So the Chief set out to find a suitable tree along the route. He selected a young maple sapling and bent it over and staked it to the ground. He knew exactly which direction he wanted the Indian Tree to point and the purpose of the tree.
As years passed, he gently refined the leather thongs tying the tree to the ground, and repeatedly visited the tree to ensure it was growing correctly in the right direction and at the right angle. Sometimes he needed to scrape the tree gently, causing sap to weep out, but the knife wounds helped to ensure the tree would grow each year in the correct angles.
People began to come on the narrow path, a few at first, but increasingly the path grew broader as more people found the sacred place with the help of the Indian Tree. The tree served its purpose, and people were happy they could find the way and were no longer wandering lost in the forest. The tree was happy when it saw people helped along the way. Its leaves filled out and burst into color every Spring and every Autumn.
While the tree looked glorious in all seasons and was faithful to its purpose, the Indian Tree was clearly different from all the other trees in the forest, especially those closest to it. The surrounding trees were uniform, straight, and either had no scarring or never reflected on the meaning of the scarring they did have. These other trees began to look down on the Indian Tree, to scoff at its right angle.
As the years passed, people who didn't understand about the sacred place and didn't understand the purpose of the Indian Tree began to laugh at the tree. Others shook their head and pitied it. Why did it have such a strange angle? Why wasn't it like all the other straight trees? Something was wrong with it! Some folks tried to help, out of pity to try to straighten it. They wanted to make it look like all the others.
They tried to chisel at the tree to cut off the unique angle. They caused deep wounds within the tree. But they couldn't cut through the whole trunk - it was strong and thick. So they decided to use it for other purposes.
They began to set things on its horizontal arm. At least it would be useful to them! At first it was just young children sitting on its horizontal limb, but eventually people wanted to build on it and use it for more. A bench was built on its ledge, cutting the tree severely, making it gasp. Then they weighted the horizontal arm even more, building a shelter over the bench, so they could sit there.
As the years passed, the bench and shelter grew even more elaborate into a house, and the weight of the house on the horizontal limb began to pull at the roots of the Indian Tree. The tree began to lean to one side. It wasn't meant to be a bench, a manmade shelter, or carry a house on its horizontal limb. The tree struggled to stay upright, to live for its purpose and point people along the way. It knew it could handle only so much weight and stay upright.
The tree sensed the pressure from all the trees around it, the pressure to be like them, and it felt their scoffing, their pity, their attempts to make it like all the others, the pressure of the people passing by laughing at it, and knew that while it was strong, very much more stress and it would snap in two and lay down and die.
A violent thunderstorm came, the kind only found in that area, and the forest shook. Trees swayed, limbs snapped, and the manmade shelter built onto the horizontal limb of the Indian Tree blew off. Finally! The tree was free once again from some of the weight sucking its life and strength.
The Chief was long gone, and the tree knew it was all alone except for a few close friends who understood its purpose and celebrated its different shape. Sometimes the tree cursed the way it was, and sunk into depression, its branches and leaves wilting, and at other times it was happy when it saw it was still helpful to a few people and was still needed by a few.
One day a little girl came on a hidden path, once a broad path for those on the their way to the sacred place but then overgrown once more as the Indian Tree sank into obscurity. The little girl stumbled on the tree and stood and wondered at it.
She saw the scars, the place of deep wounding, the flat place where the shelter used to be, and wondered at the people who used to know the tree in decades past. She wondered at the Indian who had first tied down the tree, and wondered what its marking was for. She sat on the horizontal limb, and reveled in its protective canopy and silence. She listened to the gentle wind moving its branches. She returned often to the tree, rejoicing each time she saw it standing proudly in all its unique angles.
The tree witnessed to her of its strength to stand through so many storms, because its thickness betrayed the fact it was very old and all the trees around it were young and thin. Clearly, the Indian Tree's contemporaries had long since passed, leaving it surrounded by those who never knew the Chief. The little girl enjoyed the tree and its difference among all other straight trees.
The girl grew up, but she never forgot the tree, remembering it in her heart. Eventually developers came and cleared large swaths of land to build large cookie-cutter houses for wealthy people who didn't care about the sacred place, the path, or the trees. The developers cut down all the straight trees, but left the one unique Indian Tree in all its glory, marking the way to a time and a place long gone.
