The issue is they are reaching their lifespan so in the near future they will be gone.

Here are mine, they all mark the same creek or way to the creek.

Those are great! Water and food were always their priorities.

Yes, believe the Comanches with a few others had the prior res around Young /jack counties iirc They kept raiding so where moved to Oklahoma, where as JG said, they kept raiding from there into the mid 70's.

I think many of the trees folks think the indians "bent", is more a romantic thing, they would need to be at least 150+ and even then, I bet the Local tribes knew where they where going, even settlers before the mid 1800's where making them as well for the same reasons, so whose to say, outside of the ones the tribes have passed down, like the counsel tree.

They have a registry thru the Comanche nation and the Texas forest service iirc

I'm sorry but those trees look 60 years old at best.

Why would an indian need to mark the creek at the creek? MMmm...creek this way...mmm...feet wet.

Good article.

I went down the rabbit hole on this topic, seems to be different opinions on if it's fact or folklore.

The most interesting thing posted on here to me was the tree that Mr. T shared. There could be from original land grants and documented in field notes in the GLO archives that mention this particular tree. That is awesome if it is in fact that. This why I would like him to privately share with me where it is located because I can research it for him.

Because the creek moves. Back then, if a legitimate marker, the creek possibly wasn't there at that exact spot. The below picture is of the wagon trail (ruts too) on Fort Leavenworth, Kansas where the trail at the frontier came up out of where the Missouri River used to be. You can see the river (background) is now no longer there. Also (unrelated), less than a mile from this spot is where the Santa Fe and Oregon trails diverge.

I see that all of you have read Empire of the Summer Moon

You bet. Everyone should read it.

I heard a really good rebuttal.

The guy asked the question, do you think an Indian would be upset if we think they need bent trees to find rivers? These guys knew the land like the back of their hands, they would follow certain trees, game trails to find the water.

Then, asked why would they mark trails with something that is already found naturally, that would be really confusing.... why wouldn't they bend the trees, scrape the bark and then notch them. This would leave no doubt. Apparently this was done in the Appalachians.....

One of the guys in the video said that not all of these trees are Indian marker trees, and they'd have to do a lot of research to determine if they are real. I don't think he understood what he was admitting when he said that.

Interesting topic for sure, it had me looking at all the oak trees from San Antonio, to Rockport where I did see some trees that looked like "marker trees".