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Cotton Tree
Cotton Tree
	Street-level view of Cotton Tree at the centre of Freetown in April 2007
Species	Kapok (Ceiba pentandra)
Location	Freetown, Sierra Leone
Coordinates	8°29′14″N 13°14′08″W / 8.4872°N 13.2356°W
Height	70 metres (230 ft)
Diameter	15 metres (49 ft)
Date seeded	c. 17th century
Date felled	24 May 2023

The Cotton Tree was a kapok tree (Ceiba pentandra) that was a historic symbol of Freetown, the capital city of Sierra Leone. The Cotton Tree gained importance in 1792 when a group of formerly enslaved African Americans, who had gained their freedom by fighting for the British during the American Revolutionary War, settled the site of modern Freetown.^[1]^[2] These former Black Loyalist soldiers, also known as Black Nova Scotians (because they came from Nova Scotia after leaving North America), resettled in Sierra Leone and founded Freetown on 11 March 1792.^[3] The descendants of the Nova Scotian settlers form part of the Sierra Leone Creole ethnicity today.^[1]^[4]^[2]

On 24 May 2023, a heavy rain storm felled the cotton tree with only the lower part of its enormous trunk still standing.^[5]

History

The exact age of the Cotton Tree is unknown, but it is thought to have been about 400 years old.^[5] It was mature prior to the foundation of Freetown and there are records of its existence in 1787 when settlers from Britain came to the peninsula. In March 1792, a group of former slaves who joined the settlement are said to have gathered under the Cotton Tree to pray and a white preacher named Nathaniel Gilbert preached a sermon.^[3] The Cotton Tree was also an important landmark for the Temne people who marked territory based on whether it was visible from the tree.^[6]

There are many legends concerning the Cotton Tree. Stories relate that the tree was planted by freed slaves from a seed taken from the Caribbean or that a slave market was held in the tree's shade.^[7] Another legend related that catastrophe would come if the tree ever fell.^[8]

The 70-metre (230 ft) tall, 15-metre (49 ft) wide Cotton Tree^[9] was the oldest of its kind in Freetown and one of Sierra Leone's most famous landmarks. It stood in a roundabout near the Supreme Court building, the music club building, and the Sierra Leone National Museum, which was established in the former Cotton Tree Telephone Exchange and had "Cotton Tree, Freetown" as its postal address.^[7] A booklet of Sierra Leonean heritage sites described the tree as standing,

like a colossus, in the middle of the city keeping watch, and 'protecting', the capital, as it has done for over two hundred years. Its gnarled and spiky trunks, sturdy bole and massive shady branches also give it the look of a sentinel, "standing in the centre of the oldest part of Freetown, surrounded by, yet dominating the principal buildings of Church, Law, and Government."^[7]

A 1933 Sierra Leonean two pence stamp, designed by a Roman Catholic missionary and issued as part of a set commemorating abolitionist William Wilberforce, portrayed the Cotton Tree along with text reading "Old Slave Market".^[10] After Sierra Leone gained independence in 1961, the tree was visited by Queen Elizabeth II. The Cotton Tree has been celebrated in children's nursery rhymes^[11] and was featured in Sierra Leone's first banknotes in 1964.^[7] Sierra Leonean poet Oumar Farouk Sesay composed a poem about the tree, comparing it to major world landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower and Big Ben.^[12]

The British ethnographer and colonial administrator E. F. Sayers wrote of the Cotton Tree in 1947:

How many human joys and human sorrows has our Freetown Cotton Tree not seen, and how many tragedies and comedies must have been enacted within the sight of it and within its sight? ... Freetown's Cotton Tree stands today for a sense of continuity in our corporate life, a symbolic link between our past and our future.^[7]

The trunk of the Cotton Tree was reinforced with steel straps and concrete.^[8] Thousands of fruit bats roosted on the tree's branches.^[13] At some point, it was partially scorched from a lightning strike.^[14] It also caught fire in 2018 and again in January 2020.^[15] In 2019, the Freetown City Council authorized rental allowances for the relocation of 62 people who had been begging and living around the Cotton Tree.^[16]

On 24 May 2023, a heavy rain storm felled the cotton tree with only the lower part of its enormous trunk still standing.^[5] President Julius Maada Bio mourned the loss, saying there was "no stronger symbol of our national story than the Cotton Tree, a physical embodiment of where we come from as a country". He vowed to include diverse voices in creating a new monument including remnants of the tree.^[9]

References

^ ^a ^b Walker, James W. St. G. (1992). "Chapter Five: Foundation of Sierra Leone". The Black Loyalists: The Search for a Promised Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone, 1783–1870. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. pp. 94–114. ISBN 978-0-8020-7402-7. Originally published by Longman & Dalhousie University Press (1976).
^ ^a ^b Taylor, Bankole Kamara (February 2014). Sierra Leone: The Land, Its People and History. New Africa Press. p. 68. ISBN 9789987160389. Archived from the original on 23 May 2024. Retrieved 20 March 2022.
^ ^a ^b LeVert, Suzanne (2007). Sierra Leone. Marshall Cavendish. p. 18. ISBN 978-0-7614-2334-8. Archived from the original on 23 May 2024. Retrieved 27 May 2023.
^ Hargreaves, J.; Porter, A. (1963). "The Sierra Leone Creoles – Creoledom: A Study of the Development of Freetown Society". The Journal of African History. 4 (3, 0000539): 468–469. doi:10.1017/S0021853700004394. S2CID 162611104.
^ ^a ^b ^c "Sierra Leone's symbolic Cotton Tree falls during storm in Freetown". The Guardian. Agence France-Presse. 25 May 2023. ISSN 0261-3077. Archived from the original on 25 May 2023. Retrieved 25 May 2023.
^ Kabs-Kanu, Leeroy Wilfred (14 February 2014). "How Freetown expunges the ghosts of its past". Cocorioko. Archived from the original on 12 April 2022. Retrieved 26 May 2023.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Basu, Paul (2018). "Palimpsest memoryscapes: Materializing and mediating war and peace in Sierra Leone". A Museum Studies Approach to Heritage. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-36130-5. Archived from the original on 23 May 2024. Retrieved 27 May 2023.
^ ^a ^b Little, Allan (13 March 2005). "A frontier between civilisations". BBC News. Archived from the original on 12 April 2005. Retrieved 26 May 2023.
^ ^a ^b "Sierra Leone's iconic Cotton Tree destroyed by storm". Deutsche Welle. 25 May 2023. Archived from the original on 23 May 2024. Retrieved 25 May 2023.
^ Fyfe, Christopher (1990). "Review of The Postal Service of Sierra Leone". The Journal of African History. 31 (2): 338. ISSN 0021-8537. JSTOR 182789. Archived from the original on 23 May 2024. Retrieved 26 May 2023.
^ "Storm fells symbolic 400-year-old cotton tree in Sierra Leone". Al Jazeera. 25 May 2023. Archived from the original on 23 May 2024. Retrieved 26 May 2023.
^ Fofana, Umaru; Greenall, Robert (25 May 2023). "Sierra Leone's iconic cotton tree felled by storm". BBC News. Archived from the original on 25 May 2023. Retrieved 26 May 2023.
^ Flanagan, Jane (25 May 2023). "Sierra Leone's historic cotton tree is felled in storm". The Times. Archived from the original on 25 May 2023.
^ Mednick, Sam (25 May 2023). "Centuries-old cotton tree, a national symbol for decades, felled by storm in Sierra Leone". San Diego Union-Tribune. Associated Press. Archived from the original on 23 May 2024. Retrieved 26 May 2023.
^ "Sierra Leone's symbolic 'Cotton Tree' goes up in flames". News24. 31 January 2020. Archived from the original on 23 May 2024. Retrieved 26 May 2023.
^ "FCC settles relocation package for Cotton Tree beggars". Politico SL. 27 June 2019. Archived from the original on 1 July 2019. Retrieved 26 May 2023.