Understanding Versus Interpretation - Nohham Cachat-Schilling

 Maunumuet(ash) – “where someone gathers it”

Stone prayer place, in the singular; in the plural, Ceremonial Stone Landscape.

 

  “Attempts to explain stone prayers may be taking the wrong tack," writes Nohham Cachat-Schilling. "Interpretation is tricky, more so when it comes to spiritual matters. Misnaming, mis-associating, and misplacing are verbs that still attach to the body of literature on stone prayers, excepting mostly those few pieces that have been written by Indigenous descendants of this region. Writers who get the facts and figures right about stone prayers often wander off the path when it comes to explanation. Indigenous narrative about spirit-inhabited stones starts the path into the cultural narrative that built maunumuetash.

 When Europeans arrived in the Western Hemisphere, they immediately began to rewrite our culture and history to conform to their hegemonic and supremacist agenda.  The overwriting and politicization of Indigenous legacy has not ceased. But there are always those who bridge toward reconciliation…” 

https://www.ethicarch.org/post/understanding-stone-prayers-in-the-northeasterncultural

A Prayer for Wendell

Three hospital beds

 Since I last sat down to write, my friend Wendell DeerwithHorns left this world.

 I just told a little story in my most previous post about some stone cultural features I’d shown a drawing of to Trudie Richmond when she was still at the Institute for American Indian Studies - and I’ll add that there was also a photograph I’d shown her of another. I’d come across a flat boulder that had two other stones on it. One of those stones I had at first thought was a cow’s skull but it turned out to more resemble a bear’s head which turned out to be balanced on the platform of that flat boulder, beside it another oddly shaped stone, just to the right of the Bear’s Head.

 When I showed her the Bear, Trudie asked me, “Have you been having bad luck lately?” And I replied that no, I hadn’t. Again she asked what Wendell thought about these stones and once again I had to say I didn’t really know.

 I guess that’s how I found myself sitting in Nancy and Wendell’s kitchen for the first time, drinking a cup of coffee. We’d become closer friends since I’d first met him at a couple Pow Wows when my wife Roberta’s mother Beth was at Waterbury Hospital during the last days of her life. I guess you could say we were staying there too, right by her side, sleeping on chairs and on the window sill, a little nest of blankets and pillows Wendell had brought us because he was working there at the hospital at the time. Wendell took care of us during that difficult time and my family will always remember his kindness, will always be grateful.

 In the DeerwithHorn’s kitchen, there was an abalone shell with sage and cedar on the table. Wendell struck a match and started the mixture smoldering. I still smoked a corncob pipe in those days, and as I filled my pipe, I also added a bit of tobacco to the shell because it seemed the right thing to do. Previously, a couple people and I had helped Wendell set up the circle for a PowWow, marking out spaces for the Families and other Traders who were planning on attending, and the first thing he had done was put down that same  shell, to smudge us and send a prayer up to Thunkashila, “Grandfather” in Lakota.

 I showed Wendell the photo of the two stones on the boulder and I remember his first words as “Just like at home,” which I took to mean back in South Dakota. “When you look at these things,” he said, “Throw down some tobacco.” He also suggested that the odd shaped stone was a fire starter, the concave edge a place to put a shell full of tobacco.

 Well, I did do that next time I walked up to that Bear’s Head. I brought along a quahog shell and found that the edge fit perfectly into that stone, right where it rested on the boulder. There were some pits in the top part of the stone and I imagined that would be a good spot to place the tip of a fire starter into a ball of cedar bark. I had earlier noticed a depression chipped into the top of the Bear’s Head stone and when I tried to fit the shell to it, I heard an audible “click” when it fell into just the right spot.

 I eventually found a couple Connecticut references to allude to tobacco offerings, hunting, and burning a tobacco mixture, but that’s another couple of stories for another time.

 There’s a second hospital bed in this story – and it’s my hospital bed on the last day of January 2011.

 I woke up hearing my friend’s voice speaking in Lakota, recognized that word for Grandfather, realized that he was praying over me. I’d had three stents placed in three veins going into my heart hours earlier – and the doctor had somehow confused me with someone else and had just told my wife Roberta and my sister Joan that I probably wouldn’t make it through the night. I drifted back into a drug induced sleep and Wendell went to go check on the situation. He then put my family at ease, straightening things out, letting them know I would be just fine.

 The third hospital bed in this story is Wendell’s, set up in his front room, by the big picture window.

 He took my hand in his, held onto it for a long time before he let go. I pulled up a chair and we talked.

 We talked about old times, good times.

 "I'm with the Spirits a lot now," he said at one point.

  We laughed a little, talked about dreams, and were comfortably quiet in between.

  When I said goodbye, I just didn’t know it would be the last goodbye.

 Those few short hours I now see as a great blessing, sitting here by my front room windows watching the sunrise, saying a little prayer for my friend…

Monday, March 25, 2024

 

Spring Equinox Story (Nonnewaug)

For Wendell, my "Twin Brother"

  After showing a drawing of a sunset over some possible stone cultural features, a Schaghticoke elder who worked at a local museum had asked me, many years ago, “Well, what does Wendell think about this?” She knew that Wendell DeerWithHorns, who was born either seven days after I was (or possibly a week less than a year before) on the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota, and I had become friends and she was genuinely interested.

   I was able to answer her very quickly.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

   So I guess that is how it came to be that on the next vernal equinox, Wendell and I were walking over to a sort of triangle made of stones and boulder, in a seemingly abandoned and neglected apple orchard. We crossed some hayfields, following a stone wall, had to cross a ditch and then another little stream as well, walking on fallen tree trunks that the roses and barberries were trying their best to cover up, just then sprouting the first green of the new year.  

   We talked about the local history and I told him about bringing a Paugussett war chief we both knew over to look at the twisted trees of great age and the boulders that seemed to point out where the sun set on the equinoxes and maybe the summer solstice. We talked about Medicine Wheels...

  I don’t have photos but somewhere there’s a drawing of the two of us as stick figures along with a diagram and compass points of two sunsets, documenting the time we witnessed this springtime event. We watched the sun go down and decided to stay because Venus was becoming more visible as the sun when behind the hill over the stones. It looked as if it was following the same path and we were curious to see if the planet would also set on the same spot on the hillside marked by the boulders.

  Well, you know Venus surely did set over the stones – which shouldn’t have been a surprise since the moon and all the planets follow this ecliptic path in the sky.

  Getting darker by the minute, we started back toward that tangle of trees and thorns over the swampy little stream, a darker spot in the distance.

   That was when we both realized that neither of us had thought to bring along a flashlight...

Nancy and Wendell DeerwithHorns

What Does Indigenous Stonework Look Like? (Eastern Gate of Turtle Island)

 "What Does Indigenous Stonework Look Like?"

That’s always the question.

    In the early spring of 1990, I had two woodcut illustrations of Indigenous Stonework to observe, described as gravesites by a historian writing in the middle of the 1800s.

 Today, Leap Year Eve 2024, I look at my phone or turn on the laptop to see who saw what where yesterday or the day before or two or twenty years ago.

   Today I can ask several guys named Dave if it’s okay for me to use a photo or two on my blog to again make a case that yet another alleged “colonial stone wall” is Indigenous stone construction, an obvious Snake Effigy.

  Yes, I’ll probably overlay some “Eyes and Antlers” on the image, gratifying some people and angering all the rest. Yes, I might even show the stones covered up with a cross and rail fence, those easily constructed wooden stakes and riders recognized as “legal” by the local fence viewer, remind you that the row of stones just might be of an as of yet undetermined age, compare one more Stone "Big Snake" to the same old Stone "Big Snake" still grinning on the hillside across the fields I can see out my front windows...

 Today I might convince someone that I’m not “totally bonkers,” and yet today another person might send me yet another definition of Pareidolia in a condescending tone. Somebody else might tell me again that it’s a construction made by the “people before the Indians”  - and before the so-called glacier and before the comet and before the flood. Today somebody might send me a link to my own poorly written blog, asking “Did you ever hear about this?” – and it’s one of those old woodcut illustrations.

And today I might just say “Thanks” to all the Daves,

And all the Stephanies, Anns, and Jerries,

All the Mikes and all  the Matts,

All the Charlies,

All the well-known Starrs,

And especially all the Unknown Rising Stars who saw something for the first time yesterday -

Thanks for posting those pictures that show the great beauty in all that stonework here at the Eastern Gate of Turtle Island.

We've just begun to scratch the surface

and there's much more to see and learn from...

Little Peoples' Sweat Lodge?

 Suddenly a Stone Sweat Lodge

My friend's original photo:

Note the size of the (Goosefoot Maple?) leaves.

This is a tiny "chamber" similar to larger ones, such as this one below,

accessed at a preview of "Our Hidden Landscapes" at Google Books:

One distinguishing Characteristic of Indigenous Stonework is perhaps the way certain stone structures are "stacked" to resemble, sometimes quite realistically, the scales around the eye of a rattlesnake:

A dramatic photo of a "chamber" in NY, on the Winter Solstice:

Larger preoculars on the left, smaller post oculars to the right,

under a supraocular-like "lintel" stone...

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2016/12/solstice-serpent-eye.html

Some of you might be thinking, "That's a niche," in Stephanie's photo,

a place to "leave an offering" and that may be so,  

but I think it might also be a small stone sweat lodge,

"Serpent Stacked" to resemble the Eye of the Big Snake Spirit,

perhaps a way of traveling to the Underworld...

Side by side, Little and Big:

"The sacred stone piles on Mohegan Hill are a critical feature of the traditional landscape of Mohegan Hill; they were created by the “Little People” who live deep within the ground of Mohegan Hill. These “Little People” or Makiawisug are the ancient culture heroes of this region. These stone piles also possess powers that protect the Mohegan people from outsiders. Not only do the “Little People” still live within the ground on the Hill and continue to guard the stones, these stone piles are perceived as being made of the bones of Mother Earth and they contain messages that guide generation after generation of Mohegan People. Contemporary Mohegan tribal members make offerings to the “Little People” in hopes that they will continue to protect our Tribe."

http://newenglandfolklore.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-little-people-who-live-under-hill.html

A couple others:

The Snake above is looking to the right:

A little quote:

"When we consider beings supposed to be human, we come to the wigguladumooch-k, or little people, whose footsteps may sometimes be heard in the forest on a still day, though they themselves are rarely seen. They are especially strong in magic power, and will sometimes impart this to the Micmac who wins their friendship. Once in a while, in the woods, one will observe stones piled together so as to make a little house. If you move them and go away, when you return you will find them placed just where they were before you touched them."

Hagar, Stansbury (1896) Micmac Magic and Medicne Journal of American Folklore vol 9, pp. 170-177.

https://archive.org/details/jstor-533400

And then there's this:

Suddenly a Zigzag (MA/CT)

 

   Looking at an old post, I suddenly notice an “abandoned stonewall” might be a dreaded “zigzag stone wall.” With no further ground proofing, I decide to dive right into just another zigzag dissenter post:

  Well, yes it might be better defined (from a distance or a fuzzy enlarged photo) as appearing to be “serpentine,” but every popular stone wall book (or online lecture of a presentation on the YouTube) might say because it’s so very regular" and such “even” construction that it is probably most likely definitely without a doubt a “Yankee Farmer Wall.” The Colonialist Folk Tale states that zigzag stone walls are accidental creations, agricultural waste tossed against a wooden rail fence, sometime after 1620 in the howling pristine wilderness that became the "New England."

Above: Eric Sloane drawings.

 And yes, you might hear or read that the shape is used to distinguish a “farmer’s fence” from a “Native American Wall” by people who acknowledge the existence of Ceremonial Stone Landscape features, but here I am once again telling you: That carefully constructed zigzag is not the result of “field clearing stones thrown up against wooden rails that have long since rotted away."  

Nonnewaug Snake Effigy

A linear row that turns zigzag:

  These Big Stone Snakes may have functioned as fuel breaks on a fire-tended cultural landscape, a large scale garden – a rock garden, if you will – for a very long time. They are infused with, are alive with, the powers of the Great Serpents who have much to do with weather and water as well as lightning-set fires - or humanly set fires thermally pruning the landscape or protecting certain places from those fires, keeping the fires under control... 

  If this segment of stones was indeed shaped by Farmer William Nilly, then which side of the wooden fence was he tossing those stones?? Likely from the field above, right?? So, the uphill side, right?

And yes, I’m telling you again, “Look for the Snake Head.”

Old Post: https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2016/03/is-that-serpent-like-wall.html

How many turtle effigies?

 Someone asks: "Do you have any idea how many turtle effigies there might be still standing?

How many turtle effigies?

Which kind of Effigy?

All of them?

I just don’t know…

 

I remember spotting turtles within the alleged “Estate Wall”

On the eastern border of the Institute in Washington CT

And thinking that’s a job for someone who isn’t me,

Counting all the possible turtle effigies in just this one massive construction,

This huge Snake Effigy, this Qusukqaniyutôk above the Shepaug River…

 

I call a boulder effigy of a box turtle “Turtle One”

Mostly because it was the first I clearly saw as Grandfather Turtle

-          One steps through a remnant of a row of stones

-          Into a mast forest zone to stand beside it,

-          Up above the planting fields and fish weir in Nonnewaug…

I call a snapping turtle effigy behind my old chicken coop “Turtle Two”

Mostly because it’s the second turtle effigy I could see

Ever since the chickens scratched it out of the farm trash

But I’ve never counted or assigned numbers to all the many turtle effigies

Which have made themselves known to me in those Stone Prayers…

 

There are turtle effigies on top of snake effigies way up high on hillsides

There are turtle effigies in the wetland gardens most people call swamps

And there are turtle effigies in the rows of stones that snake along in between the two.

Sometimes one finds a Diamondback Terrapin effigy up above a saltmarsh,

Sometimes one finds a musk turtle effigy by the ruins of an old saw mill

Sometimes one crosses the river on the backs of turtles (that are also snake scales),

Where eel baskets were still placed in the dark of the autumn moon just over 300 years ago...

Sometimes there’s an effigy right there,

-           In the middle of what one thought of as a colonial construction

-          In the middle of where two took wedding vows

-          In the middle of where their children and grandchildren played

-          Over by where someone may one day sprinkle some of one’s ashes…

 

Saturday, February 03, 2024