(Continuing from here: http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2016/01/oldest-trails-older-trails-and-old_14.html)
Where the newest trail meets the older
trail is an interesting spot. I first came across it in November of 2014, just
as the sun was about to set and snow was about to fall. I had the impression
then that these “stone walls” were not Euro-American constructions and this intuition
hasn’t changed. The photo below is from that day over one year ago from when I
am writing this:
Observe:
the maintained Land Trust trail just below the older trail, bordered by fairly
intact stone walls, considering their as yet undetermined age. There is a gap
in the lower east/west running rows that lead into two sections of land divided
by a third perpendicular segment extending southward beginning on an outcrop of
bed rock, an ancient oak tree also of as yet undetermined age on the north side
of that stone row. It’s on my “to do list” to measure the oak’s diameter which
I estimate to be at least ten feet.
(2014: note the pedastled boulder.)
Before
scrambling up the outcrop and ridge-line, I should mention the end of the stone
row to the left has a large boulder at its end that could be interpreted as the
head of a snake or Great Serpent, shown here in yet another photo from 2014:
Two views
of the north side, back to January 2015:
Looking south (kind of):
Looking east:
This row undulates in construction, like the
profile of a roller coaster, up the grade of the outcrop ridge, and it is my
impression that a resemblance to a rattle snake was intended by Indigenous
builders, the composite head (rather than a single boulder) resting on the
exposed outcrop…
Consider: "The
significance in aboriginal thought of exposed bedrock at a topographical
eminence, then, is understood by reference to a set of beliefs held by the
Algonquin speaking Cheyenne, but also so widespread throughout the Americas
that I doubt any professional ethnographer would find quibble with it. In the
native view, expounded at length by the Cheyenne Elders, there exist three
worlds: the world below, the domain of the ancestors, the middle world, that is
the land of the living, humans and all their relations – the winged ones the
four-legged, the creepy crawlies, the swimmers, the two-leggeds – and the world
above, the domain of the Powers Above, the Sky People of the starry world. On
earth the domain of the world below, begins at bedrock, the womb of mother
earth, from which all life comes and to which it returns. It is the
responsibility of the living to honor the struggles and sacrifices of the
ancestors, by maintaining harmony in the middle world for the benefit of all
living beings through ceremony properly conducted, as taught by the ancestors,
involving offerings to the powers above. When a human being stands on a high
hill, feet on bedrock, head in the sky, with the intention of making ceremony,
he or she is therefore at a place of unusual power, connected to all three
worlds simultaneously – past, present, and future, the domains of the
ancestors, of the living, and of the higher powers." - William Sullivan,
PhD.
Above: just past a damaged segment, most likely from a branch fallen from the tree, the fallen stones still beside the wall, an intact segment rises in a second undulation. Below: looking back down toward the trail at that damaged spot where a large quartz boulder is included on the wall, the bedrock visible below an accumulation of leaves. The stream shown in part one is down in that valley, leading into a Cranberry Swamp (and Cranberry Pond), photos of the low stonework at the edge of the riparian zone can be seen in this post as well as other views of stone walls on this hillside: http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2014/11/other-side-of-tail-part-two.html
Observe: again the cap-like stones (like bumps
of bones along the spine of a snake), the shapes of the stones stacked here and
the inclusion of more white quartz (and yellow quartzite too) as well as the
round stone in the center of the photo and the segment. Consider: this property
has been a nature sanctuary since 1913 (the pines may have been planted by the
Civilian Conservation Corps sometime after that) and probably pasture land
reaching back into the 1700’s when the predominant fencing was wooden rails.
Consider: Indigenous history reaches back for 12,000 years in the area with a
great emphasis on maintaining the landscape by use of fire – which to my
knowledge hasn’t been investigated to any great extent in this locale and
remains largely understudied, let alone even considered a possibility in
Connecticut and the rest of New England.
Back in November 2014, I happened upon a
blog post that just happened to include photographs of some of these same stone
walls. As I was considering the very real possibility that these stone
constructions might have come into existence over thousands of years of Native
American land stewardship, the blog author waxed romantically about the very
short period of time in which intrepid early colonial settlers reshaped a wilderness
landscape, building stonewalls as they plowed and cleared fields, resulting in
the now “abandoned stone walls (that) are the signatures of rural New England,
the “relics of a vanished agricultural civilization,” in a rather myopic view
that really has not been proven scientifically. As I pondered (and continue to
ponder) how these walls may reflect the land use of Indigenous People, using
informed (and imaginative) speculation, I was troubled that the blog author was
reinforcing a myth that is really a form of “Ethnic Erasure,” to put it as
politely as CT State Archeologist Dr. Brian Jones puts it, misinterpreting
stonework that could be considered monuments of the previous Indigenous
cultures that inhabited the region long before the 17th century.
The saving grace of that blog post is its
last paragraph that seems to be supportive of protecting CT’s stonewalls: “A
1939 study estimated that there were 240,000 miles of stone walls in New
England, which contained more stone than the remaining monuments of the ancient
world put together. Unfortunately, Connecticut (unlike Massachusetts and New
Hampshire) has no law that protects its stone walls, and they are slowly
falling victim to bulldozers or being quarried for new stonework.”
Chainsaws were whining in that parcel as I
took one last photo of that stone wall before moving eastward, observing other
stone work and I leave you with that for now:
Lovely photos.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if the Algonquian ideas apply to everything. I am never sure if any of the stonework we are looking could pre-date the Algonquian dominance in New England.
Certainly bedrock is present at (what I think are) burials.