Object: Poplar - Tulip Tree - Tulip Poplar - Liriodendron Tulipifera

Tulip Poplar trees grow very straight, with huge long trunks that were used by the Native Americans for making dugout canoes, mishoon.      Diameters of 36" are not uncommon.

This tree species was so important to the Indigenous people that their land treaties sometimes named it as excluded from use by the Europeans.   Ideally, this would have resulted in Tulip Poplars continuing to grow to very large sizes so that the Indigenous people could return to harvest them as needed to make mishoons, a major mode of transport and trade.

Spirit was present in all living things for the Indigenous people, so when taking a Tulip Poplar for use as a mishoon, they were engaging with a spirit that had been growing for more than 100 years, and the resulting mishoon also carried that spirit, per Chief Harry Wallace of the Unkechaug Nation on Long Island.