Gone But Not Forgotten

Bert2.06 Earl Plato

Part Two - The Giant Tulip Tree at Rosehill

Our Rosehill prize no longer exists. It was worth lots of money. This native tree of the Carolinas was cut down for its valuable soft wood that is so workable. It was one of the tallest and most beautiful of our eastern trees. During the previous years Bert Miller had collected seeds from this majestic giant and donated the seeds to the Niagara Parks Commission. When was it cut down? I am not sure. Bert in his own words in 1958 told us, “ It’s the largest tulip tree in Ontario and I believe that it is the oldest.” Dr. Sherwood Fox of the University of Western Ontario, at that time, estimated after counting the stump’s age rings to be about 400 years old! The tulip tree’s demise then was in the 1950’s. Bert would often talk in a strange tongue. I knew that it was a scientific language. Liriodendron tulipifera was its scientific name - that’s our Tulip tree. Bert was self taught and he amazingly knew the scientific botanical names of his discoveries.
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Our grand and majestic tree was truly a very old local landmark. Let me walk through this part of Niagara history as if we were in the living presence of our great tree.
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Our prize tree was a young sapling when the local Neutral Indians (Attawandarons) controlled the Niagara Frontier in the mid-16th century. For the next 100 years those artificers of finely made flint (chert) projectile points traded their wares with both the Hurons and Iroquois in then a peaceful environment. Our tree was fully mature growing on the deep, rich moist soil and could well be a landmark for the local natives at that time. It looked down on the trail as another group of Seneca warriors passed by.
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The year was now 1647. Iy was a time of intertribal warfare. The Keepers of the Western Gate, the Senecas, landed at the mouth of a small Creek on the Niagara River and followed it to its source until they came to an escarpment, the limestone ridge of the Onondaga escarpment. The furtive force followed the Old Indian Trail in a south westerly direction until they came to the shoreline of an ancient lake (Ridgeway). They followed this rise of land westwards until on their south jutting out into the great lake was a point of land (Point Abino). There nestled in the bay was a large Neutral Indian village. The Senecas attacked but the palisaded village withstood the onslaught. They laid siege to it. Eventually it fell and with it the end of the Attawandaron nation.
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Yet our silent giant remained untouched through it all.
Next: The Coming of the Europeans.