Big Mound

twisted apple tree

Here's something I can't go back and photograph, this old twisted apple tree.
I probably took this photo in 1991, having just read Cothren's History, on the look out for more apple trees after seeing what remained then of the other ones he writes about.
And just before reading Manitou for the first time (while camping at Burlingame and going to the Narragansett Church to see the twisted trees there), which explains why I didn't take a photo that included the Manitou Stone to the right. Perhaps the branches hid it that day.

I've got no idea how old this might be.

Was there a mound of stones between the tree and the stone to it's southwest, robbed back in 1840-something? Is it more recent, sort of a secret, a grave of a wandering person who still recalled the treaty and how Nonnewaug was buried nearby although the band had moved along, retaining hunting, fishing and burial rights?
Is it perhaps a winter burial, in the place where the wigwam they died in once stood? I sat by that tree once, watching a winter sunset above the point of that stone...