Farmers of Corn, Squash, and Beans?
Farmers of Cranberries, Blueberries, and
Mast Forests??
“Just some
rocks, of course” someone else says,
And of
course I’m thinking “You mean stones.”
“Farmers
clearing their fields, of course,” someone agrees,
“Happened
all over New England, lol!” someone else
proclaims,
And of
course I’m thinking “What kind of farmers?”
And of
course I know who he means:
-
Dutch Farmers
-
English Farmers
And, of
course, all those Farmers who came after them,
Bringing
pigs and cows and sheep
Wheat and
peas and “Old World Crops”
To the mythical
howling and empty wilderness of these “New World Lands.”
And of
course I’m thinking they think:
“Nothing
happened here before 1620.”
And of
course he doesn’t have a clue what I mean:
The Farmers
planting “Corn, Squash, and Beans,”
By the Stone Fish Weirs in the floodplains
-
Lenape Farmers of Forests and Grasslands
-
Paugussett Farmers of Blueberries and
Cranberries
And of
course all those who came before them
On these Ancient
Homelands,
Over
thousands and thousands of years
I’ll say it
again:
Over
thousands and thousands of years…
“We didn’t
build walls,” someone else says
And I know
she means the “stone fences” almost everybody colloquially calls “stone walls,”
Here on the
Eastern Gate of Turtle Island that almost everybody calls “New England,”
Almost
always assumed to be post contact constructions related to
European
ideas of property ownership,
European animal husbandry,
And European
agriculture,
Here where
all the “Real Indians” are said to be extinct,
Here where
the Puritan Saints declared:
Indians had
no art and “enclose no land,”
Here where
nomadic Indians wandered like houseless people,
“Like the
foxes and wild beasts,”
Here where
the Indians, they said, worshipped the bright red devil…
But I’m
talking about the Qusukqaniyutôkansh, the Rows of Culturally Stacked Stones,
That snake
along the ancient roadways, that enclose the ancient gardens,
That follow
the path that water takes from hillside springs to the salt water,
That continue
to get eaten up, bulldozed and buried, or maybe washed away,
That
continue to be dismissed as “linear garbage piles” by Colonialists, Denialists,
and Nationalists,
All of whom
claim to be experts and scientists, supposedly exposing the pseudoscience,
Exposing the
academic fraud of a perceived Ceremonial Stone Landscape Movement,
Often in the
form of an angry condescending ad hominem tirade
Rather than
an actual investigation of the Rows of Culturally Stacked Stones,
The “stone
fences” almost everybody colloquially calls “stone walls,”
Here on the
Eastern Gate of Turtle Island that almost everybody calls “New England,”
That
sometimes begin with what appears to be Snake head…
Of course I find I agree with that statement...
"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
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