New Work
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Work in Progress

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The Saga of the Big Tree

  Grand Junction Free Press
  145 N. 4th Street
  Grand Junction, CO 81501

Surprising find in Cottonwood Tree

Sculptor discovers ancient
Indian artifacts

By Sharon Sullivan
Free Press Staff Writer

As she carved through the old Cottonwood tree trunk, sculptor River Wylde discovered stone. A piece of the wood that had grown up around the stone popped off, exposing the surface of the rock. Using her hands Wylde began removing and dumping pitch from the tree until she realized there was something more there than just the tree's pitch. She found a bone. And a bag made from the smooth muscle of an animal.

Wylde, a Mesa State College art student, took her findings to Dr. Rick Dujay, a zoologist and director of the college's center for microscopy.

Dujay assumed the artifacts were Native American and would probably need to be returned to a tribe. "That's when the entire sculptural process stopped," Wylde said. "I also stopped because I wanted to wait for the results of the bone. If it was human — and it had been a burial tree — I didn't think I should go any further."

Wylde's sculpture instructor, Marilyn Wounded Head knew that her own tribe, the Lakota, put bundles in trees. But this tree that had grown in the Palisade area was not Lakota area.

Mesa State staff, archaeologists, and museum curator David Bailey were all called to a meeting with the artist to discuss what to do with the artifacts. They decided to consult Northern Ute Tribal elder Clifford Duncan, and on May 10, arranged to bring him from his home in Ft. Duchesne, Utah, to the college.

"It was good to hear from a Ute medicine man what it was — meaning it was a ceremonial bundle," Wounded Head said.

Duncan explained how his people would put sacred things in Cottonwood trees for safekeeping. Sometimes special people such as infants or children who had died were buried in the crooks of trees. Cottonwoods are sacred to the Utes and are considered the link between earth and heaven, he told the group.

Pine pitch was added to ward off evil spirits. A stone was placed on top to keep out animals. "My people would put bodies in the trees which would become living caskets," Duncan said, according to Wylde's partner, Luna Leduc.

Duncan gave permission for the bone to be removed and tested.

Dujay was able to determine the bone came from a bison. And the bag was a smooth muscle made from an elk, deer or some other animal. The 200-year-old tree had grown up and around the cache. Using tobacco and sweetgrass, Duncan offered prayers and talked to the tree in his native language, bringing the tree "up to date spiritually," said Wylde. "It was a beautiful ceremony. It was so powerful." Then the Ute elder asked Wylde what she was making from the tree. "I said it was a memorial," Wylde said. "He smiled, and said, 'A memorial carved into a memorial.'"

Wylde's sculpture will depict two men, one holding the other. The artifacts will be a part of the finished sculpture.

"It has to be," Wylde said. "They've been in that tree for 200 years."

Wylde and Leduc will be moving to Portland in a couple of weeks, and she'll finish the sculpture there. Wounded Head said she hates to see both the sculpture and the sculptor leave. "But they both have good futures," she said.