Walking along the eastern stone border of
an old Indian Trail, heading north from the striking Grey White-eyed Great
Serpent Gateway (http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2014/12/grey-serpent-gateway.html),
there is another gateway. As you walk along the seeming “Estate Wall” of the
former property of the town’s fist Puritan minister, you can note that some of the
stones used are quite colorful. The quartz stones shown above, could be said to
be possibly representative of a marking of a rattlesnake – and thus a marking of
the Great Serpent who knows the intentions of the person entering the gateway.
I have to borrow and use the word “Uktena” or “Strong Looker,” borrowed from
the Tsalagi
or Cherokee language. That triangular stone before it could also be the
head of a smaller snake, a course of stones laid down not as a “brick or
block-like” course of stones – something you might expect to find in an Estate
Wall supposedly built in that brief Golden Age of Stone Wall Building, and
maintained at least for part of the time leading up to the present.
These white quartz stones could also be
said to mimic or resemble a high domed shell (carapace) and head of a box
turtle, sort of along the lines of multiple images (images within images?) that can be found in other Rock Art:
A suggestion of an eye and mouth – eyes on
the upper, mouth lower – purposely placed to suggest a “zoomorphic” or more
specifically a “testudinate” head, combined with the shell like stone of
similar stone, which is sometimes a repeated pattern that suggests Indigenous
construction:
Step back:
Then step way back, and observe the White Box Turtle in the center of the photo:
The next gateway to the north, the intended focus of the
post:
Looking to the left, one could interpret this
as a variation of the serpent theme, using flatter stones obviously (stacked on
what may be an older serpent below the uppermost):
Turning to the right, an almost identical
stone, possibly disturbed a little, but still conveying the impression (the Indigenous builder's purposeful
intention) of an Uktena seeming to look at the person entering the gateway:
Bear in mind that this is just an observation of a repeated pattern. Call it an "artistic pattern" if you like, but also remember that Native Americans used iconography to infuse the power of Turtles or Great Serpents or anything else into what isn't mere decoration in a wide variety of media. These protective Serpents guarded the area in numerous ways, I conjecture, including control of the fires that maintained the paths or trails and whatever was enclosed by them (as some people suggest that earthen mounds do where stone isn't readily available).
What would some well funded research tells us about the age of these rows of stones??
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related posts (but certainly not all of them):
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