NAGPRA (Thirty Days)

"I used to search for reservations and native lands

before I realized everywhere I stand

there have been tribal feet running wild as fire…”

P. Waksman Photo from: http://rockpiles.blogspot.com/2012/05/what-remains-at-pratt-hill.html

Stones gathered, stones placed just so

In a heap, in a row,

Over a period of time so long ago

That no one truly knows

How long they’ve been there;

And the Old Ones shrug their shoulders

And say “They’ve been there Forever.”



Native Graves Protection Act, you say?

What it boils down to is,

You got so many days

To move your granny

To do your study

Before we bulldoze it away.

Dontcha know?

There’s money to be made!

Your “rocks” are in the way.


And that’s the real bottom line

They’ll give you just so much time

To move your Ancestors off of OUR LAND!



"If the discovery occurred in connection with an activity, including (but not limited to) construction, mining, logging, and agriculture, the person shall cease the activity in the area of the discovery, make a reasonable effort to protect the items discovered before resuming such activity, and provide notice under this subsection. Following the notification under this subsection, and upon certification by the Secretary of the department or the head of any agency or instrumentality of the United States or the appropriate Indian tribe or Native Hawaiian organization that notification has been received, the

activity may resume after 30 days of such certification."

http://www.nps.gov/nagpra/mandates/25usc3001etseq.htm

An Ancient Zig Zag Rock Wall

Image stolen from: http://4cornershikesancients.blogspot.com/2011/03/cannonball-mesa-point.html

They seem to have different names depending on where you go on Turtle Island - stone fences/stone walls, rock walls/rock lines and probably more, sort of like "pop" and "soda," "Dr. Pepper" and "Mr. Phib." Some places they put your groceries in a bag, other places they put them in a sack.

"Hikers"  is a more universal term (as if "universal" is the right word - I see relatively few photos from people hiking on other planets, like I never understood why there weren't Extra-Terrestrial Contestants in the Miss Universe Pagent) and some of them are bloggers who share through digital images the hikes they take to places I'll never go.

So thanks, Todd Lochmoeller/Traveler, for posting this image above of An Ancient Zig Zag Rock Wall and all those other images I'm about to dive on into (watching for the rocks of course) at:

  http://4cornershikesancients.blogspot.com/

Recollecting Nemasket

Photo from: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTX5rDBYtQeh9wRYyhFBO11rQkh3gGgzuAaIwtJiMZvF9Y1dQYpOAWmnBhrI_3O6zuyK7W0wNRkefylsucYneEkDpssFIV1Sn2BSMkisiTNI2q1CkJVv8NWEXgNtjJNpPfzHtrMg/s1600-h/Mitchell+House,+Betty%27s+Neck.png

"Before I left Lakeville, I visited the old Indian burying-ground; but it is now difficult to recognize it as such, since all the stones have suffered mutilation at vandal hands. Even the Indians graves are not respected, and she who remains is but a solitary figure amidst the rush of invasion, the only type of a race which has now almost vanished from New England." Source: Walter Gilman Page, New England Magazine, “A Descendant of Massasoit”. January 1891, 642-644.


http://nemasket.blogspot.com/2011/01/visit-to-zerviah-gould-mitchell-1891.html
 

Wootonekanuske and Teweeleema,

 more familiarly known as Charlotte and Melinda Mitchell,

 were the last descendants of Massasoit and lived at Betty's Neck in Lakeville.

AN HEIR TO KING PHILIP: http://nemasket.blogspot.com/2009/09/heir-to-king-philip.html
 

 "a rock on a high hill a little to the eastward of the old stone fishing weir, where there is the print of a person's hand in said rock". [Massachusetts Historical Collections Vol. 3d 1810]

"Lenik himself suggests that "the handprint is that of a shaman who has marked the area as a sacred site. The boulder, standing alone on the hilltop, may have been seen as a source of spiritual power. The carving of the handprint may have been a shaman's attempt to derive power from the site."Hand Rock: http://nemasket.blogspot.com/2009/05/hand-rock.html

Chinese Walls (in California)

My friend Dave C. often sends me Google Earth images, like the one above, that show interesting details that stand out on satellite photos - from all around the world as well as Turtle Island.

Well, the image sent me on a little "Google Journey" - one showing me the documented Chinese rock walls near the place marked spot. This sounds like someone working for my Grandpa Tim: "Morgan Quick agreed to pay a Chinese contractor $1.75 for each rod (sixteen and a half linear feet) of stone wall. He also provided pork and rice for the workers. The contractor, who sat under an umbrella tracking construction progress with an abacus, paid his workers 25 cents per day IF they completed a rod and a half (twenty four feet and nine inches). The daily wage was lost if workers failed to meet the quota."

http://www.goldrushcam.com/2008/LG/sierra_sun_times%20linda%20gast%205.htm

But the result that "got me" was the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management website (http://www.blm.gov/id/st/en/prog/cultural/lower_salmon_river/historic_mining.html ) with the above picture of the obvious prayer seat/tsektsel, accompanied by this text:.

" The Chinese along the Lower Salmon River: Some of the places where past residents lived are still visible. These habitations were typically rock structures. The structure foundations average about 3 feet high, 6 feet wide, and 10 feet long. A wooden framework was constructed over the top of the rock walls. A variety of roofing materials were used. Most roofs were probably of canvas attached to a framework of milled lumber or driftwood. The wood was undoubtedly scavenged when the structure was abandoned.
Many of these structures had a fireplace. Generally, structures built by Euro-Americans had the fireplace in the wall opposite the entrance. Some rock structures built by the Chinese have the fireplace adjacent to the entrance. This architectural feature is unique to some structures built by the Chinese. The only other known standing structures with this unique architectural style are Chinese structures in some of the old mining areas located in New Zealand."

After seeing the Grey Feather Gallery of photos at Ancient Paths of Shastina (that I 'lifted' to illustrate this post http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2012/05/classic-example-of-prayer-seat.html), I (and probably Norman too) wonder what "the Chinese fire place/foundation" faces and what other features might occur around it that just might be similar to those Grey Feather photos at:

 http://www.ancientpathsofshastina.com/gallery/gray-feather/

(Main site: http://www.ancientpathsofshastina.com/)

A photo I couldn't easily steal of a CA Chinese rock house can be found at:

http://www.goodyearsbar.com/chinese.php 



Classic example of a prayer seat

A conversation with Alyssa Alexandria RunsWithWolves

Photo: Alyssa  Alexandria

What does the Tsektsel face?

Another Tsektsel or prayer seat:

Photo: Alyssa  Alexandria

The view, focal point from inside the second prayer seat:

Photo: Alyssa  Alexandria

Are any of the prayer seats integrated with the walls? Yes, they are. The walls do trail down to nothing once they reach them, however. Sometimes just a single row of cobbles.

The walls are robust at ground level, then meander up into nothing but a single row of stones going up the outcroppings to the prayer seat area; then (they) just stop and you're within the "spots."

They are all tied to walls. I took a series of photos with smoke holes, medicine boulders, some other wild perch type seats-- it's a little ceremonial area on top of a high outcropping. Lots of donation stones (red ones).

Added on 3/26/2022:

  

Prayer seat

níswonki - an enclosure, "three bends" (Nipmeuw, Narragansett). https://www.academia.edu/40876479/Assessing_Stone_Relics_in_Western_Massachusetts_Part_II_Patterns_of_Site_Distribution

świhwákuwi (viz. świk+wāgawi, ‘it grows around,’ Unami Lenapeuw, Zeisberger 1995:151, 173; świ, ‘three’ for 3-sided - Mohegan Nation 2004:98) form open ellipses that the author considers roughly equivalent to the “nave” of a Christian church…” https://www.academia.edu/40876478/Quantitative_Assessment_of_Stone_Relics_in_a_Western_Massachusetts_Town

 

 

Tsektsel or prayer seat (Yurok)

http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2012/05/classic-example-of-prayer-seat.html

 

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-08-25-mn-24849-story.html

https://escholarship.org/content/qt71d2g30s/qt71d2g30s_noSplash_0005b610d8eb3ffac3aaad128f8c8aff.pdf

 

Multiple Choice

How would you caption this?


a.) "Turtle effigy in a Native American Stone Row"

b.) Made by a "crazy colonist"

c.) An accidental random occurence (One of 999,999) during field clearing (in a field already cleared by Native Americans sometime before 1659) while building a "stone wall" in Woodbury CT"

Ancient Paths of Shastina

"Ancient Paths of Shastina" is primarily geared towards those who wish to connect with the earth energies found within our megalithic power spots. But, whether you're on a spiritual journey, looking for photographic opportunites, a Dowser, Nature Lover or just wanting to experience the ancient petroforms and walls in a professionally guided atmosphere...

 http://www.ancientpathsofshastina.com/

Lichen It (or Not)

I certainly would not be the first person who said, "Lichen growth is an unreliable indicator of time."
Walk down my driveway with me and I'll show you what I mean...

That big stone on the flower bed was pushed out of place by some lilac roots from on top of the upper retaining wall (probably built in 1850 from the recycled stones from the original central chimney of my possibly circa 1700-10 "at least begun to be built" home, the chimney replaced by a brick one when the house was modernized by Samuel Atwood, a descendant of Woodbury's first doctor, Jonathon Atwood). Keep in mind that this retaining wall soon blends into a zigzag stone row on this side of the Indian Trail, still known as Nonnewaug, with another zigzag stone row bordering the other side of the road (which shows quite well in aerial photography taken in 1934 and is now only a remnant of its former self, much like me).
   Update: the retaining wall does show stone tool marks, but by the spring of 2016 many elements of Native American Iconography were identified in this and other stonework I had long assumed were Euro-American in origin. Dr. Curt Hoffman added them to a database he continues to compile and filed a site report, adding this wall and others to his list of (I think he said) 7,000 sites. (5/17/2016)

I placed these cobbles on the fallen boulder and none of them had any remarkable amount of lichen growth on them when I did, unlike the boulder whose lichen growing career probably started in earnest around 1850. I'm going to make a guess that I placed the stone all the way to the left in the photo on the boulder in around 1997 - or a little after - because that's when I saw my first "without a doubt" Native American made Tobacco Offering Bear Effigy. The others were placed there, one at a time over the years, picked up somewhere close by or dug out of the flower bed - or fallen into the driveway from the second retaining wall made for  this flower bed...

It looks like it has about the same amount of lichen growth (see how it almost blends into the boulder in the second view of the top of the stone), and a person could be tempted to say that this might prove that the stones were placed there at the same time, but they weren't. A bunch of dry summers (one really dry summer comes to mind) slowed the growth, while I also recall a really wet summer when all sorts of mold and fungi began growing everywhere, especially the Black Rust I think people were calling it, on my tomatoe plants. Originally it looked much like the underside when first placed there...

It's much the same story with the other stones I later placed there...

There were a figurative ton of interesting crystals in the on this cobble (same stone above and below).

This one below is a possible Nutting Stone, used to crack nuts (or acorns), found nearby, about two or three hundred feet from the probable mast forest resource zone to the western hilltop, where early roads and cart paths lead down to the early 1700's mill on the river...

These two, which have almost no lichen on them, I put where I did because the type of rock/stone matched up well, especially with that high degree of probability that these stones were "borrowed" from the nearby Testudinate Stone Mounds up by my old Chicken Coop because it was an Easy Thing To Do, a factor you should always take into consideration when dealing with Human Behavior. These two fit the pattern of a headstone and a left foreleg. The headstone also has another repeated feature, a depression that easily accepts a clam shell for a tobacco offering...

People seem to enjoy driving into this flower bed wall along my driveway and I pick up what falls and put them on top of the former chimney stones, fine examples of colonial stoneworkfrom circa 1700, hammer marks from when they were quarried and drilled holes, possibly for the keeping room fire place, those old "kitchen fireplaces" where colonial moms (or servants) were cooking stuff on spits or in those metal pots that they hung from hooks and all, just like you see in paintings and houses turned museum.
Will these stones placed on the quarried chimney stones get covered with lichen as well?
Will I ever be able to put all the turtles together again, with no King's Horses or King's Men to help me put them back together again after the Egg was Scrambled?
 

Maybe I'll use the Grandfather Trick and say to my Grandkids, "I'll bet you can't make some turtles out of these stones - a dark one, a light one, a red one, maybe one with a light brown head and green feet..."
 

Shasta Turtle Story

Photo by Alyssa Alexandria (2012)

Stop here along the stone row trail and sit with me.

I’ll tell you a story about Grandfather Turtle and the Mountains you can see in the distance …

Turtle Vision Rendering "Doodle" TMS (2012)

 

Shasta; Stone Rows as Bones of the Ancient Cultural Landscape

The Three Zones of Shasta; Photogravure after painting by Thomas Hill

http://www.siskiyous.edu/shasta/lit/mui/jmuir14.htm

Seeing recent photos from around Mt. Shasta, I look at all those stone rows as the Bones of the Sacred Ancient Cultural Landscape. Images like these fuel my imagination, just as much as any study or ethnology from Northern California does, including the highlights from "American Indian cultural models for sustaining biodiversity," written from a Native American perspective.

Dennis Martinez, Takelma Inter-Tribal Project Restoration Consultant:

"There’s a tendency to think of nature as pristine. I think people are beginning to realize that there are very few places on this globe that one could adequately describe as pristine. The anthropogenic (humanized) landscape has been around for not just tens of thousands of years, but hundreds of thousands of years.

Henry Larcom Abbot . Report of Lieut. Henry L. Abbot...In: Pacific Survey Reports, Vol. VI, Washington, D.C., 1857.Courtesy College of the Siskiyous Library Mount Shasta Collection

[http://www.siskiyous.edu/shasta/map/pd/wm-cp3.jpg]

We’re going to have to reorder the way we look at the world a little bit. If we as scientists view preserving wilderness or biodiversity as worthy of study only when the area has no native or any other peoples, then I think we’re dangerously on the wrong track. If you take the native peoples out of their own habitat - the forest, the desert, the tundra or wherever - I think 9 times out of 10, the ecosystems start to unravel. This instability comes about because people have learned, as native people did here in North America for eons of time, to live in a relationship culturally and spiritually with the plants and animals in the natural world...People who lived in a place for generations—tens to hundreds of thousands of years—needed to have their act together in order to survive. They needed to know how to use the land, and how to use the land sustainably. This is not a function of just one population in any one generation...When the forest is clearcut...memory the place is unrecognizable. If the old people were to come back now to any forest system in the Pacific Northwest, they wouldn’t recognize it, it’s so completely different. That’s what a lot of people call “natural.” It really is a gigantic experiment in secondary succession, the end result of which is unknown.

[http://www.siskiyous.edu/shasta/map/pd/wm-jy3.jpg][http://www.siskiyous.edu/shasta/map/pd/index.htm]

When I say “management,” that does not exclude the spiritual part...Every place around here was well known, etched in memory since childhood. We knew the territorial boundaries by heart. We knew
everything about our neighborhood, and we knew all the songs for the trails and the springs.

...it’s like after Hiroshima or Nagasaki. It’s gone, the neighborhood, the memory the place is unrecognizable. If the old people were to come back now to any forest system...they wouldn’t recognize it, it’s so completely different. That’s what a lot of people call “natural.” It really is a gigantic experiment in secondary succession, the end result of which is unknown.

If the elders were to come back now from the spirit world, they would look around and say, “There’s nobody taking care of this place.”

Images, and there are lots more, from: Mount Shasta; Chapter 10 of Picturesque California, 1888, as well as text written by (Someone's Uncle) John Muir: http://www.siskiyous.edu/shasta/lit/mui/jmuir14.htm]

Western ecological sciences and traditional environmental knowledge

“People who lived in a place for generations—tens to hundreds of thousands of years—needed to have their act together in order to survive. They needed to know how to use the land, and how to use the land sustainably. This is not a function of just one population in any one generation...I’m going to talk about is trying to integrate traditional knowledge into modern science. I’m not putting Western science down. It has a very useful role, but from the traditional point of view, we feel it has a limited role. I will talk about why we need to try and integrate or form a synthesis of Western ecological sciences and traditional environmental knowledge.”

Dennis Martinez

Takelma Inter-Tribal Project

Restoration Consultant

http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/pubs/gtr63/gtrwo63g.pdf
Images from http://iceagefloods.blogspot.com/2009/04/dalles-and-she-who-watches.html

Two Possible Turtles in a Single Stone Concentration

Another Mills Mounds Interpretation

https://plus.google.com/photos/104108168963367110008/albums/5711033971227605073?authkey=CLrGvfas-cvJrQE#photos/104108168963367110008/albums/5711033971227605073/5711034014579623906?authkey=CLrGvfas-cvJrQE

Image reversed and eyes added:

  Lower right, two turtle heads, suggesting mating turtles. Another round, possibly drilled(?), eye hole?
The Mills Mound image is  reversed to show the similarity to the photo below from Beaver Brook MA:

Above Photo by Peter Waksman

See: http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2009/06/box-turtle-mating.html
 and http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2009/06/two-turtles-again.html

X head single stone turtles

How did that archeologist smarty pants put it?
Find one stone bunny on Easter Island and it is nothing remarkable, but find a line of a bunch of stone bunnies all facing the same way on Easter Island and you’ve got something interesting.
I may have remembered that incorrectly, but that basically is some sort of definition of the method of Archaeology.

In my yard, in an old chicken yard, next to a falling down old chicken coop, there are several old stone "heaps" (káhtôquwukansh in Pequot/Mohegan), linked to by some stone rows – or what is left of them after 350 years of disturbance.

(Editing this in 2021, I'll say they are turtles (made of) stacked stones: 

Tûnuppasuonk kodtonquag - turtle effigy in stone (Nipmeuw).

Tûnuppasuonk qussukquanesash – “Small Stones Turtle”)

There are all kinds of "turtle effigies" in these heaps of stones, some composed of parts - shells and heads and legs - but also some that are possibly single stones, also looking more like turtles than anything else I can think of.

These possible turtles seem to have been chipped away to reveal the (sometimes) crystal chunk of some type of rock or other that seems to be the turtle’s head, a motif or style that, now that I'm looking for, I seem to be finding in many places other than this (such as here: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0sycx895URpLOkc4_fmTfBJ7UR0hFYUvKJ9Hl5DksYBOAOrtHPjzEG3FB5DnPidfxiqlt6DnGb6rnszeclULYmb3JcR3GuNtnEMihWRr6sBuwRL0Uiw7oe1yEvaZvxHUOqEr2LA/s1600/nov+17+2010+hamburger+edge+024.jpg ).

More in the same group of stone heaps:

This one still has the fragments of the whole broken cobble nearby:

First Medicine Bowlder (1997)

"What was the first mortar-like possible Medicine Bowlder I ever saw?" you may or may not wonder.

I'm going to tell you anyway that it was just across the state highway by the upper driveway here at Happiness Farm where my family has lived for the past 32 years. Or at least show you some photos of old photos from my sketchbook, as well as a drawing or two...

Below is "Where it is" on a drawing:

Below: Turtle One, a box turtle petroform

And, a special bonus photo of a small turtle petroform, missing the head stone but with the plastron stone intact, miles away at a stone worked spring: