“There is a balm in Gilead
To heal the sin sick soul.”
That old American spiritual was most important to early day ranchers and homesteaders alike coming into this new place now called North Central Montana.
With Easter just around the corner, it is a fitting time to see why those old timers named the lowly cottonwood trees “Balm of Gilead Trees”.
It is their perfume and perfect for Easter although it is too early to really get a good whiff of them Easter Week.
Those old timers travelled up Beaver Creek,. Clear Creek and Big Sandy Creek on picnics, smelled the sweet perfume of the Black Cottonwood or Mountain Cottonwoods and called them Balm of Gilead trees.
Long before, those same old mountain and prairie trees had provided shelter and winter wood for many Native American Nations along with providing shelter for all manner of wildlife in this region.
Lewis and Clark wrote often about how necessary those huge groves of cottonwood were along the Missouri, necessary to the Corps of Discovery for everything from firewood to canoes when they continued their journey to the west coast.
Later man called woodhawks cut down those vast riparian forests and sold the wood to steam boats traveling up and down the Missouri from St. Louis to Fort Benton and Cow Island when water levels were low.
Today watersheds like the Milk, the Teton and the Marias still contain beautiful forests of cottonwood along their banks.
Not only that but along the Missouri, groves have come back, some say because of the dams along the way and others say in spite of the dams. The BLM and friends plant cottonwoods in the Wild and Scenic Missouri corridor every year.
But those are not the cottonwoods that smell so good. The sweet smellers are found higher in the mountains and are called Mountain cottonwood or Black cottonwood. Their perfume is simply one of the beauties of Montana Mountains to smell!
In her essay on cottonwoods, Jennifer Morrissey says, “Cottonwoods have learned to dance with the water and the wind and the land over millennia. In just the past two centuries a minuscule bit of time by comparison; humans have been altering the flow of water and the law of the land in ways detrimental to cottonwoods.”
On the vast prairies of Montana, what is more synonymous with prairie towns than a railroad track running through, grain elevators and dusty cottonwoods shading summer streets?
There is a big uproar about cattle in the wild and scenic river corridor of the Missouri. Certainly there are two sides in every issue and maybe more. The gist of this issue is that one group does not want to lose their grazing leases in prime habitat for cattle needing water and sustenance. Another group does not want cattle disturbing the revere of their river experi9ence in any way. Those people, reaching for arguments for limiting cattle on the corridor state that the cattle are killing the cottonwood trees.
The other side has reached far different conclusions and some have actually stated that even if cattle do no good to cottonwoods those trees are not native to this region in the first place. Those folks seem to be saying that since those trees are not native, they are not as important as “river purists” seem to think.
The idea that cottonwood trees are non native seems to hold about as much water as Big Sandy Creek on the prairie in August.
Vaughn M. Rundquist, when he was a professor of Botany and Biology at MSU Northern says that not only are they native to Montana but experts have identified four species of cottonwoods growing in the state.
“There are Lanceleaf cottonwoods, Plains cottonwoods, Black cottonwoods and Narrowleaf cottonwoods,” said Rundquist. “All are native to Montana. Plains cottonwoods grow on prairie waterways, Black cottonwoods grow in mountains.”
Black cottonwoods are often called Mountain cottonwoods and grow in the higher waterways of the Beaver Creek Valley in the Bear Paw Mountains. Same with higher up in the Sandy Creek waterways and Clear Creek as well. Those same Black cottonwoods grow to immense size in the McDonald Valley of Glacier National Park.
The key to all the cottonwoods, whatever the group, is they need water to flourish. After all they are all willows Rundquist said.
So, of course they are native. Consider this. Some in Glacier have been core sampled to be from 500 to 700 years old.
The bigger question is that age old recreationalist vs. rancher question. Are the cattle hurting the cottonwoods?
“Cattle are destructive to all riparian vegetation and stream quality, “ Rundquist continued. “Cattle need to be managed properly, that seems to make sense.”
For example if cattle feast on cottonwood seedlings and bark near fall when nutrient rich grasses are not present, maybe those cattle need to be away from cottonwoods during that season.
One thing that bothers me. If cattle can destroy the cottonwoods and river bottom land in general with poor management practices and even at times over grazing, what about those millions of buffalo? Why was there a cottonwood left standing during the heyday of buffalo?
“Fences,” contends Rundquist.
“Buffalo wandered extensively and did not spend as much time in any one place. Remember that despite the vast numbers of buffalo, think of the vast acreages they used,” said Rundquist.
Jennifer Morrissey continues her essay, “I have benefited from dams and diversions, from cattle grazing, from human modifications to riparian areas. Drinking water, irrigation water, hamburgers, hiking trails, wood and paper products are all examples of things I have used whose creation and delivery had potentially detrimental effects on cottonwoods. And personally we have altered the landscape here. If we had allowed cottonwoods and their places to work their magic on us, would we have done things differently? Would we have worked so hard to change those places? Would we have needed those products of the modifications so badly? Would we have changed the tempo of the music to one the cottonwoods could not dance to?”
There is a cotton tree in my Havre backyard that must be at least a hundred years. Maybe it predates the house I live in by that much.
Jennifer Morrissey ends her essay with a poem dedicated to those cottonwoods like the giant outside of my bedroom window.
“So those giants outside my window
And the logs upon my fire
And the skeletons standing over the creek
Those trees whose foliage I admire,
They have all beat the survival odds
That began in a puff of white.
They have used the wisdom of ages
To dance with water and land and light.”
