Oldest Trails, Older Trails, and Old Trails In Among the New Trails (Part Three – the Row of Stones on the Hillside)

(Continuing from here: http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2016/01/oldest-trails-older-trails-and-old_14.html)

    Where the newest trail meets the older trail is an interesting spot. I first came across it in November of 2014, just as the sun was about to set and snow was about to fall. I had the impression then that these “stone walls” were not Euro-American constructions and this intuition hasn’t changed. The photo below is from that day over one year ago from when I am writing this:

    Observe: the maintained Land Trust trail just below the older trail, bordered by fairly intact stone walls, considering their as yet undetermined age. There is a gap in the lower east/west running rows that lead into two sections of land divided by a third perpendicular segment extending southward beginning on an outcrop of bed rock, an ancient oak tree also of as yet undetermined age on the north side of that stone row. It’s on my “to do list” to measure the oak’s diameter which I estimate to be at least ten feet.

(2014: note the pedastled boulder.)

  Before scrambling up the outcrop and ridge-line, I should mention the end of the stone row to the left has a large boulder at its end that could be interpreted as the head of a snake or Great Serpent, shown here in yet another photo from 2014:

Two views of the north side, back to January 2015:

Looking south (kind of): 

Looking east:

   This row undulates in construction, like the profile of a roller coaster, up the grade of the outcrop ridge, and it is my impression that a resemblance to a rattle snake was intended by Indigenous builders, the composite head (rather than a single boulder) resting on the exposed outcrop…

Consider: "The significance in aboriginal thought of exposed bedrock at a topographical eminence, then, is understood by reference to a set of beliefs held by the Algonquin speaking Cheyenne, but also so widespread throughout the Americas that I doubt any professional ethnographer would find quibble with it. In the native view, expounded at length by the Cheyenne Elders, there exist three worlds: the world below, the domain of the ancestors, the middle world, that is the land of the living, humans and all their relations – the winged ones the four-legged, the creepy crawlies, the swimmers, the two-leggeds – and the world above, the domain of the Powers Above, the Sky People of the starry world. On earth the domain of the world below, begins at bedrock, the womb of mother earth, from which all life comes and to which it returns. It is the responsibility of the living to honor the struggles and sacrifices of the ancestors, by maintaining harmony in the middle world for the benefit of all living beings through ceremony properly conducted, as taught by the ancestors, involving offerings to the powers above. When a human being stands on a high hill, feet on bedrock, head in the sky, with the intention of making ceremony, he or she is therefore at a place of unusual power, connected to all three worlds simultaneously – past, present, and future, the domains of the ancestors, of the living, and of the higher powers." - William Sullivan, PhD.

https://ipsmo.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/south-march-national-archaeological-treasure.pdf

   Above: just past a damaged segment, most likely from a branch fallen from the tree, the fallen stones still beside the wall, an intact segment rises in a second undulation. Below: looking back down toward the trail at that damaged spot where a large quartz boulder is included on the wall, the bedrock visible below an accumulation of leaves. The stream shown in part one is down in that valley, leading into a Cranberry Swamp (and Cranberry Pond), photos of the low stonework at the edge of the riparian zone can be seen in this post as well as other views of stone walls on this hillside: http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2014/11/other-side-of-tail-part-two.html

   

Observe: again the cap-like stones (like bumps of bones along the spine of a snake), the shapes of the stones stacked here and the inclusion of more white quartz (and yellow quartzite too) as well as the round stone in the center of the photo and the segment. Consider: this property has been a nature sanctuary since 1913 (the pines may have been planted by the Civilian Conservation Corps sometime after that) and probably pasture land reaching back into the 1700’s when the predominant fencing was wooden rails. Consider: Indigenous history reaches back for 12,000 years in the area with a great emphasis on maintaining the landscape by use of fire – which to my knowledge hasn’t been investigated to any great extent in this locale and remains largely understudied, let alone even considered a possibility in Connecticut and the rest of New England.

    Back in November 2014, I happened upon a blog post that just happened to include photographs of some of these same stone walls. As I was considering the very real possibility that these stone constructions might have come into existence over thousands of years of Native American land stewardship, the blog author waxed romantically about the very short period of time in which intrepid early colonial settlers reshaped a wilderness landscape, building stonewalls as they plowed and cleared fields, resulting in the now “abandoned stone walls (that) are the signatures of rural New England, the “relics of a vanished agricultural civilization,” in a rather myopic view that really has not been proven scientifically. As I pondered (and continue to ponder) how these walls may reflect the land use of Indigenous People, using informed (and imaginative) speculation, I was troubled that the blog author was reinforcing a myth that is really a form of “Ethnic Erasure,” to put it as politely as CT State Archeologist Dr. Brian Jones puts it, misinterpreting stonework that could be considered monuments of the previous Indigenous cultures that inhabited the region long before the 17^th century.

     The saving grace of that blog post is its last paragraph that seems to be supportive of protecting CT’s stonewalls: “A 1939 study estimated that there were 240,000 miles of stone walls in New England, which contained more stone than the remaining monuments of the ancient world put together. Unfortunately, Connecticut (unlike Massachusetts and New Hampshire) has no law that protects its stone walls, and they are slowly falling victim to bulldozers or being quarried for new stonework.”

      Chainsaws were whining in that parcel as I took one last photo of that stone wall before moving eastward, observing other stone work and I leave you with that for now:

Oldest Trails, Older Trails, and Old Trails In Among the New Trails (Part Two – An Older Trail)

 "To both see and observe: Therein lies the secret."

~ Sherlock Stones

(Continuing from here: http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2016/01/oldest-trails-older-trails-and-old.html)

    I looked up from the present Land Trust trail by the big stone wall (with the white quartz boulder at the beginning of the segment) and sort of causeway with a stone culvert and saw what could be an older trail bordered by stone rows:

    I observed the “blocky end” of the entrance on the left, the “wave” or undulation rising up and the layer of cap-like stones on the part most intact to the right as well as the obvious fallen stones that make it different from the other gateway that I walked through – not the one with the white boulder but the one that the path led to…

    But I also noticed that it is similar to that gateway because of the blocky stones on which the smaller stones were placed, creating a somewhat serpentine sort of construction – to an imaginative investigator that is. A mediocre investigator would perhaps just think that the fallen stones were evidence of all the stones that once were there at this beginning of the row. The imaginative investigator would wonder if the stones had been “borrowed,” making it more resemble a typical Euro-American wall perhaps, negative evidence that it more resembled the other more intact gate nearby, that a little imagination could convert into a Great Serpent (or Horned Serpent, depending on how much imagination the investigator had brought along):

    But that’s negative evidence, right? Well, sure – unless of course you were a conservator of antiquities of some sort perhaps, pondering the restoration of the object you were both seeing and observing.

Above: the segment just past the blocky end, and below: the next little “hump” or undulation.

 (I thought as I added the photo below: "Roller Coaster-like.")

9/13/2018:

Passing the doorway, glancing at the screensaver showing the image above, I find myself looking at the lower row with the big stone, wondering "Is this an eye?"

 And then I see another obvious eye on a boulder on the upper row (beside a white Manitou Stone) that I've missed:

New Composite Overlay:

    Stepping into the trail between the rows of stones:

9/13/2018:

A second look at the photo above:

       Another high spot in the lower row of the trail (above), which seems to suddenly disappear (I don’t even have an unscientific measurement), as does the upper row a little further on (below)…

     But you can see that farther on the upper is still intact (more or less), perhaps because the stones on fairly level ground were easier to steal - I mean "borrow" - and toss into a cart or truck or something:       

    And this row, and the old trail as well as the present maintained trail, leads to the place I was headed to, but the sound of chainsaws and heavy timber falling was getting louder as I approached.
Here three stone rows meet up and I thought I’d get a second look at the spot and catch a few better photos than I did in November 2014 (this one is good: Three Stone Rows and Big Oak):

To be continued…

Oldest Trails, Older Trails, and Old Trails In Among the New Trails (Part One “By the Stream”)

(Above: taking another look at a possible large white quartz “Serpent Head-like” boulder at the “gateway” to a trail leading NW. Note the slight angle of placement, as if the “Strong Looker/Uktena” was indeed looking at a person – and his or her dog –about to enter this trail. The row of stones behind the head leads to the stream.)

     I was out (finally), looking around at suspected trails myself just yesterday (1/i2/2016), thinking about which was which, which was when, and just where do certain trails lead to and just who made them, as well as why did someone make them.

     I returned to this spot below, illustrated by an aerial photo from 1934, a snapshot in time I can attach a date to and puzzle about just what I see, compare it to what I can observe on the ground, and plan what to further investigate next time I do another walk-about:

     For some reason it’s easier for me to visualize where I was by flipping the image (and attempt to map my observations) so that south is at the top, pointing me back to home and the Nonnewaug Wigwams, since what local histories imply is that the Indigenous People who lived there did travel here and other places around it, “hunting and gathering” you could say, but as local histories also tell us, burning over the landscape, for many reasons more perhaps than to just clear the underbrush to improve the hunting:

     I really just ventured into that stand of pines with the grey question mark, by way of the water feature in blue in the bottom left corner. There was active tree work happening in the area I really wanted to get into to attempt to take some better photos than I had gotten before on two previous visits.

      I ventured into that “gateway” trail just a little bit since I’d only taken a look at it when it was snow covered last time I was here. And there was another “stone gateway” pointing me toward where I wanted to go, so I scrambled over the fallen tree through it:

Trying to capture the whole “gateway,” the massive wall behind the big white quartz boulder that crosses and then turns into a sort of retaining wall along the stream in the distance:

North side, intersecting “undulating” intersecting row above it:

Observing: big triangular boulders as a base. Wondering: Oldest segment on the bottom, a low serpent-like construction? Observing: smaller stones on top of those, riding up almost wave-like. Wondering: a later addition? A larger serpent head representation composed of small stones?

South side of the “gateway,” undulating toward the stream:

Closer, noting all the quartz, and the roundish stones mixed in with the “easy” slabs, some placed as if possible eyes of possible effigies, mostly zoomorphic, and a capstone-like layer on the top:

This segment dips into the stream at present. I suspect but will never know if there were a sort of culvert built into it at this point. I do know that upstream not too far, as well as in other places on the property, other culvert-like structures exist still:

The small dark spot in the photo above is a still functioning culvert, shown closer below:

The other side, modern culvert and recent repair of the “causeway” (including the trucked in gravel in circa 2003) with the older stone culvert still doing all the work:

Note the little bit of water in the near distance on the left of the photo. It could be a little filled in pond. On my way out I took better notice of it:

And another culvert-like structure made of stone (that needs a better photo):

Across the Land Trust Trail, a few bubbles let me know that it drains into the bigger stream, a few more larger stones giving that too a culvert like appearance:

(Also deserving a better close up image :)

One more thing to note: On the ridgetop directly behind me as I stood to take the above photo is a short segment of stone – possibly two segments with a gap in between – that I’ve only seen close up with a dusting of snow on old snow about one year ago:

I’ll toss in a couple more photos out of sequence, taken on the way out, since they fall under the By the Stream category, some more stonework that includes another upper culvert and causeway above the big one, promising Part Two to soon come:

Other visits to the same place (by the stream):

http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2014/11/serpent-to-serpent-to-entrance-of.html

http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2014/11/other-side-of-tail-part-one.html

Anchoring a Wall - with a Snake Head-like Boulder

   One more for the collection, probably an existing Indigenous Serpent Petroform of scientifically untested and unknown age, somewhere on Turtle Island, appropriated by and romantically accredited to "early farmers," as if 1492 or 1620 were the earliest that humans lived or farmed (or managed the landscape for thousands of years) in the Northeast. 

   I used the above photo here once:

http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2013/05/another-erratic-post.html

I added this on 6/19/2021:

Native Perspectives on Sustainability: Dennis Martinez

"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...

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.”

Native Perspectives on Sustainability: Dennis Martinez (O'odham/Chicano/Anglo)

Interviewee: Dennis Martinez

Interviewer: David E. Hall Date: 1/03/08

DH (25:00): “If you are in a conversation with someone who is unfamiliar with the concept of sustainability, are there any brief stories or analogies that you might share to help them understand that idea?”

DM: “Well, I gave you one, the one of the grey willow and Mayan agroforestry. It can be multiplied many times. When you go in and dig those underground corms (bulbs) for edible camas, etc., and many other plants that grow in the ground, the women that dug those were also cultivating the ground. They were aerating the soil, they were mixing nutrients in the surface and they burned periodically to replenish the nutrient supply. Even though some nutrients volatize into the air following burning, in the long run this is a way intended for these ecosystems, and prairie systems, and wetland systems in maintaining the turnover in nutrients.

   When people hunted, they would draw a large circle of fire, like in the Willamette valley or around here, around deer or elk, they wouldn’t always take the best males like people do now with trophy hunting, they would take the more fair and middling ones because they understood enough about genetics to know that they needed the strongest ones to continue the health of the herd.

    When they would burn for the prairie plants that they needed culturally, medicine, food, etc., tobacco, you know, all of the things they needed, and habitat as well, for the wildlife that they depended on, they would often back-burn around conifer growth, like for example Douglas Fir in the Willamette Valley. They would be burning for oak protection, acorn production, but they would also back-burn so that they wouldn’t burn up the Douglas Fir forest, because that was thermal cover for the elk and deer in the hot summer days. We could go on and on. You get the idea, that people understood something about giving back and the act of using. They also were saving certain plants that were of a utilitarian value to the tribe. But they were also taught to respect all life, all plants and animals, as a gift of the creator, and that anyone that was greedy, or that anyone who damaged plants unnecessarily, or killed game unnecessarily was considered the worst kind of human being…”

http://www.nativeperspectives.net/Transcripts/Dennis_Martinez_interview.pdf

    "Dennis Martinez grew up in the San Joaquin Valley, on a ranch where he experienced a "rich subsistence life." Martinez closely identifies with an inter-tribal community of people in Southwestern Oregon who work to restore traditional lands and cultures. He currently lives in the Klamath Mountains of Northern California. Over the past 40 years, Martinez has contributed extensively to the cause of ecological and cultural restoration at the local, national and international levels. A community organizer, speaker and author, Martinez is recognized as a leader in bridging Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) with Western science. As co-director of the Takelma Intertribal Project, Martinez and Agnes Pilgrim (Siletz) reestablished the annual Salmon Thanksgiving Ceremony after a 150 year absence. A former board member of the Society for Ecological Restoration International (SER), Martinez is now Chair of the SER's Indigenous Peoples' Restoration Network, and has been involved with numerous other organizations and causes. Martinez was recognized for his work as recipient of the John Rieger Service Award from SER, a 2001 Bioneers award, and as an Honoree of the 2001 Buffett Award for Indigenous Leadership."

http://www.nativeperspectives.net/Leaders_D_Martinez.php

https://globalearthrepairfoundation.org/dennis-martinez-2/  - (updated link)

    "Of O'odham, Crow, and Chicano descent Dennis Martinez, an ecosystem restorationist, contract seed collector, and vegetation surveyor, as well as the founder of the Indigenous Peoples' Restoration Network, writes, "The latest Indian burning in Northern California and Southern Oregon was in the 1940’s. When Henry Lewis did his 1973 study of the patterns of Indian burning in California, there were people living who remembered why they burned. Now their children, who are in their 60’s and 70’s, remember burning, but they don’t remember the control techniques or the objectives. So we may have lost that knowledge.
   At Three Fires Walpole Island Reserve (Ojibway, Potawattomi, Ottawa), they never stopped burning. Ontario’s 70 endangered species are found in quantity in 2,200 hectares on Walpole Island. This is amazing to botanists, who come there from all over the world to see what a “pristine” landscape can be like. But the people are part of that “pristine” quality. They’re still performing their role in the ecosystem, so the biodiversity is incredibly high.It’s the only place in Ontario where you can find biodiversity that high..."

http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2006/06/yes-there-is-great-bias-against-idea.html
More about Martinez that appeared previously on this blog:
 http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/search?q=Dennis+Martinez

A Look Back at 2015: Mysterious Stone Walls of Southern Illinois

By KEVIN BOUCHER • DEC 30, 2015

    "In several southeastern Illinois counties there exists collections of large boulders that, often, seem out of place with the surrounding landscape.  Scientists have determined that these pre-date the fall of the Roman Empire.  Who built these?  How and why were they built?  We are not certain, and Carrier Mills history teacher Mark Motsinger has been studying these mysterious stone walls and is in the process of writing a book about these structures.  Here is Mark talking with WSIU's Kevin Boucher about these: http://news.wsiu.org/post/look-back-2015-mysterious-stone-walls-southern-illinois-0#stream/0

    "Last week we heard about the existence of numerous prehistoric stone walls in southern Illinois from Mark Motsinger, a History teacher at Carrier Mills High School.  In this feature, Mark tells us more about these structures, which were built before the more well know Cahokia Mounds.  We will also hear about evidence that suggests that there were humans living in southern Illinois between one-thousand and three-thousand B.C.  In the spring of 2014 Mark received the Olive Foster Outstanding Teacher Award by the Illinois State Historical Society:"

http://news.wsiu.org/post/stone-walls-southern-illinois-part-2-0#stream/0

 "To learn more about one of these stone structures near Makanda visit:"

http://www.dnr.illinois.gov/NaturalResources/cultural/Documents/UnsolvedPrehistoryWallOfMystery.pdf

"Mark Motsinger is a history and social studies teacher in the Carrier Mills-Stonefort School district. In the spring of 2014 he received the Olive Foster Outstanding Illinois History Teacher award given by the Illinois State Historical Society (which Mark attributes to his work regarding the "Stone Walls, as he states in the audio)."