white pine floor

The white pine is the state tree of Michigan. We chose plain white pine boards for the floor of the atelier, our studio, formerly a chicken coop. Before I left for Ireland, Don and Peter worked on it, using old fashioned cut nails to install the boards. While I was in Ireland these past two weeks, Don finished installing the boards, sanded for four hours, then rolled the spar - the varnish used for wooden boats. We wanted the boards to be unstained so they would gradually age into the golden glow that pine turns over time.

The white pine has a lot of symbolism in the US, and in Michigan. The Haudenosaunee Indians (pejoratively called Iroquois, meaning "black snakes" in French, which they translated from what a rival Huron tribe called them) considered it their symbol of peace because of the union of the five tribes under their peace treaty. White pine needles grow in clusters of five. The five tribes Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onodaga, and Seneca were united after centuries of war, into one Indian nation. (These tribes are from the eastern US, and there may be information about the white pine symbol in Michigan, but I didn't find it.)

This union of Indian tribes is considered to be the longest running constitutional government still existing, and was partially the model used for the US government.

Now that the floor is done, we are going to create a ceremony for blessing l'atelier, using the Native American stories of peacemaking as a guide. Then we will move the furnishings in.

I found much of this interesting information about the Haudenosaunee and the white pine at this nice site.