Watertown CT Historian Charlie Crowell writes, “Here’s an old “zig-zag” stone wall that runs along an abandoned section of the Old Baird Road (aka. “Old Middle Road”) in Watertown (CT). This wall, or “stone fence” as early settlers would have called it, dates back to colonial times...Ancient pieces of split rail fencing still rest on top of the wall. Barbed wire, which came much later, is also present.
The Old Baird Road was part of a stagecoach route from New
Haven to Albany. During the American Revolution, the route was used to
transport wagon loads of military supplies, presumably headed to the Battle of
Saratoga in 1777. Soldiers marched along with the supply wagons..."
[Lifted, with permission, from the widely read Watertown History Page by Charlie Crowell:
https://www.facebook.com/p/Watertown-History-Page-by-Charlie-Crowell-100060847285557/]
I'm going to suggest that this roadway, bordered by what remains of "rows of stacked stones" may have originally been an "Indian Trail" - or really an "Indigenous Highway," one of many "Native American Paths" that were used by early settler colonists that have since become modern roads. I'm going to suggest that there is Indigenous Iconography used in the stacking method of the "stone fence" that reveals it as a carefully constructed Ceremonial Stone Landscape feature rather than an accidental feature related to stones being tossed up against a the wooden rails of a "Snake Fence," as zig-zag stone fences were conjectured to have been formed, as suggested by Eric Sloane and other writers/historians:
In recent years, the idea that Indigenous Peoples of northeastern North America (or Turtle Island, as it was known as for a long, long time) did not make "large scale" stone constructions has come into question, and may well prove to be a great fallacy. The "zig-zag stone fence" has always intrigued me and really was one of the features of what has come to be known as Ceremonial Stone Landscape that I can't help but critically observe, here in the Nonnewaug or CT Cluster #3 as Curtiss Hoffman calls it in his inventory of possible Indigenous Stone Constructions in his book, Stone Prayers (2016). I've searched in vain for an actual messy conglomeration of stones in zigzag manner that would suggest field or road clearing stones thrown up against early post contact era wooden rail "Snake" or "Worm" fences and to this date have only found carefully constructed zigzag rows of stones (see the numerous posts in this blog). The "landform signature" of these zigzag rows of stones on Old Baird Road on LiDar images is a "regular and even" shape all too often assumed to be a sign of a "farmer's wall" by many researchers both professional and avocational:
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Qá
qusuqaniyutôk nohkshô:
“And the stone wall was broken.”
Prov. 24:31,
Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God (“Eliot Indian Bible”)
Chapter 5
Dr. Laurie W. Rush
“So You Believe in Aliens Too?”
An Anthropologist Looks at Stone Features in the North American Northeast and the Archaeologists Who Do and Do Not Study Them
https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/our-hidden-landscapes
“No, I do not believe
in aliens, nor do I believe that the people who inhabited the northeastern
United States for more than 10,000 years never built anything out of stone.' It
is equally incredible to me that farmers of European origin who only inhabited this
same landscape for fewer than 500 years could be responsible for the
construction of every single stone structure we encounter in the region today.
What I also find hard to believe is how many archaeologists in the 21st century
fail to apply robust scientific methodology to the analysis of stone features
encountered every day in the landscapes of our region. This failure and the
associated emotional responses to serious attempts at scientific discourse on
the stone landscape issue beg for anthropological and historical analyses of
the causes of this phenomenon, along with solutions for approaching more
objective research in the future.”
There are stone cultural features found throughout the
landscapes of northeastern North America, and most archaeologists agree that
these structures were created by people in the past. The controversy emerges
when a new generation of archaeologists and people initiate objective research
designed to conclusively determine the ancestry of these features. To accurately
understand the true origins of the stone features of the Northeast,
archaeologists of northeastern North America need to:
Our Hidden Landscapes
Indigenous Stone
Ceremonial Sites in Eastern North America
Lucianne Lavin (Editor), Elaine Thomas (Editor)
Foreword by Laurie Weinstein
Introduction by Lucianne Lavin and Elaine Thomas
Part I. Indigenous Perspectives on the Meaning and Significance of Ceremonial Stone Landscapes
1. When the Landscape Speaks for Itself, What Do We Learn? by
Doug Harris
2. Markings of Ancestral Pathways: A Native Perspective by Elaine
Thomas
3. Unseen Borders and Ways of Knowing: Northeastern
Algonquian Sacred Lands by Nohham Rolf Cachat-Schilling
Part II. Academic Perspectives on Understanding, Protecting,
and Preserving Indigenous Ceremonial Stone Landscapes
4. Obligations of Place: Engaging with Tribal Historic
Preservation Offices in New England to Preserve and Protect Ceremonial Stone
Landscapes by Paul A. Robinson
5. “So You Believe in Aliens, Too?” An Anthropologist Looks
at Stone Features in the North American Northeast and the Archaeologists Who Do
and Do Not Study Them by Laurie W. Rush
6. Introduction to Stone Removal and Disposal Practices in
Agriculture and Farming by James E. Gage
7. Ceremonial Landscapes in the Chesapeake by Julia A. King
and Scott M. Strickland
8. Stones and Their Places: An Application of Landscape
Theory to Ceremonial Stone Landscapes of West Virginia by Matthew Victor Weiss
and Charity Moore Norton
9. Piled Stone Features of Jackson County, Georgia by Johannes
H. N. Loubser
Part III. Case Studies of Ceremonial Stone Landscapes
10. A Sacred Space on a Hilltop in Harwinton, Connecticut by
Robert DeFosses
11. Interpreting Row-Linked Boulder Sites from Georgia to
New England by Norman Muller
12. Historic Ceremonial Structures by Mary Gage
13. A Theoretical Model of the Moon and the Milky Way at
Ancient Meeting Places by Frederick W. Martin
14. Mythologies of Light and Cast Shadow Within Northeastern
Stone Chambers by Kathleen Patricia Thrane
Our Hidden
Landscapes: Indigenous Stone Ceremonial Sites in Southern New England
by Dr. Lucianne
Lavin
Thursday, October
26, 2023
Harwinton Town
Hall
100 Bentley Dr.
Harwinton, CT
Doors open at 6:30
pm
Presentation
begins at 7:00 pm
Pre
registration requested at this link.
Directions at
this link.
Sponsored by the
Harwinton and Burlington Land Trusts
“A hike in the woods often reveals a variety of built
stone cultural features. Many of these are the remains of abandoned farmsteads
and industrial mill sites. Others, however, represent Native American
ceremonial sites. The idea of Native Americans designing stone structures that
represent sacred landscapes is fairly new to some Northeastern researchers, as
it was historically – and erroneously -- thought that local Indigenous peoples
did not build in stone and all such structures were the result of European-American
farming activities. Some of it is, but some of it is not.
This PowerPoint presentation (and the recently published
book on which it is based) introduces people to Southern New England’s
Indigenous Ceremonial Stone Landscapes (CSLs) – sacred spaces whose principal
identifying characteristics are stacked stone structures that cluster within
specific physical landscapes. They are often unrecognized as the significant
cultural landscapes they are, in dire need of protection and preservation.
State regulations (in Connecticut, at least) support
preservation of sacred Native American sites (that is, those sites of ritual
significance), and so it is important for members of land trusts and
conservation organizations, as well as private property owners, to be able to
recognize these sites within their properties and work to preserve them.”
