The Hilltop Farmer 2

That Exceptional Yankee, the Hilltop Farmer William Nilly,

        plowed both sides of the same field they say,

Just because he could, just because he was so frugal,

          just because of all those stones…

He had a million sheeps and twice or half as many pigs and cows 

          and his plow was the finest in the land.

Singlehandedly and willy nilly, he tossed them stones 

     (that some silly people think are “Serpent Walls”)

           while holdin’ the plow with the other hand…

Sometimes he had some help of course

 And sometimes he helped someone else of course:

How Things Were

 

“One day I'll be old gray grandpa

All the pretty girls will call me "sir, "

Now, where they're asking me how things are

Soon they'll ask me how things were…”

 - Jesse Winchester

  I guess that is what I have been trying to tell you about, “how things were,” here in Nonnewaug, a little section of a town in western CT. Much has disappeared from the landscape, much has changed – from the stones along the roadways to the stones in the Nonnewaug River and anything along the powerlines – you know, I felt the rumble of those big machines sometimes before I ever saw what they were doing just like I felt an earthquake one morning not all that long ago.

 

   “How things were” isn’t just the changes on the landscape since 1650, but it’s the changes in the landscape since 1970 when I first visited Nonnewaug Falls as well as those changes in the landscape since 1990 when I read William Cothren’s History of Ancient Woodbury and realized that there was a village right here on the floodplain when the English settler colonists arrived in 1673, a permanent Indigenous settlement that continued to be occupied up to around 1740.

 “How things were” has been affected by floods and frost, stone structures along the little brooks and streams, as well as the diagonal stone fish weir on the Nonnewaug River that may be the source of the place name that still survives here, a “fishing place” like Cothren suggests, over by the cornfields of the Nonnewaug Wigwams. 

    “How things were” has also been greatly changed, like I said, by those big machines in an archeologically sensitive area, without any investigation I’m aware of, no thought given to these culturally stacked stones that may well predate colonization and Euro-American settlers in the Paugussett Homeland.

    There’s a bright spot in this ‘how things were” business. That old “History of Indians in Connecticut” by John Deforest can be retired as the “go to history.” Dr. Lucianne Lavin’s “Indigenous Peoples of Connecticut” is a remarkable book that replaces older 1850s misinformation and misconceptions with reliable information and reinterpretations of those misconceptions.

   And then of course there are other bright spots, other recent publications such as Curtiss Hoffman’s “Stone Prayers” and “Our Hidden Landscapes” edited by Dr. Lavin and Elaine Thompson, two more books I highly recommend.

  In the meantime, I’ll keep trying to tell you, like an old grey grandpa, about “How Things Were.”

Images from my notes in a folder called “Picture of Nonnewaug Wigwams 2025”

Pattern vs Pareidolia on Social Media

 

I take a look on that social media page and see:

Yet another fine example of

    An obvious Indigenous stone effigy

Yet another snake, I say

“Serpent Stacked” or “Serpent Laid”

In courses like entwined snakes

“Yet another turtle right there, in or on that alleged farmer wall,” I say

AND THEN:

Yet another someone says “Euro-American Stone Wall!”

Yet another someone says “Pareidolia!” and sends yet another definition

Which both Mr. Merriman and Webster claim is ‘the tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern.”

Random, ambiguous, you know, “not really a pattern.”

 

Here’s a basic pattern for you:

1. A Stone Snake-like head

 2. A Stone Snake-like body

  Sometimes a “diamond” on the head (or at the 7^th scale heart),

    Maybe below the head or behind it

Maybe a Stone horn or feather, pointing backward or maybe forward

Maybe undulating up and down or side to side

     Maybe hugging the road or a water feature

Maybe on both sides of that road or water feature

Emerging from a rock face or a split stone

 Connecting to “something” somewhere or maybe everywhere

   Separating “something” from something or maybe everything

    And maybe probably both separating and connecting

At the same time and in every time and always and forever….

 

So yeah, of course, I overlay the image with the imagery of informed imagination

 So that even the most skeptical of skeptics can plainly see

    And for every someone who says, “That really makes it “come alive,” so to speak,”

 Another one or two says, “I really really hate it so much much much when you do that!”

 

Me, I’m just wondering how many more examples I forgot to add…

Waking Up on Turtle Island 2025

On the dollar side of 70 years old,

 I wake up to another sunrise over “Sachem Nonnewaug’s Hill.”

Reds and purple give way to grey and white and blue,

 And the sun will soon glisten on the ice covered snow,

But the sun seems caught in the trees and the clouds on that hill.

 

I’ve got my feet up,

Only one of them swollen and bruised

   The morning news in an ear bud

Only one so that the news

Only sounds half as bad  

Only sounds half as sad

And I attempt to feel only half as blue

 

And Leonard went home yesterday,

“Stretched his eyes” like Les Two-Horns used to say,

For the first time in 50 years,

And that’s the only good news I think I’ve heard

In a month that feels like 50 years

 

 I think about 50 years of changes in the land,

Not just on that hillside

But also along the roadsides and the rivers

As yet another stone remnant of Turtle Island

Disappears forever without much notice by anyone but me it seems

 

And then I think about 500 and even 5000 years of changes in the land

And then I think I should be writing more right here and now

And then I hear more bad news, more changes in the land,

And the sun breaks through, shining right into my eyes…

 

Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Big Snake by the Big Lake (Morris CT)

 One of many "stone wall-like" artistically stacked stone cultural features that recall the Great Serpent...

 

"Abbomocho (Hobbomock, Chepi) – In English: The Healing Spirit..."

     "The Spirit of Death, night, northeast wind, the dark and the underworld."

Chapter 10: Spirit Names and Religious Vocabulary

by Dr. Frank Waabu O'Brien, Aquidneck Indian Council

http://www.bigorrin.org/waabu10.htm

 “First of all, Hobbamocke is spelled many ways (Hobamock, Hobbomok, Hobbomock, etc.), and is also known by different names, like Abbomocho, Chepian, Chepi, and Cheepi. His multiple names reflect his slippery nature - he's elusive and hard to pin down.

 As a deity (or manitou), he's associated with death, the color black, the northeast (the direction from which the worst weather reaches New England), swamps, and dense woodlands. I can see why the Puritans claimed Hobbomok was the Christian Devil in disguise, but the Algonquians took a more balanced view of this deity. For example, although he was sometimes harmful, Hobbomok could also heal disease and convey invulnerability to weapons.

 Hobbomok was also the manitou who helped the most powerful shamans, and the Algonquians of southern New England often sought visions of him. To see Hobbomok, young men would spend the night in a desolate place, drinking a mixture of potent herbs including the hallucinogen white hellebore. The herbal concoction caused vomiting, but the initiates would drink their own vomit (often mixed with regurgitated blood) until the mixture remained in their stomachs. (Note: Don't ever try this!) Receiving a vision of Hobbomok during the ordeal conveyed shamanic power. He would also appear in dreams of his own accord, an occurrence which would make the dreamer a shaman from that time forward.

There were two important types of shamans, both having strong relationships with Hobbomok: the pniese, who was immune to weapons, and the powwow, who could heal heal his clients or harm his enemies using his spirit allies. (The word powwow now means an American Indian gathering, but originally meant shaman). In times of trouble, such as war, shamans would often lead their people into the swamps, where they could communicate more easily with Hobbomok or other watery, underworld spirit allies.

 Hobbomok appears in dreams in many forms, including a deer, a man, or an eagle, but his favorite forms are the eel and the snake.   

Terrifyingly, Hobbomok also sometimes appears as a European, as John Josselyn recorded in 1674:

 "Another time, two Indians and an Indess, came running into our house crying out they should all dye, Cheepie (Hobbomok) was gone over the field gliding in the air with a long rope hanging from one of his legs: we askt them what he was like, they said all wone Englishman, clothed with hat and coat, shooes and stockings."

 I found this Hobbomok information in two places: William Simmons' Spirit of the New England Tribes, and Kathleen Bragdon's Native People of Southern New England, 1500-1650.”

http://newenglandfolklore.blogspot.com/2010/05/hobbomok-and-shamanic-power.html

 

Wednesday, May 01, 2024

Big Snakes Up by the South End of the Big Lake

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2024/05/big-snakes-up-by-south-end-of-big-lake.html

Thursday, May 02, 2024

More South End of the Big Lake (CT)

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2024/05/more-south-end-of-big-lake-ct.html