Last of Stone Fish Weir at Nonnewaug

    On the 69th anniversary of the Great Flood of August 18-19 in 1955, a record amount of rain fell in this part of the Paugussett Homeland, called Pootatuck by many, a string of floodplains along the Pomperaug River and its tributaries. Here in Nonnewaug, the floodplain filled with water, almost as much as it did during a flood in the mid to late 1990s, quite to that line on the map called the 100 year flood contour, what I imagine was once a glacial lakeshore, described by older residents as worse flooding than the Flood of '55.

  The Nonnewaug Diagonal Stone Fish Weir was washed almost entirely away during this recent major flooding event of 2024…

 I finally walked over there yesterday to take a look (I had attempted an earlier walk, but wasn’t able to. There wasn’t a short enough path I could take through the brush and my arthritic right hip kept telling me to turn around and go back home).

 I had felt the heavy machinery at work, had heard it in the distance over the past few weeks. I saw that the water company was repairing eroded river banks, heard the cultivator in Stuart’s field, and brush cutters along the road in the meanwhile. Yesterday it became clear that the machines and chainsaws were headed to where the remains of the Nonnewaug Fish Weir were located.

 And the weir was very much gone, a few stones at one spot but very much now gone, virtually unrecognizable...

 I was relieved in a way that it was the power of the flood that took the weir rather than those machines I hear over there as I write this...

 I sprinkled the last of the tobacco from a pouch that I carry, meant to be put down as a something like a prayer, something of a sacrifice, an offering under the open sky... 

  It was much like saying goodbye to an old friend, a good friend, a special friend who you can't believe is really gone...

 

 

Indigenous Peoples Day 2024

 There was just a single comment below that photo on the "Lost New England" facebook group page that mentioned Indigenous People at the original post. Someone named Joe said: "I was going to say, the early settlers recounted how clear the land was when they found it. In fact, much of what they found were fields. Possibly from Indians burning the forests to clear the land for agriculture."

 I'd have to add that the use of fire was more sophisticated than simply burning forests to clear land but more of system of maintaining a domesticated landscape that included "forest gardens," that was developed over thousands of tears - oops: "thousands of years" is what I meant to say... 

 The post included this link where I lifted the two separate images: https://lostnewengland.com/2015/06/connecticut-river-from-mount-holyoke-hadley-mass/

This place has a long human history, far longer than that 3% of time that includes the post contact period. Most of the comments spoke about "colonial farms" and Merino Sheep, ignoring that other 97% of the time humans made use of the landscape shown in the two photos.

  Anyone see the Giant Beaver in the distance?

      Do you know the story, how it recalls an actual glacial event??

(Also: I'm not sure if the Turners Falls Sacred Hill Site is visible in either photo, but perhaps someone more familiar with the landscape knows...)

Prove It

 

 I don’t necessarily intend to “prove” anything, really.

I’m just an observer, really.

I’ve been walking around the New England,

Looking under modern layers of “civilization,”

For the remains of Turtle Island.

 

I’m just saying these stones deserve a second look,

That old zigzag border along the road,

That undulating linear row of stones,

That quartzite bear head balanced on a boulder,

Before it is swept away like the diagonal fish weir

That gave the place a name most people misunderstand.

 

Nonnewaug is a place where survivors gathered

After the rats and pigs and fleas,

After the epidemics,

After the Pequots were massacred…

 

I had to add Nonnewaug to that old map:

Farthest away fish weir,

Place of safety,

“Dry (Farming) Land,”

Eeling Place, Fishing Place,

“In the Middle” and maybe more…

 

Fuel breaks among the gardens,

Around the water features,

Along the roadsides and causeways,

Where something is tended,

Where the World is Renewed,

Where the Snake Being allows entry

To all the places where Everything is…

Mr. Freeman's Grandfather and Grandmother; "Never must've read that book..."

"Never must've read that book..."

 Iconic New England Stone Fences along the roadsides,

Old Indian Trails paved in layers of gravel and asphalt,

Chip sealed the day before yesterday,

Rebuilt into estate walls during the days of the WPA…

 

 Mr. Freeman was a regular at the coffee shop in the town I’m from in Connecticut, and he had family there that went way back, reflected in his last name, from a time when a black person’s last name was their own name. He had many a story to tell about the old days in Watertown and many of the surrounding towns. One particular morning, he was talking about how his grandfather was a stone mason who had worked on the famous walls of the Whittemore Estate, over by Lake Quassapaug. My Great Grandfather Giovanni Rinaldi also worked on those same stone walls, part of a crew of three that included one of his brothers and a cousin. I mentioned that to him, added that Giovanni lived nearby, the first farm in Woodbury to have electricity, and Mr. Freeman told me he was familiar with that side of the lake because, as a kid, he used to spend the summers there with his Woodbury Indian grandmother, at the Indian Fish Camp.

 

 Now, this conversation happened in 1990, just after I’d first come across and read an Ancient History of Woodbury CT that had no information about the house my family was living in, but it did get me started thinking about the possibility that I was observing Indigenous Stonework, sort of like waking up to find I was on Turtle Island at an actual Village site. I had just reviewed the old “go to” 1850s History of Connecticut Indians by John DeForest who was under the impression that only one insignificant group of Indians, the Pootatuck, ever lived in the “desert” of Litchfield County in Northwestern CT.

 Mr. DeForest called the Woodbury Indians, the Pootatuck, “extinct,” vanished with barely a trace, and forever gone in that book.  

 When I mentioned that to Mr. Freeman, he remarked that his Grandmother “must’ve never read that book.”

 

 34 years later, I’m driving by some of that Whittemore Estate stonework, thinking about the foundation of my house where I’ve been removing Portland cement and am about to start repairing with lime mortar. I stop for a moment because all these rhomboidal stones have caught my eye…

 

And then, there’s this turtle in profile, and then I start to think about Mr. Freeman’s Grandfather, and Woodbury Indians, and wonder "Just who is a "Real Indian?"

 

 

Housatonic

Housatonic Pohtatuck  Mattatuck

 "Another toponym of the Schaghticoke and Mahikanak homelands that has been much debated is Housatonic. Ausatinoag is the name recorded in 1661 by John Pynchon in land account books, Usiatenuk in modern Mahikanneuw. The change from -atinoag to -atenuk should not be ignored. Pynchon was closely familiar with toponyms from the Central Connecticut Valley and dialects of that region.  Goddard, in a 2016 paper that is based on the work of Pere Mathevet, and subsequently Holly Gustavson, revealed the presence of a half-dozen dialects, some of them language isolates, in an area that was previously treated as having only two dialects. If Pynchon’s records were accurate in 1661, that would change the affiliation of these people.  However, nearby toponyms suggest that this is a Mahikanneuw name, and affiliates with awosatenik (awosaten[e]+ik, locative suffix, Unami), changed only by the loss of initial a, which is also common in modern Unami.  Usiatenuk (modern Mahikan) and Ausatinoag affiliate more closely with Unami than Munsee:  awosi = on the other side, Unami, while Munsee uses awasi. From old to modern Unami, [w]o and long o convert to u; o and u have a substitution relationship across languages that a and u do not share. It appears that Ausi (awosi/awusi) in old Mahikan is also unified to -u in Usiatenuk. Munsee is more distant to the name Usiatenuk. Some have posited Munsee as the tongue of the Schaghticoke people, but the Schaghticoke people appear to identify as majority Mahikanak (See Schaghticoke p.67), while they include in their number and have historic ties with their immediate neighbors.

 

Housatonic River (Mahican) "beyond the mountain" Usiatenuk in modern Mahikan; (awosatenik, Unami Lenapeuw; awosatene = over the hill, p. 22 Zeisberger)

Pohtatuck do not appear to have a published history that I could locate in their own voice, but here is one reference: http://nativenortheastportal.com/bio-tribes/pootatuck

  Tschana[n]tamsquah named among Pohtatuck translates as “unknowing woman” (Unami tshilantamixkwe= tschil+anantam+ixkwe = not/don’t wisdom woman) similar in Nipmuk (anantam – wisdom).

 

Mattatuck – near Middlebury and Naugatuck; mistranslated as “no tree,” derives from matta, “distant, last” (Kchisogmo Laurent attested), and tekw, “river.”  “Far River.”  There is also a Mattituk, eastern Long Island in Unkachog land, being the farthest east river on that land.

Menunketesuck River (and Menunketesuck Island )(Hammonasset) "strong flowing stream"

Naugatuck River  near Middlebury and Mattatuck; mistranslated as "single tree," a temporary and thus useless identifier.  Naugatuck derives from nohkw, “soft” and tekw “river,” Nohkwtetk. Nohkw confused by uninformed with nekwut, “one,” tekw confused with mhituk, “tree.”

Quassapaug (Quinnipiac) "big pond" or "big rock"

 

Mianu/Mayanno(s), sakima of Siwanoy who died by the gorge named for him, presents a telling form of “gather” if his name is given at all correctly.  Lenape, Mahikan and Mohegan all adhere to the mauwe-/mauwu-/mauwi- stem form for “gather (animate) together,” even extending to Northern Cree maaumwitaau (we gather together). Mauwen is modern Unami for “to gather” animate subjects, similar in Munsee.  I found one instance of moiham, “someone gathers,” in Unami, where the normal form is mauwe-. However, Natick and Massachusett are marked by Eliot and Trumbull, in the Natick Dictionary, as using mianau- for “gather them together”:

With inan. subj. nippe moiemo, the water is gathered together, Ex. 15, 8; mukkinneonk noema), Lev. 8, 4 (– miſſaema), Judg. 20, 1), the assembly is gathered together; pl. máemoush, Prov. 27, 25. [Narr. midwene, ‘a court or meeting'; miau'étuck, let us meet. Abn. maiéssafin, on s'assemble. Quir, mutuwêu'unk, a congregation, Pier. 61.] mianaú;, motinati, etc., v. t. an: he assembles, gathers (them) together, 2. Sam. 12, 29; suppos. mayanuk, “if he gather together’, Job 11, 10; imperat. 2d sing. miam, miyan, máin, gather thou (them) together, 2 Sam. 12, 28; Esth. 4, 16; Num. 21, 16.

This affiliation marks a northeastward association that upsets present assignations of Siwanoy language.  Quiripi appears also to use -mauw as the stem for “gather people,” as used in nagamauwo, “those gathered” in the “Quiripi Catechism,” yet perhaps this is mistranslated from nag amauwo = those Departed (neg amaiyeuog in Nipmuk); mutuweuunk is cited from Pierson. Additionally, Quiripi as presented in the Helps for the Indians . . . catechism uses intrusive r, which may be reflected in anthroponyms given above.  There is a troubling number of linguistic anomalies to be found in the names of signatories for just a few of the area tribes, suggesting that the picture is more complex than we’ve been led to believe.  There are signs of influence from all languages in all directions within toponyms and anthroponyms of Westchester and Fairfield Counties.

The presentation of separate leaders accompanied by separate entourages of community leaders (clan elders) attests to the fact that each of these people regarded themselves as independent of each other – to the level of speaking separately about the core critical matter of the Land.  On the face of it, we have here six independent, but closely allied, political bodies.  They represent just half of the contingency of communities grouped as “Siwanoy,” treated in land negotiations as two divisions of many communities.  To what degree people labelled Siwanoy regarded themselves as one is and won’t be clear. What we do know is that they initially presented large delegations as agents for the people, and later fewer.  Earlier people talked separately in small clusters of villages, while later, sakima signed alone for large areas; even later, those same sakima signed together.  There were also early combined negotiations, particularly after wars, with multiple peoples petitioning together. Peaceful talks about land appear to have been different in the early years.

Page 51:  “Many anthroponyms appear to indicate a place, perhaps marking the person by their place of association. The majority of personal names reflect nominal forms of verbs.” (Sachem Nonnewaug)

Variations in linguistic affiliation of toponyms, ethnonyms and anthroponyms in these documents cannot be simply attributed to the translators since the named translators would ostensibly speak the same language as categorized by some scholars.  As given above, the translators are all from the immediate area where Mahekanituk meets the sea (Rye, Yonkers, Hackensack), less than 20 miles apart.  Yet, in an area of less than 50 miles radius, the suffix for just one concept of pooling water takes on an array of forms: -pack, -pac, pek, -pequa, -paqua, -pough, -paugh, pauk, -buc and -peague. Again, these forms are mostly recorded by the same few persons and translated into just two languages, but the resulting forms on record are diverse. While lists of signatories are all full of similarities, many have some degree of idiosyncrasy.  The difference between “tribes” in names falls mostly to the frequency of certain endings or frequency of theme in roots used. 

Mahikan names in the Hudson Valley distinguish only slightly from Lenape, being very closely related (Appendix F).  The only Paugusett sakima I could find in early contact times is Kockopotanauk, a name that bears the one stand-out trait of Mahikan, shared with Quiripi, frequent use of au diphthong in colonial transliteration.  However, the names of leaders recorded at Wnahktituk (Stockbridge) in later parts of the colonial period take on distinctive form readily recognized in regional land documents (Appendix G). This difference is supported by at least two east-west dialects of Mahikan, recognized in the words for “woman,” uxk, in Western dialect, usk in Eastern dialect.

Elizabeth Mauwee (Mahyeuh) was born in New Haven (Mioonktuk). In 1699 she married Joseph Chuse (Paugusset) and moved to Schaghticoke."

 

 from Nohham R. Cachat Schilling:

https://www.academia.edu/60153097/Decolonizing_Our_Story_Indigenous_Peoples_of_the_Great_Rivers_Intervale_an_Onomastic_and_Identity_Review

 

The Tamarack Spot

 Something I began in November of 2021...

Snake Capstones

@

Happiness Farm

aka

The Petruzzi and then the Murtagh/MacSweeney Community Training Home

The Samuel Atwood House, The Tamarack House,

 The Buell Baby Farm, 

and the Old Haunted House on

Nonnewaug Road, Woodbury CT

Quite possibly built as

John Minor's Watch House at the Nonnewaug Wigwams

    My mother-in-law once told me that there was an old Tamarack tree in front of the house, but all I know of it is a stump that has slowly deteriorated away during the entire time that I’ve lived here. It’s a messy spot alright, the stone retaining wall damaged by tree growth as well as the effects of an ill-fated attempt at a repair involving Portland cement mortar in the 1960s that resulted in more water damage. I should be embarrassed to even show you, but here you go, fresh photos from September 12, 2024:

I'd always assumed that this was simply "European Stonework" because of all the obvious steel tool marks. I've conjectured it was the original central chimney, but these days I'm convinced that it's original to the house, and probably made using the same "Indigenous Iconography" that occurs in other older stonework in the area... 

I pulled some weeds, mostly jewelweed,

and I'll put some gloves on before I go back for the blackberries and poison ivy...

Just as the capstone on the opposite end is a recognizable rattlesnake head,

so is this capstone. 

An overlay to "make it come alive:"

An older photo (2021):

Another overlay:

I took a closer look, down lower, where there is a sort of rhomboidal or diamond shaped stone:

Where there are some "chinking stones" under one of the larger stones,

 a distinguishing characteristic of Indigenous Stonework,

a "supporting turtle:"

Another, just above it, a little to the left:

I guess that back in 11/2021 recognizing a "supporting turtle"

and a similarity in the shaping of certain stones distracted me:

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2021/11/some-more-cellar-steps-nonnewaug.html