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Before America | Trail Marker Trees

Season 2025 Episode 2 | 3m 57s

In Waganakising — “Land of the Crooked Tree,” Eric Hemingway (Odawa, Crane Clan) walks Cross Village and Little Traverse Bay to decode crooked (trail) trees: how they were made (weights, braces, stone anchors), what they signal (water, routes, ceremony, burials), and why they endure—language, land, remembrance.

Aired: 11/20/25
Extras
A 19th-century painting twisted Pontiac’s War—this episode uncovers the real story.
Michigan’s Indigenous history that helped spark the American Revolution.
The untold story of Indigenous women whose power shaped Pontiac’s War and Michigan’s history.
A 1763 lacrosse match at Fort Michilimackinac turns into a daring Native rebellion.
Reframing America’s origins through Native resistance in the Great Lakes.