THONG TREE This photo was taken by Shirley Evans' son  while he was on an outing in the Mark Twain National Forest near Cape Fair, Stone County Missouri. According to Fern Angus' book Down The Wire Road In The Missouri Ozarks, "The trees, usually made of oak saplings, were tired down with a strip of leather or a piece of bark from another tree. The saddle, or bent section, of the small tree soon grew in a horizontal position and served to point the Indian travelers to water which ran from a perpetual spring, or river, which flowed both winter and summer. To shape the sapling the Indians first drove the base of one forked stick into the ground near the foot of the sapling. Then they placed the other forked stick upside down over the trunk, driving the two prongs in the ground."    

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