Above: A photo from:
{From a Flickr Set called: 2008.11 Noanet Woodlands (part of Hale Reservation) that belongs to Wade
Roush (the photos, not the woodland) that I found here:http://www.flickr.com/photos/wroush/sets/72157608567946328/with/2992639069/}
Mr.
Roush starts his photo set with some fine photos of Historic Stonework that
sort of recalls stacking stones almost as you would bricks or blocks…
…but
then he (and his very good looking dog) walk out along a Rock Wall that is
built in a very different manner, something described here and there as an "abandoned wall" or a "primitive wall," depending on what you are reading about New England Stone Fences and who wrote (or plagiarised it):
I think
this wall has that “Indian Look,” that placement of stones, that artistic
stacking of stones, that recalls the shapes of animals, often just the heads
but sometimes the complete animal. What I find most often is the form of the Turtle,
perhaps the most easily made sort of Petroform, which may not be all that
surprising on a continent that was, and still is, called Turtle Island. I see
them as Cultural Icons of the Native Americans who were shaping the landscape (as
all cultures do) since at least 3000 B.C. (and probably a lot longer than that),
according to the Reservation’s Website {http://www.halereservation.org/nr_history_land.html}:
“The land now occupied by the Hale
Reservation literally abounds with early Indian and colonial history. The main
Reservation Road, Carby Street, was originally known as “Old Indian Path” and
on early maps it was part of an Indian trail that led from a large Indian
settlement in Dedham to Strawberry Hill near the Westwood-Dover line, and on
eventually to South Natick. Early records show that the “Plains of Powissett”
(the land surrounding Powissett Peak and certain sections of the Charles River)
were favorite hunting and fishing grounds of at least six different tribes of
the Powissett Indians, and as late as 1763, a few Indian families could still
be found in Dover. At least nine ancient, felsite quarry sites have been
identified on Reservation land, which indicates that the ancestors of the
Powissett Indians also were frequent travelers or residents of the area. The
felsite was fashioned into arrowheads, spears, and other objects.
Archaeologists from Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology have
determined that these sites were being used by ancient man as early as 3,000
B.C. — the date associated with the building of the Egyptian
pyramids…”
And of
course the “Stone Wall Myth” is repeated once again:
“During the 1700’s, most of the Reservation’s
land was cleared of timber and used extensively as pasture. This accounts for
the extensive stonewalls throughout the area. They were used to mark property
boundaries as well as to confine livestock.”
If you
have ever visited this blog before, you might have noticed that I think that
there are more Native American made stone “walls” that have either been taken
apart to be used elsewhere, carelessly bulldozed or are explained away by the
Myth and I’ll keep writing and rewriting this over and over until I get it
right and convince at least one person who might take it seriously to get this
fact recognized. (A random sample of this ranting occurs in a search of this
blog: http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/search?q=The+Stone+Wall+Myth).
And as I
say above, Cultural Icons appear in these Indian made stone rows (which are not
to be confused with “boulder rows”). And sometimes a human-like face appears in
these rows, possibly “spirit faces,” just as they do on stone mounds, just like
all the other Icons. The first historic writer claiming to have found these
spirit faces called them “Indian God Stones.”
(A photo
of Page 173 “Manitou” by Mavor and Dix)
Rev.
Ezra Stiles (president of Yale), The
Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles:
·
January
29, 1789: At E. Guilford 28th I visited an Indian
Stone God which lay in a
Fence about half a Mile East of Mr. Todds Meetinghouse . . . . Mr. Phineas
Meigs died about 1781, aged c. 73. He told Rev. Jonathan Todd (born 1713) that
he removed this stone God from the Bottom of the Hill at the Edge of the Swamp,
and put it into the fence. It was removed about twenty Rods. I judge it a Ton & half weight. Mr.
Benjamin Teal gave me an account of a Fort
or Inclosure by Earthen Walls about
21/2 Miles N.W. from this Image, 30 or 40 Rods
long, two Rods wide Trench, Wall ten feet high Inside next a Swamp & five
feet next the Hill, being on a Declivity .
·
May
19, 1789: "View[ed] an Indian Stone God [at Springfield, MA], similar to
ours in the College Library.
May 22, 1789: "Visited Rev. Mr. Huntington [at Middletown] who went &
showed me another Indian stone
God about half a Mile East of
his Meetinghouse.
·
September
19, 1794: "[On top of West Rock in New Haven] I spied a carved or wrought
stone, which I know to be one of the Indian
Gods, of which I
have found about or above twenty in
different places from Boston to Hudsons River, and particularly between New
Milford on West and Medfield Massachusetts on East.
·
October
22, 1793: "Aged Deacon Avery of Groton Pockatunnek tells me that the
Mohegan Indians once had Idols : that in the great Reforma 1741 as he called it
those Indians brot in & gave up to the English a number of stone & wooden Idols ; & have had & worshipped
none since.
I’ve
wandered into some places in Woodbridge CT that Stiles also explored and possibly
found one he might or might not have noticed as well:
Another in Woodbridge, not so blurry, more human face-like:
Here’s a photo from Rock Piles, taken by my friend Peter, from that post mentioned before:
I thought I saw a rather human like stone on one of those
mounds and cropped it here to show you:
Going back to Mr Roush's fine set of photos, I'll repeat this one:
And show you the detail that "got me," perhaps yet another Spirit Face:
.jpg)
