New Harmony, Indiana, the scene of two remarkable social experiments, had two trees worthy of mention. In 1803 the Harmonists, under the leadership of George Rapp, separated from the Lutheran church in Germany and migrated to Pennsylvania. In 1815 the sect moved again; the members decided on a site which they called “Harmonie” on the Wabash River in Indiana. Upon disembarking at their destination, they slept under an oak tree, which was later named “The Rappite Oak.” Rapp built his own house near the tree. The Harmonists were so successful in their communal living experiment that jealous neighbors made life unpleasant for them, and they returned to Pennsylvania in 1824. But the oak survived until 1900 and outlived all of the Harmonists, whose numbers dwindled rapidly because of their strict adherence to celibacy.
Robert Owen (1771-1858), another social experimenter, purchased the settlement from Rapp and renamed it “New Harmony.” Unlike the Harmonists, Owen and his followers were humanists. Their community did not flourish long, but while in existence it was the home of a brilliant group of scientists. Among them were Thomas Say, a noted zoologist, Thomas Nutthall, a botanist, and William Maclure, one of the world’s outstanding geologists. All three men are commemorated by an Osage Orange tree planted in New Harmony in 1826. Say planted the tree and Nutthall conferred its scientific name, “Maclura pomifera,” in honor of Maclure. The tree was still alive in the 1920’s, a memorial to an experiment, which, although short lived, has had a lasting influence upon American democracy.
Several trees in the Great Lakes area were famous for their connections with treaty negotiations between the white settlers and the Indians. Just two days after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Alexander and William Macomb purchased Grosse Ile and several smaller islands at the mouth of the Detroit River. The Fox and Potawatomi Indians signed a treaty ceding the islands in return for tobacco, blankets, and a small sum of money. The document was signed under a linden tree, which survived the event a century and a quarter. It was felled by a violent storm on July 3, 1901; the site has been marked by a tablet.
Relations between the Indians and settlers were not distinguished by a high code of honor; the unprovoked murders occasionally committed by both white and red men are probably the ugliest testimony of that fact. Chief Logan of the Mingo tribe has immortalized an elm tree by his reply to just such a treacherous mass murder. In the course of Dunmore’s campaign against the Indians in 1774, Colonel Cresap had killed all of Logan’s relatives in spite of Logan’s unblemished record as a friend of the whites. After this unwarranted cruelty, the embittered chief joined the battle against the settlers. The Indians were finally forced to make peace. Logan, standing beneath an elm tree in Pickaway County, Ohio, made his famous and moving appeal to Dunmore’s representative:
patriarch of Fort Wayne’s apple trees
“I appeal to any white man to say if he ever entered Logan’s cabin hungry, and he gave him not meat; if he ever came cold and naked, and he clothed him not? During the course of the last long and bloody war, Logan remained idle in his camp, an advocate for peace. Such was my love for the whites that my countrymen pointed as I passed and said, ‘Logan is the friend of the white man.’ I had ever thought to have lived with you but for the injuries of one man. Colonel Cresap, the last spring, in cold blood and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan, not even sparing my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature. This called on me for vengeance. I have sought it. I have killed many. I have fully glutted my vengeance. For my country I rejoice at the beams of peace; but don’t harbor a thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one.”
In Webster County, Kentucky, a tree acquired a sinister reputation because of its association with an infamous criminal. Two notorious brothers, Micajah and Wiley Harpe, came to Kentucky from North Carolina in 1799. Commonly known as “Big Harpe” and “Little Harpe,” the men left a trail of murder and plunder as they moved across the state. Arrested and imprisoned for murder, the desperadoes escaped and killed a boy and three men. They finally climaxed their crimes by murdering an entire family of women and children.
The outraged citizens, led by Captain Leeper, organized a posse and rode in search of the outlaws. One of the party was Mr. Stigall, the husband and father of the last group of victims. The posse overtook the brothers in Webster County, at a point near the junction of Union and Henderson counties. Captain Leeper shot and wounded “Big Harpe,” and Mr. Stigall killed him; but “Little Harpe” escaped unharmed.
The incensed men decapitated Harpe, and impaled his head on a sharpened sapling growing nearby. The tree continued to grow, branching around its shortened trunk. Underneath the head, a face was later carved into the bole of the tree. The sculptured effigy remained clearly visible until the landmark was hewn down nearly a century later. The tree grew beside the intersection of roads from Henderson, Hopkinsville, and Morganfield, and the crossroads became known as “Harpe’s Head.”