Saturday, July 11, 2015

A Mysterious Chamber In Kent (NY)

Back to the Drawing Board

Looking back, there’s an untitled October 2011 post {http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2011/10/httpbrianaltonenmph.html} I did that included some possible Turtle Imagery in a photo I thought was taken in the Hudson Valley or Shekomeko NY that I came across at http://brianaltonenmph.com/6-history-of-medicine-and-pharmacy/hudson-valley-medical-history/european-multiculturalism/moravian-indian-medicine/mahican-health-and-disease/, used to illustrate that the Indigenous People at a Moravian Mission had a stone sweat lodge, labelled as a “cellar,” at the community – maybe because they couldn’t spell “Pissepunck” or one of the many variations of the word that seems to mean “stone sweat lodge.” In Kent CT, Moravian Missionaries did include the information that the Indigenous People at Schaghticoke did indeed continue to use sweat lodges in records they kept.

The Stone Structure on the left is the one I’m talking about (I’m still unsure where the one on the right could be):
I think the source of this photo on the left is: http://www.panoramio.com/photo/4056133:
(Odd how a Google Image Search for this one brings you to so many UFO related sites)
    The person who took the photo and posted it to Panaramio, Halberd on August 23, 2007, says:
“In and around the Town of Kent, NY (about 50 miles south of Shekomeko) there are several stone chambers like this one at the site of the old Mead Farm. Some insist that the chambers are evidence that Druids were in the area a long time ago, but this is highly unlikely according to most anthropologists. A more likely scenario, they say is that they are old root-cellars from the colonial days. The inside of this one is about 8 feet (2.5 meters) square.”
     A debate follows in the comments below the photo, the usual silliness you often find about structures like these.
      I put in my own 3 cents worth on that old 2011 post I referred to earlier but I’ve changed my mind: the turtle I thought I saw isn’t the turtle I think I see now, and that former turtle head might actually be a snake head, leading to a new overlay on the stolen photo: 
Closer (original on left and then on the right with a painted in open eye, nostrils and a tongue – maybe represented in that small pointed stone directly below the head stone???):
There’s more images of this and some other stone features here, by brucepjc: http://www.panoramio.com/user/6668009
Turns out it’s near that Hawk Rock with the modern turtle carved into by Boy Scouts, it’s sometimes called the Whangtown Chamber and is often attributed to “anyone but Indians,” but certainly, in my eyes anyway, resembles a Turtle, a symbol of the Earth in Indigenous thought, and may well be a stone sweat lodge with some similar cultural motifs to many stone features I think of as identification markers of an Indigenous origin: 

3 comments:

  1. Kent, NY is in Putnam Co, south of Shekomeko, west and south of Kent, CT. See https://www.facebook.com/pages/Stone-Chambers-of-Putnam-County/137589666253671

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  2. A bing map search brought me to another Kent NY near Lake Ontario! Thank you for the correction! And the link!

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    1. You are quite welcome. I hope it helps...they have been pondering those Cairns for some time now...big topic in Putnam Co history.

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