An "Unlikely Place" for a Ceremonial Stone Landscape Part 01

Stone Walls or Uktena Qusukqaniyutôk at Orenaug Park?

Image lifted from: https://youtu.be/35hswwxcIFI?t=9m9s

    “This is a serpent effigy - and the serpent effigies are quite often in dispute because the presumption is that they are stone walls. Most often, they are too low to pen anything in, but we identify them by other means. Usually they do have a head, such as the one you see here. This particular one, just behind the head, also has a space and an orange stone, because we believe that they are related to the serpent effigy that is in the area of Scorpius that the Cherokee referred to as the Uktena, that is, a serpent with an orange stone. In its terra form, it’s (it has) a jewel and it is horned, but this is, as below, so above...” Doug Harris
   Note: DH is likening the Orange stone (as below/in the stone "wall") to the orange colored bright star Antares that is the Jewel on the head of the Great Serpent constellation (as above in the sky), part of what Europeans came to call Scorpius.

The complete text and video can be seen here at the National Park Service website:

https://www.ncptt.nps.gov/blog/ceremonial-stone-landscapes-of-new-england-and-developing-best-practices-to-assess-submerged-paleocultural-landscapes/

This presentation was part of the Proceedings of the Maritime Cultural Landscape Symposium, October 14-15, 2015, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

    I agree with Doug Harris that this is a Ceremonial Stone Landscape Feature that, diagnostically speaking, represents a Spirit Being from the Underworld, related to water and weather, particularly in its aspect as a protective spirit against the Upperworld (Sky) “Thunder Beings” or “Thunderbirds” who could shoot lightening from their eyes and cause wild fires:

Beenaysee eshkotay – Thunderbird fire, comes from the thunderbirds’ eyes and strikes whatever it is looking at. Renewal begins with the roots that remain underground. (Figure 5.2 from: Living with Boreal Forest Fires; Anishinaabe Perspectives on Disturbance and Collaborative Forestry Planning, Pikangikum First Nation, Northwestern Ontario. Accessed from http://umanitoba.ca/institutes/natural_resources/pdf/theses/PhD%20Thesis%20Miller%202010.pdf)

     I’m unsure about the orange stone mentioned (having only the still capture from the video as reference) – and I would offer a guess that the “jewel” (on the head of the Uktena) may be the stone I have labelled as “The Jewel” or Ulstitli (and also "Ulun’suti" when in possession of a human, as well as "crystal" or "carbuncle"). I’ve taken the liberty to add horns, observing another repeated feature that in my experience suggests a “horn or antler rest” that I imaginatively conjecture may have been used to further “decorate” or enhance the stone feature to convey that this is a Horned or Antlered Snake, with the power or abilities of a Great Snake to control both a wildfire or a humanly set fire (of Renewal). This presumed stone wall may be better described as a snake petroform and a fuel break as well on a landscape once tended by low ground fires.

    The Uktena is the “Stronger Looker:" 

     "According to (James) Mooney (1900:458-459), the name Uktena is derived from akta, or eye, and implies being a “strong looker,” as everything is visible to it (i.e., it can see thoughts). From the same root is derived akta’tĭ, “to see into closely” which is also the Cherokee word for a magnifying lens and telescope. So the name Uktena implies that it sees thoughts and it does so in an accurate way; knowledge that comes in useful to predict enemy tactics (Jannie Loubser - E-mail communication July 21, 2015). "

   I would further qualify the “stone wall” as an Uktena Qusukqaniyutôk because the head is bent at an angle from the “body” of the “wall” or Qusukqaniyutôk ~ ‘stone row, enclosure’ (Harris and Robinson, 2015:140)

    This tilted head motif can be observed in many other “stone walls” that I suspect to be Uktena Qusukqaniyutôk:

An enhanced drawing with embarrassing horns or antlers:

I once came upon an unauthorized photo of Jannie Loubser at a suspected malicious website and learned in a personal communication with him that this was a photograph of an unidentified “squiggle” at the Painted Bluff site in Alabama, at the time Jannie was writing up his report that was not classified as a Snake/Uktena because of a lack of a head on one end or the other: 

     I suggested that the squiggle may be two Uktena, head to head, guarding the circular shape that may be a sort of "gateway" or "doorway" to the Underworld. I sent along a better photo overlay:

  There's an outcrop at Orenaug, surrounded by "stone walls" that also might bear some similarity to the Petroglyph, but perhaps it's more related to the Upper or Sky World and the Thunder Beings/Birds (maybe). It's just as possible that it's a place where a Great Horned Snake lives - or emerges from the Underworld.

     I've overlaid some of that stolen image above onto a photograph of that Orenaug outcrop, illustrating the similarity to the petroglyph at Painted Bluff in these two different forms of Indigenous Rock Art. Both can be seen as a person about to enter a Sacred Space, guarded by two Uktena or Great Serpents/Snakes, one in paint, the other in solid stone...

The "Gateway" is very narrow and a person would perhaps brush up against the Uktena, head turned slightly toward the person entering this space:

Overlay (including a surveyors pin at orange arrow):

As the person leaves that (probable) Sacred Space, another Uktena watches on, "knowing the person's intentions," as he or she leaves the site of suspected Ceremony:

Perhaps a person might be seeking the protection of the Great Snake before climbing to a higher point, it suddenly occurs to me. The survey pins (and some inaccurate yellow lines) tell us exactly where this feature of the Ceremonial Stone Landscape is located:

(To be continued...)