No Marker: Fort Cass and Internment Camps

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About a week ago, a man killed himself….At length he stopped and remarked that he had gone as far…as he should ever go. He loaded his rifle, lay down at the foot of a tree…and…discharged his gun.
—Journal of Rev. Daniel Butrick, 1838

No one remembers the tree:

How trunk supported trunk
How bark was stained with dark
How roots absorbed debris of brain and bone
How crack of shot rang like timber being felled then echoed in a sad report
How leaves bled red in fall, signaling life to men and mountain
How limb and lumber are not so far apart
How trauma formed a narrow band within concentric rings