A Voice from the Eastern Door
A Voice from the Eastern Door
1955 A Sugar maple in Snye produced a seed.
1956 The seed germinated to form a new tree seedling.
1963 the tree had reached 4’ in height, indicated by innermost ring, earliest record in tree.
1968 Tree is 1” DBH, Salmon River School gets Mohawk representation on board of directors.
1970 this tree began a faster rate of growth, at this time is likely when the site was logged and this tree released, with more light and less competition the tree experienced better growing conditions.
1978 tree is 4.8” DBH St Regis Mohawk health service starts.
1982 the tree had reached 6” DBH, at this time a sugar tap was put in the tree, to make room for the bucket a branch (4’ from the ground, and 1” in diameter) was cut.
The tap was never put back in and this tree was never used for syrup production again. This was possibly due to the low sap production of the tree, it was too small at this time to produce a good amount of sap. The branch decayed back to the 1978 growth ring.
1987 ATFE (Akwesasne Task Force on the Environment) started.
1991 the mostly healed over branch was damaged again and began to decay, this was possibly due to a fungus.
1993 the tree began to show a slower rate of growth, this was likely caused by competition on the site, later years in the trees life had very slow growth and rings became harder to distinguish.
1995 the tree had healed over the damaged branch. The same year the ATFE becomes incorporated to be able to handle environmental research with Akwesasne Residents best interests.
1999 Akwesasne Mohawk Casino opens. The tree has reached 10” DBH.
2000 the growth of the tree had slowed down and was stagnant, growth in the next 8 years were very close together. Less than an inch of Diameter had been grown in since 2000, compared to over 4 inches between 1980 and 1990.
In the late winter/early spring of 2009 the tree was cut on a weekend by unknown persons. The site at this time was being treated as part of a silviculture operation to increase the health of black ash. Members of the crew in the field discovered the tree had been cut, with a 4’ stump, the notch was very thin. The notch was picked up by project personnel and brought back to examine.
This tree was 53 years old when it was cut, and was 11” DBH (DBH is 4.5’ from the ground, used to measure trees).
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