Classic example of a prayer seat

A conversation with Alyssa Alexandria RunsWithWolves

Photo: Alyssa  Alexandria

What does the Tsektsel face?

Another Tsektsel or prayer seat:

Photo: Alyssa  Alexandria

The view, focal point from inside the second prayer seat:

Photo: Alyssa  Alexandria

Are any of the prayer seats integrated with the walls? Yes, they are. The walls do trail down to nothing once they reach them, however. Sometimes just a single row of cobbles.

The walls are robust at ground level, then meander up into nothing but a single row of stones going up the outcroppings to the prayer seat area; then (they) just stop and you're within the "spots."

They are all tied to walls. I took a series of photos with smoke holes, medicine boulders, some other wild perch type seats-- it's a little ceremonial area on top of a high outcropping. Lots of donation stones (red ones).

Added on 3/26/2022:

  

Prayer seat

níswonki - an enclosure, "three bends" (Nipmeuw, Narragansett). https://www.academia.edu/40876479/Assessing_Stone_Relics_in_Western_Massachusetts_Part_II_Patterns_of_Site_Distribution

świhwákuwi (viz. świk+wāgawi, ‘it grows around,’ Unami Lenapeuw, Zeisberger 1995:151, 173; świ, ‘three’ for 3-sided - Mohegan Nation 2004:98) form open ellipses that the author considers roughly equivalent to the “nave” of a Christian church…” https://www.academia.edu/40876478/Quantitative_Assessment_of_Stone_Relics_in_a_Western_Massachusetts_Town

 

 

Tsektsel or prayer seat (Yurok)

http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2012/05/classic-example-of-prayer-seat.html

 

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-08-25-mn-24849-story.html

https://escholarship.org/content/qt71d2g30s/qt71d2g30s_noSplash_0005b610d8eb3ffac3aaad128f8c8aff.pdf