Under the Snow (Nonnewaug CT)

The "forward point" of a Zigzag Row of Culturally Stacked Stones, along a road thousands of years old, a Big Snake keeping an eye on me from under a blanket of snow...

Please note that this is not how I usually view the stone feature but that morning it seemed to "transform" under the light and weather conditions, a foot and a half of snow blanketing the landscape.

 

Some Probable Stone Snapping Turtles (Nonnewaug or 'CT Cluster #3')

 Small Stones Turtle

Turtle Effigies in Stone: Tûnuppasuonk kodtonquag(kash) 

         also Tûnuppasuonk qussukquanesash – “Small Stones Turtle” 

"Small stones, stacked as a prayer

to the Turtle, striving to maintain 

Balance in the World, in the Universe. .."

(Above:) Nonnewaug Snapping Turtle Effigy

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/search?q=chicken

 (Above:) "And of course I’m looking for combinations of stone that any reasonable person (not just artists and other types of unreasonable people) just might look at and think,

“That looks like a turtle.”

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2023/02/finding-big-lost-stones-part-one-ct.html

Some Jeff Kohrt Photos

 

Above: A "Small serpent on ledge."

Below: "Wall sections."

With an overlay of an eye and antlers:

Lifted from:

New England Stone Walls & Historical Ruins | Facebook

Some Photos by Jerry Zani (RI)

 and a few quotes etc.

Some Will Tell You

 

Milky quartz stone

Framed by other stones

In the camera’s frame

The professor’s quotation in the caption reads:

“This remnant of single wall construction in Lyme, New Hampshire, shows a variety of features: Shapes are blocks, slabs, and pillows; sizes are mainly two-handers, with one one-hander; order is stacked, rather than laid or tossed; structure is a single-tiered, un-coursed wall one-on-two-and-two-on-one, with one error; lithology is mainly granite and gneiss.”

 

Some will tell you

 These Stones are

A monument to Yankee Exceptionalism,

Overnight sensations that brought civilization

Into a pristine howling wilderness

Where savages roamed like foxes and beasts

 

Some will tell you

These Stones

Couldn’t have been the work of the Original Owners who belonged to the land,

Couldn’t have been an aspect of their religion and culture,

Both banned early on by those Yankees, those English,

Who forbid the speaking of the old languages and the practice of the old religion

Up to the days of the 1970s Proto-Disco Era legislation that finally legalized

The freedom to practice Native American religions

Just in time for the Bicentennial Celebration, one might add...

Maunumuet – “where someone gathers it” Stone prayer place, in the singular, in the plural, ceremonial stone landscape (maunumuetash).

 

 

Kodtonquag(kash), kodtuhquag, kahtoquwuk - Means ‘heaped up by placing on top’ or more properly “it is raised construction” and is arranged in courses around a semi-open center by those who invest them with prayer and then raise them up together. 

 

These are placed directly on the ground.  Made of the roundest available large cobbles or tabular stones.

 

Stone Prayer - “Invested with prayers for the balance of the universe”

 

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

 

Nomadic you say??

 Someone is explaining "New England Indians" to me again,

Telling me all about

Those nomads wandering in the wilderness again.

 

Someone is explaining "New England Stone Walls" to me again

Telling me all about

Those settler colonists taming the wilderness again.

 

Me, I woke up on Turtle Island again:

The sun rose behind clouds in Nonnewaug again,

I still drive from one old village site to another old village site

Where the modern towns and cities are now

Along some roads that are thousands of years old,

Along an old mastodon migration trail, another Great Path

Along those smaller roads where those stones that were placed long ago remain,

Along another Great Stone Snake, composed of thousands of smaller effigies...

 

Someone is explaining New England to me again

Telling me all about

Those mythical things I’ve heard before about the wilderness again…

And then, thankfully,

Some young person of Indigenous ancestry I know

Pipes up with a quote from somewhere

That goes like this:

"Algonkian towns were located along waterways where fertile soil and fresh water were available...(And)

Native peoples developed sophisticated agricultural technologies for farming a variety of crops, harvesting seafood, and managing forests and landscapes..."

Thanks Drew Shuptar Rayvis!

Evaluations of qusuqaniyutôkansh (colloquially known as “stone walls”)

 

 “Evaluations of qusuqaniyutôkansh (colloquially known as “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.

   “Call it “The 97% Solution,” Sherlock continued. “For thousands and thousands of years -roughly at least 97% of the total human history time span of the area - the Indigenous Peoples of what is thought of as quaint “New England” certainly had a greater opportunity to shape the landscape, using fire and stone than the post contact Euro-American Settler Colonists and their slaves, indentured servants, employees, and their exceptional descendants with their “Merino Sheep Walls” in the remaining 3% of the human history of the region. The example of the use of LiDar in Central and South America to reveal and discover Indigenous Stonework in a place where “true civilization” was thought impossible to exist in a “pristine jungle” serves well. If those southern regions were transformed into some of the world’s largest gardens, then why would it be impossible that the Indigenous Peoples of the Eastern gate of Turtle Island could create one of the “World’s Largest Rock Gardens,” my dear Possum?”

    Dr. Possum sighed and remarked, “Well Stones, what is the truly more advanced civilization – one that creates a sustainable system of coexistence with the ecosystem or one that degrades it to such a degree that, if continued without change, in all probability leads to extinction?”

    Both men paused, pondering this...

"Is it ethnic erasure or Ethnic Cleansing to ignore the Indigenous creation of Stonework and attribute the majority of the stonework to the settler colonists who arrived in the years around 1620?" asked Possum.

"You may be merely "splitting hairs," as the saying goes, my dear Possum," replied Stones.