The Saga of the Big Tree

  Grand Junction Daily Sentinel

Indian Artifact Found
in Cottonwood Tree

By GARY HARMON
Wednesday, May 16, 2007

When River Wylde carved into the 200-year-old cottonwood for a Mesa State College sculpture class, she struck more than heartwood. Deep inside the tree she found a football-size rock buried in the wood.

"I stopped the carving process when I first ran into the stone," Wylde said. "It had obviously been in the tree for a long time, and I thought I should arrange to keep it."

Once she formed that plan, she started carving again, "and that's when I came into the pine pitch."

Not wanting to damage her tools, she started removing the pitch by hand "and that's when I uncovered the bone and skin material."

The find postponed the carving while Ute tribal leaders were called in. Elder Clifford Duncan of the Northern Utes identified the artifact as something that might have been cached away into a cottonwood, a tree revered by the Utes, for a memorial or religious purpose.

It was placed in a tree near what is now Palisade at the base of Grand Mesa, with a rock atop it as protection from scavenging animals.

The bone found in the tree was a bison tibia that showed toolmarks, suggesting the animal was butchered, said Dr. Rick Dujay, a zoologist and head of the Mesa State College Center for Electron Microscopy.

Its smooth-tissue wrapping appeared to be the bladder or intestine of a mammal, Dujay said.

Her selection of the cottonwood was serendipitous in itself, Wylde said. The hunk of wood was bound for the chipper when she saw something she could free with sculpture, she said. "I knew it immediately," she said.

Duncan performed a cleansing ceremony for the memorial and urged her to continue her planned sculpture, Wylde said. She plans to haul the cottonwood to Oregon, where she hopes to finish it as she continues studying sculpture at Portland State University as a junior.

Once it's done, the cottonwood will be a memorial, Wylde said.

Her plan struck a note with Duncan, she said.

"He gifted the tree back to me," she said, hoping she would complete her "memorial from a memorial tree."