No presidential proclamation,
But when I Woke Up On Turtle
Island today
It was still Indigenous Peoples Day
Here at Nonnewaug,
In Pootatuck,
In the Paugussett Homeland,
Where the spirits of countless eels
Are about to pass by the spirit of a stone fish weir
Once again in the dark of the moon…
CSLs:
"Evaluations of máunumúetash* by parties who do not test their hypotheses against Northeast Algonquian cosmology and rituals are doing, at best, only half an investigation..."
*(Máunumúet(ash) - place(s) of ceremonial gathering (ehenda mawewink, Lënapeuw,
mawighunk, Mahhekanneuw). Themes of connectedness, reciprocity, prayerfulness
and continuity are expressed through máunumúetash.)
Nohham Rolf Cachat-Schilling - The Bulletin of Society for Connecticut
Archaeology (2018)
https://www.academia.edu/40876479/SCASubmission
(Longer than wide “stone wall/fence-like”) Rows of Culturally
Stacked or Laid Stones:
“Evaluations of qusuqaniyutôkansh (“stone walls”) by parties
who do not test their hypotheses against Northeast Algonquian cosmology,
Traditional Ecological Knowledge, and Rituals of Renewal on Ceremonial Stone
Landscapes are doing, at best, only 3% of an investigation,” remarked Sherlock
Stones to his associate, famed Rocket Surgeon John Possum..."
.jpg)
https://www.ethicarch.org/post/understanding-stone-prayers-in-the-northeasterncultural
By Kaitlin Keane, Staff Writer
Sep 15, 2025
NEW MILFORD (CT) – More than two centuries have passed since the
monument honoring Native American Chief Waramaug at his burial site in Lovers
Leap State Park was dismantled.
“He was a rock star, he really was,” Julie Stuart, executive
director of the Bridgewater Land Trust, said at the recent Town Council
meeting. “People have cheered at the idea of putting something back to honor
his history there."
Waramaug commanded more than 200 warriors when the northwest
corner of Connecticut was being settled in the 1600s and 1700s. He later
presided over 1,000 members of consolidated tribes from today's New Milford,
Kent, Woodbury, Roxbury, Litchfield and surrounding land in an area known as
Weantinock, according to a 1985 article by The New York Times.
He was a sachem of the Wyantenocks, who had hunting grounds
near the falls on the Housatonic River, wintered in the area now covered by
Lake Lillinonah and spent the summer at today's Lake Waramaug. His “capitol”
was believed to be at the Great Falls just south of New Milford, overlooking
the Lover’s Leap gorge, according to The New York Times article.
Lake Waramaug, which is bordered by Kent, Washington and
Warren, was named after Waramaug, whose name translates to “good fishing
place,” according to state records. Lake Lillinonah – which borders
Bridgewater, Brookfield, New Milford, Roxbury and Southbury – was named after
Waramaug’s daughter.
According to local legend, Lillinonah fell in love with a
white colonist she nursed back to health. He left with promises to return after
telling his people about his bride, but when the colonist did not return,
Waramaug arranged a marriage for Lillinonah, according to the legend.
Lillinonah is said to have boarded a small boat above the
falls before her wedding, the legend states. Her love returned through the
woods when Lillinonah’s boat entered the falls’ current and threw himself into
the waterfall where they both perished, according to the legend.
Waramaug later died in 1735 at the age of 77, and a monument
was erected in his honor at the top of Lover’s Leap, Stuart said.
“They say that both the Indians and the European settlers
were so enamored with him,” Stuart said. “He was such a great figure in our
history that as people came by through the years, they would add a stone to the
monument.”
The New Milford Town Council unanimously voted at the
council’s Sept. 8 meeting to work with the Connecticut Department of Energy and
Environmental Protection to create a monument at Waramaug’s burial site in
Lovers Leap State Park.
His burial site is located on a 39-acre state-owned parcel
on the eastern side of Lovers Leap “at the precipice overlooking the valleys,”
according to the 1985 New York Times.
In the late 1800s, the Hurd family of Bridgeport bought the
land at Lovers Leap and built a lodge and a castle, dismantling and using the
stones from Waramaug’s grave to create the foundation and fireplace for both
buildings, Stuart said.
“It may be karma that both those buildings have since been
burnt down and there’s nothing left there but ruins,” Stuart said.
The land was later deeded to the state for a park in 1973,
according to the 1985 New York Times article.
Sep 15, 2025
Kaitlin Keane
Reporter
Kaitlin Keane is thrilled to nurture her journalism career
as a weeklies reporter with Hearst and looks forward to becoming better
acquainted with the communities in her coverage area. While she enjoys the
opportunity to cover breaking news, her beat is generally focused on local
profiles and school-centered stories. Outside of her reporting work, she is an
avid reader, baker and cyclist.
https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/search?q=Waramaug+
“Weramaug, Warramaug: the name by which the Sachem of the
Weantinock…was known to the English.:"
“On the summit of Lover’s Leap, Chief Waramaug was buried.
The spot, in the Hurd estate (not open), was formerly marked by the usual pile
of stones built by passing warriors as a mark of respect, but the great house (
'whose foundation and granite staircase sits overgrown like some Mayan pyramid,
as well as an old chimney and castle-like turret,' according to
http://articles.courant.com/2010-09-03/features/hc-marteka-lovers-leap-new-milford-0920100903_1_trail-gorge-natural-beauty)
was erected, and the main fireplace stands directly over the chiefs grave (page
465).” Connecticut: A Guide to Its' Roads, Lore and People by Wilbur Cross;
Federal Writers Project ~ Boston,
Houghton Mifflin Co., 1938
https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2012/09/a-few-bits-about-waramaugs-grave.html
Dr. Luci Lavin
writes, “A stone monument once overlooked the Housatonic River in the area of
New Milford, Connecticut (Butler op. cit. pg. 5). It supposedly marked the grave of the eminent
Weantinock sachem, Waramaug, who died in 1722.
In the early 1800s it was vandalized by whites; the scattered stones
supposedly were used to build a nearby mansion. Frank Speck reported that the
17th century Mohegans of southeastern Connecticut built a stone pile above the
road leading from Norwich to Hartford as a boundary marker for the northern
extent of their tribal lands; like the Stockbridge Mohicans did at the Monument
Mountain stone pile, Mohegan members would add a stone to the pile each time
they passed. He also reported a stone pile several feet high on the
Schaghticoke Reservation in Kent, on which early 20th century Schaghticokes
still added a stone as they passed to pay respects to the ghost of a murdered
Schaghticoke whom they thought haunted the area (Frank G. Speck 1945, pp.19, 22
in “The Memorial Brush Heaps in Delaware and Elsewhere, Bulletin of the
Archaeological Society of Delaware, Vol. 4, No. 2)…”
https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2015/05/monument-mountain-and-other-indigenous.html
In Orcutt's History, Indians of the Housatonic and Naugatuck Vallys, the name is spelled "Waraumaug:"
I got these maps all mixed up in my mind yesterday:
Those Champlain Maps That Look Like Drawings
The same day we sailed two leagues along a sandy coast, as we passed along which we saw a great many cabins and gardens. The wind being contrary, we entered a little bay to await a time favorable for proceeding. There came to us two or three canoes, which had just been fishing for cod and other fish, which are found there in large numbers. These they catch with hooks made of a piece of wood, to which they attach a bone in the shape of a spear, and fasten it very securely. The whole has a fang-shape, and the line attached to it is made out of the bark of a tree. They gave me one of their hooks, which I took as a curiosity. In it, the bone was fastened on by hemp, like that in France...Some of them came to us and begged us to go to their river. We weighed anchor to do so, but were unable to do so on account of the small amount of water, it being low tide, and were accordingly obliged to anchor at the mouth…1
Envisioning Pomperaug's Village site
Town of Woodbury CT:
Stonework and Stonework on Google maps and Google Earth
“I keep looking for
a view of them on Google maps and Google Earth where street views are available
but the foliage gets in the way and I can't show you a good view of that,” I
mentioned in the previous post, here: https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2025/08/the-deer-path-stone-wall-weston-ct-part.html
So I kept looking (as if that were the only thing in the world I was thinking about):
A Culturally Stacked Row of Stones on a Modern Day Property Line
Six months and a couple days past the Valentine’s Day Achille’s Tendon Incident, I found myself traveling down some old turnpikes and trails to have dinner with someone in someplace I’d only been to once before. The town was one of those fancy Connecticut towns where former farmland turned to fancy suburban houses for the wealthy, and of course I was looking at all the various forms of “stone fencing” reflective of those time periods my critics believe I’m unaware of, but as I drive along the old roads, I see the Indigenous Stonework remnants still in place here and there, just like just about everywhere in Connecticut. I glimpse old trail border rows of stones and spot some Stone Prayers (hidden in plain sight as they say), up by some “broken” rough and rocky uplands, a couple Stone Serpents with big stone heads guarding them, up near "The Devil's Den" along the way.
(I keep looking for a view of them on Google maps and Google Earth where street views are available but the foliage gets in the way and I can't show you a good view of that.)
Just before we pull into the driveway at our destination, I note that there is a “stone wall property border fence” hugging one edge of the yard…
The ground was
fairly level along this row of stones and I finally got a chance to hobble along the first “stone
fence” I’ve been able to "walk like an old man pretending he's not drunk and failing to do so" along in half a year. The next day, at home, I
check the aerial photos for 1934 and see the cultural snapshot of farmland
that’s mostly “cow and apples” related, with probably tobacco plots and
woodlots as additional cash crops. I see that the rows of stacked stones sort
of point to present day magnetic north and I know that is commonly assumed to
be a sign that somebody used a compass to plot these lines (long lots?) in the
post contact period, as they say…
(But the declination changes over time and the artificial intelligence overview that pops up these days on a web search surprises me by saying that “In 1700, magnetic declination in Woodbury, CT, was approximately 7 to 8 degrees west of true north. This means a compass needle would point 7 to 8 degrees to the left of geographic north.” I don't know what to think about that...)
Still, these initial observations on a single visit makes me really wonder if I am seeing pre-contact Indigenous Stonework of undetermined age in the Paugussett Homeland or later stonework created in the last 335 or so years after the Puritan/Pequot War when settler colonists were granted land to be turned into private properties and farms practicing European style methods of agriculture.
Close to the Deer Path Road, there's a large "triangular" boulder in the row of stones that could be or "could have been seen as" an example of a boulder-type of snake head (like hundreds of others in many other places).
