a haunted botany: a performance for a forgotten forest focused on Eastern White Pine, an evergreen that once grew as large as Sequoias throughout the Northeast. It was originally used by the Wabanaki as a medicine, food source, building material, and as the inspiration for creation myths. Also known as “The Tree of Peace” by the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Eastern White Pine was the founding symbol unifying the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas as early as 1142.

In the 1600s, European colonists began prospecting along the eastern seaboard, and their journals describe the size and abundance of the region’s trees.  In 1691, King William III decreed all Eastern White Pine to be the property of the Crown, marking all trees larger than 24” in diameter with the “King’s Broad Arrow” to be used as masts for the British Royal Navy.  The Crown’s claims on pine ignited the ire of colonists, fomenting the Mast Tree Riot of 1734 and the Pine Tree Riot in 1772, early precursors to the Boston Tea Party.

Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum is home to a large collection, in the parlance of the arboretum, of Eastern White Pines. The pines, planted in the 1930s, were meant to create a barrier between the arboretum’s more ‘natural’ landscapes and the built spaces of the surrounding neighborhoods. The performance took place on Peter’s Hill, one of the highest points in Boston. The area now called Peter’s Hill was bequeathed to Harvard for the arboretum by Benjamin Bussey in 1872. Bussey was a Boston merchant and one of the richest men in New England in the 18th and 19th centuries.