Bois d'arc (Osage Orange)

The tree bears a French name because early French settlers watched Native people make bows and war clubs from its wood, and Meriwether Lewis noted in 1804 that the Osage traveled hundreds of miles to get it. It grew naturally in the Red River drainage. In March 1804 Lewis sent cuttings to Thomas Jefferson, though they did not survive. Settlers later pruned it into dense, thorny hedges to keep livestock out of gardens and cornfields, a use that lasted until barbed wire arrived in 1874, and in 1934 it became a main tree of the Great Plains shelterbelt project.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cane River Creole National Historical Park — steps away
  Oakland and Magnolia, two Cane River cotton plantations kept as they stood, told through the enslaved families who worked them, the 1864 and 1804 freedom seekers and the tenant farmers who stayed into the 1960s.
• Melrose Plantation — 5.0 mi
  The Cane River estate built on land granted to Louis Metoyer, son of Marie Thérèse Coincoin, with the Yucca House and African House, later an artists' retreat; guided tours Thursday to Sunday.
• St. Augustine Church, Isle Brevelle — 5.2 mi
  The parish church at the heart of the Cane River Creoles of color, begun by Augustin Metoyer on his family's land and still holding Mass for the community that grew from Marie Thérèse Coincoin's children.
• Fort St. Jean Baptiste State Historic Site — 7.9 mi
  A reconstruction of the 1716 French fort beside the Natchitoches village, with a palisade of nearly 2,000 pine logs, a chapel and storeroom, and living-history programs, open Wednesday to Sunday.

More markers nearby

• The Enslaved Nanny's Room — steps away
• The Sound of Time (Oakland Bell) — steps away
• Creole Architecture — steps away
• Working Iron — steps away