Sunlight and Shadows on the Grandfather Stones (Nonnewaug)

 Middle of June, just a few minutes past 10am, 

     Shadows on a certain Stone caught my eye: 

I was walking my friend down to his car parked at the bottom of our driveway,

Seen here on an early spring day,

And overlay of horns and eyes on a Guardian Serpent:

This stone:

I stepped up from the driveway,

 stood in the flower bed,

 and the shadow wasn't so noticable,

looking down at the stone:

But bending at my complaining knees,

I'm pretty sure I'm looking at old steel tool marks

and an intentional zoomorphic head:

Turtle head, snake head??

Well, maybe, could be, and I wonder

"Is it meant to be seen as both??"

More about "Tool Marks and Shadows" in Nonnewaug:

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2021/11/sun-shadows-european-metal-tool-marks.html

2 Floodplain Cornfields Along 2 Rivers

(Mounds And "House Sites")

https://gutenberg.org/files/56304/56304-h/56304-h.htm

 "It's a very old road, the one that led from the place where the Sachem Pomperaug's Village once stood to the place where the Sachem Nonnewaug's Wigwams were located when Captain John Minor and a group of settler colonists left Stratford CT arrived in 1673. It's also known as the CT Path - one of them anyway. Started as a game trail for mastodons and other megafauna, the sign downtown says..."

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2023/03/stone-serpent-above-old-cornfields-ct.html

Snake Heads or "Anchors?"

Repeated Pattern 

or

 the tendency to perceive a specific,

 often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern,

by pastures and cornfields,

such as Great Serpents?

  In Nonnewaug, the stones still touch the edges of the floodplains that were the agricultural lands of the Pootatuck, a "band" of the Paugussett, the “furthest away fish weir” in the last floodplain in a chain of floodplain intervales that start where the Pomperaug River empties into the Housatonic River, at the falls, at the contact era Village known as Pootatuck. After the First Puritan War (Pequot War), European (English) settler colonists from the “New London” area became interested in the acquisition of all these former farmlands. By 1673, a group of English from Stratford by way of New London, arrived in the area, putting in crops in long established cornfields, "quite to Nonnewaug Falls," where there was a late woodland village that became a contact era village, up until about 1740, when "civilization" arrived, putting chestnut rails up over ancient Stone Snakes to become "improved" private property under colonial law...

An overlay on a zigzag segment of carefully stacked or laid stones:

Another spot nearby to the north:

http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2023/02/sun-shadows-nonnewaug-ct.html

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2023/02/unsuited-to-farming.html

A spot crushed and buried in 2007:

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2020/08/and-stone-wall-was-broken.html

Farther south along the River:

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2023/03/stone-serpent-above-old-cornfields-ct.html

More Maps and Drawings

And missing "Stone Cultural Features," Qusukqaniyutôkansh (pl): Rows of Stacked Stones, colloquially “stone walls” or “stone fences,” often assumed to be post contact constructions related to settler colonist property ownership and agriculture of the last four hundred years.

These three towns were built on top of older village sites:

Messing with some images overlaid on an old map of "Trails and Sachemdoms:"

The "stone walls" or Qusukqaniyutôkansh may be a missing detail

in this drawing below:

Above: First Puritan Minister's Estate in Bethlehem CT

Below: "Nonnewaug" in present day Woodbury CT

"Qusukqaniyutôk: (‘stone row, enclosure’ Harris and Robinson, 2015:140, ‘fence that crosses back’ viz. qussuk, ‘stone,’ Nipmuc or quski, quskaca, ‘returning, crosses over,’ qaqi, ‘runs,’ pumiyotôk, ‘fence, wall,’ Mohegan, Mohegan Nation 2004:145, 95, 129) wall (outdoor), fence, NI – pumiyotôk plural pumiyotôkansh.)" - Nohham Rolf Cachat-Schilling

Bulletin of the Massachusetts Archaeological Society, Vol. 77, No. 2 Fall 2016

https://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1202&context=bmas

Qusukqaniyutôkansh (pl): Rows of Stacked Stones, colloquially “stone walls” or “stone fences,” often assumed to be post contact constructions related to property ownership and agriculture.

Qusukqaniyutôk: “A row of stones artistically stacked or laid using elements of Indigenous Iconography, sometimes obviously resembling a Great Snake, often composed of smaller snake effigies as well as other effigies both zoomorphic and anthropomorphic, sometimes appearing to shapeshift into another effigy, possibly related to control of water or fire (sometimes both) on Sacred Cultural Landscapes that are beginning to be recognized as Indigenous Ceremonial Stone Landscapes.”

From a perspective of distance, the largest of the Stone Snake Qusukqaniyutôk snake across the landscape, crossing over others, sometimes connecting great boulders or bedrock outcrops, sometimes along streams – and sometimes stacked over and hiding a stream, a Musical Row of Stones - the sound of water is the Great Snake contentedly “purring.”

Inside some enclosures, there were “gardens,” plant resources perhaps tended by fire, perhaps protected from fire, something living kept in balance, kept in production by someone offering tobacco to a serpent guardian before entering, someone singing while stacking stones, picking up and replacing her grandmothers’ and grandfathers’ stones that have fallen.

Zigzag, linear rows of stones, snaking across the landscape, both sides of an Indian Path or Native American Trail or an Indigenous Road that’s possibly one or two hundred or ten or twelve thousand years old…

Interested in Indigenous/Native American Ceremonial Stone Landscape features, such as stonewall-like Qusukqaniyutôkansh (pl) - Rows of Stacked Stones, colloquially “stone walls” or “stone fences,” often assumed to be post contact constructions related to property ownership and agriculture? Learn more here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/4585999861

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/search?q=Qusukqaniyut%C3%B4k

 

Maps and Drawings

 

This map caught my eye, got me thinking...

Lifted from:

https://people.cas.sc.edu/ajames/Research/Pubs/11%20James%20Pre-%20&%20Post-Cola%20Impacts.pdf

It got me thinking of the map from Charles C. Mann's "1493" 

and the map in Curtiss Hoffman's "Stone Prayers:"

And that got me thinking of these sort of map-like drawings

or drawing-like maps and Champlain:

Champlains Journals, Maps, and Illustrations

 "For archeologists, cultural anthropologists, and ethnohistorians studying early historic period Native American cultures along the Northeast coast and the interactions between these groups and Europeans, Champlain’s text, maps, and illustrations are an information treasury… Even farther south there was a language and ethnic shift that is described by Champlain. He writes that the more southern group is called the “Almouchiquois,” a people who were horticulturalists.

“They till and cultivate the land; a practice we had not seen previously. In place of ploughs they use an instrument of very hard wood made in the shape of a spade…We saw their grain, which is Indian corn. This they grow in gardens, sowing three or four grains in one spot…they heap about it a quantity of earth. Then three feet away they sow as much again; and so on in order. Amongst this corn they plant in each hillock three or four Brazilian beans, which come up in different colors…they keep the ground very free from weeds. We saw there many squashes, pumpkins, and tobacco, which they likewise cultivate (Champlain 1922:327-328).”

Adding some rows of stacked stones on the landscape, 

fuel breaks around gardens, along roads, and around water features...

 Based on his observations of the “fixed abodes” of the Indians and the cultivated fields, along with nut-bearing trees, Champlain inferred that the climate in this area was milder than that of the St. Croix River. He reported that “the Indians remain permanently in this place, and have a large wigwam surrounded by palisades formed by rather large trees placed one against the other; and into which they retire when their enemies come to make war against them” (Champlain 1922:329-330).

Mallebarre Harbor (Nauset Marsh, Eastham, Massachusetts), July 1605
On 20 July, de Monts and his party managed to ride over the shoals and sandbanks at the entrance to Nauset Harbor, which Champlain named Mallebarre (“bad bar”) for these obstacles, and into the large embayment. The land around the embayment was densely occupied. Champlain noted: “…all around it little houses about which each owner had as much land as was necessary for his support…There came to us from all sides, dancing, a number of Indians, both men and women” (Champlain 1922:350).

I suggest that stone cultural fuelbreaks are missing details... 

 On 21 July, de Monts, Champlain, and nine or ten companions, all armed, set off to visit the Indian settlement. The remainder of the French party stayed with their ship, guarding it and its contents. In his journals, Champlain describes a landscape with many cultivated fields, filled with the same crops he noted along Saco Bay. He noted several fields that were not cultivated, being left fallow and suggesting a multi-year strategy for cultivation by the natives..."

 https://www.nps.gov/articles/the-french-along-the-northeast-coast-1604-1607.htm

 "The Nauset Archaeological District, within the southern portion of Cape Cod National Seashore was one focus of substantial ancient settlement since at least 4,000 BC. Indians at Nauset Harbor practiced farming and fishing. Farming was simple, using stone hoes and fire-hardened wood tools to work the soil, but rewarding. French explorers and the early English settlers report crop surpluses. In fact, the early Pilgrim settlers purchased corn and other crop foods from the Nauset Indians during the early years of their settlement at Plymouth, just across Cape Cod Bay. One of the means of fishing can be seen in the upper right corner of the map of Nauset by Champlain (Figure 1), which shows a conical weir constructed of saplings and grass rope, designed to capture fish swimming from the marsh into a pond. Radiocarbon dating and information indicating the season in which different species were collected or hunted, based on studies of the shellfish and other faunal remains from ancient shell middens, indicate that people lived here year-round.

 The first written account of the area was by Samuel de Champlain, who sailed in on July 21, 1605, and saw a bay with wigwams bordering it all around. He went ashore with some of the crew: “before reaching [the Indians’] wigwams, [we] entered a field planted with Indian corn…[which] was in flower, and some five and a half feet in height. ... We saw Brazilian beans, many edible squashes…tobacco, and roots which they cultivate … .” He also described the round wigwams, covered by a thatch made of reeds, and the people’s clothing, woven from grasses, hemp, and animal skins. As the expedition cartographer, Champlain has left us an informative map of the Nauset Harbor area (Figure 1). 

 https://www.nps.gov/caco/learn/historyculture/the-nauset-archaeological-district-eastham.htm

Later the same day:

This image caught my eye, got me thinking, 

Lifted from:

https://nocofireshed.org/what-we-do/

Got me adding some missing stone cultural features,

as I envision them functioning:

 “On shore, Verrazzano noticed that the Narragansett’s “fields extend for 25 to 30 leagues; they are open and free of any obstacles or trees, and so fertile that any kind of seed would produce excellent crops.” Apparently, the Narragansetts used controlled burns to clear the land of trees, brush and briars, and making the land open for grazing for wildlife and for cultivation…”

http://smallstatebighistory.com/verrazzano-visits-the-narragansett-indians-in-1524/