Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig winonacotter.org. NS
Answer
winonacotter.org. 3 NS ns26.domaincontrol.com.
winonacotter.org. 3 NS ns25.domaincontrol.com.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0