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This two-part geocache memorializes one of the very oldest landmarks in northern Illinois. It features a modestly sized container; so bring smaller trading items. The cache may be a challenge to find; patience is manditory! Children and dogs (on leash) are welcome. The area closes at sunset, and may be wet and muddy in springtime. There's plenty of easy-to-find parking adjacent to the posted coordinates.
"A long time ago, long afore your granddaddy was born even, there used to be heaps of Injuns around here - - thousands - millions, I reckon, far as that's concerned. Reg'lar sure'nuf Injuns... wuz all around here - right here where you are standin'. Don't be skeered - hain't none around here now... They been gone this many a year." - (Joe McCutcheon, 1912)
Yes, they are gone - and so is their world, vanished with hardly a trace, for our present landscape is entirely a product of modern civilization. Today, one can search many miles in vain for but a single glimpse of anything that survives from the days of the 'Red Man' - though he be absent little more than a century and a half.
In fact, about all that remains are the memories of his prairie and woodland paths, now paved over, which the Indians themselves inherited from migrating wildlife. Though much travel in those days was via water, overland trails often connected the streams, and where the ways met, a trail marker would often be needed. The Potawatomi, last of the Native Americans to call northern Illinois their own, employed a method which utilized actual living trees as signposts to mark crucial points along these ancient trails.
First, a hearty young sapling (often an oak) would be located growing near the location of the proposed marker. Its main trunk (or sometimes, just a large branch) would be carefully bent earthwards, and tied firmly to the ground. Over the course of the following seasons, the living tree would develop a permanent deformity, a characteristic 'bowed' or 'humped' shape which (as it reached maturity) would set the tree apart from its fellows, allowing it to serve as a living trail marker.
Apparently, many trees were singled out for such service; more often than not, they outlived their makers by centuries. Today, however, only a few such 'Indian Trail Trees' remain, and this geocache will lead you to one of the very last.
You'll have no difficulty locating the Trail Tree itself, for the coordinates posted above will take you directly to it. To claim this cache as a 'Find' however, you'll need to sign the logbook, which is located in the cache container just a short distance away.
To obtain the coordinates for the final container, count the number of posts which support the fence protecting the Trail tree. Then, ADD that number to the LAST THREE DIGITS of the NORTH coordinate (listed below) and SUBTRACT the number of fenceposts from the LAST THREE DIGITS of the following WEST coordinate below. The resulting coordinates will lead you to the cache container itself.
Therefore, final cache container coordinates are: N 42 09.387 PLUS number of fenceposts, W 87 49.460 MINUS number of fenceposts. The coordinates for the Trail Tree itself (listed at the top of this page) are NOT used to calculate the final cache location.
When you visit the first location, please take a moment to imagine that day when (well over two hundred years ago) this hallowed locale was marked, not by satellites and a reading on a GPSr, but by the hands of a forgotten Native American as he grasped and bent a sapling in the virgin glades of the unnamed Illinois forest. Since then, the tree has grown, watching in silence as the world of men changed utterly around it.
How many more years will pass before this venerable witness falls victim at last to old age, or to the whims of an obdurate culture, and follows its simple maker into the forgotten ages of the past? Then, finally, will the last living memory of the touch of the 'Savage' hand be lost - never to return to the ancestral lands of the Potawatomi.
Additional Hints
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Gur cbrg fnvq, 'bayl Tbq pna znxr n gerr'
ohg urer Ur unq uryc sebz n Cbgnjngbzv,
naq gur svany vf pbhegrfl Travhf Ybpv.