81 (Winter 2022): 338–347. Online at https://www.proquest.com/docview/2759659770?sourcetype=Scholarly%20Journals (accessed November 21, 2025).

Morrow, Lynn. “Thong Trees: Targeting Tourists Again.” White River Valley Historical Quarterly 35 (Spring 1996): 12–17. Online at https://digitalarchive.thelibrary.org/digital/collection/periodicals/id/27012/rec/97 (accessed November 21, 2025).

Staff of the CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas