Tutelo Park Plant Walk

This plant walk features the significance, uses, and lore of the selected plants to the Gayogohó:nǫˀ community. It recognizes the first stewards of the land and is meant to remind us that they, like the plants found here, still thrive in the Finger Lakes. The plant walk project was co-created with Steve Henhawk, a local Gayogohó:nǫˀ citizen, and the Town Conservation Board. The knowledge he generously shares with us here was shared in the hope that people who visit know more about the place these plants inhabit today within his culture, more about the history of this place, but most of all that the Gayogohó:nǫˀ are still here today.

Focusing an interpretive effort at Tutelo Park is significant. The park was established through an effort in the 1990s to commemorate the Tutelo town, Coreorgonel, that was located in the vicinity of the park, and which was destroyed by Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Dearborn troops. Coreorgonel consisted of about 25 homes with other clusters of homes nearby. The Tutelo were refugees, having been displaced many times in the 18^th century from Virginia, who planted the area extensively with crops of peaches, corn, watermelons and other crops. On each plant page you will be able to hear Mr. Henhawk share his knowledge of each of these plants in his own language, and in an English translation