Stiles, "Rings of Fire," Trees and Serpentine

It appears in all the earliest of histories and observations of New England/Turtle Island and Stiles is no different when he writes, "The Indians always burned rings or tracts on thofe fummits, to give a clear view for hunting deer..."

And I always refer people to William Cronon and "Changes in the Land" to help them understand that it was not a "wildernefs," as Dr. Stiles writes (Ftilef writef), but a land where a people had lived for 10 or 20 thousand years, those people almost completely wiped out by European diseases.

This blog is dotted with references to Indian burning to create their Cultural Landscape, and those stone rows I keep taking photos of are the remnants of firebreaks to control burning - among other things as well.

It was a "large charge" for me recently, at the "Indian Trail" entrance to Elderslie Preserve (which I think of as "Peter's Old Back Yard Preserve) to notice the remnants of a serpentine row ('ring' might be a better word now that Dr. Stiles has put it in my head) at the edge of the swampy land there...

So many stone piles and stone rows still exist at Enderslie, 400 years after the burning ceased. I wonder how many were pillaged, taken apart to build other things after the Quinnipiac departed along their own "Trail of Tears."

And the trees, in the widowed land taken over by newcomers, were at first a great "free for the taking" resource if they were large enough, fire wood for an even longer time, and now just seem as if they are some sort of large weeds as we burn fossil fuels, wild and un-managed for the most part, protected in the Preserves.

In Enderslie, as I walked around looking a stone mounds, I began to recognise some rock piles compromised and and some almost destroyed by both small and large trees...

Difficult to see in video, almost impossible in photos, the Serpentine Row is best seen in person: