Protection of Native American Ceremonial Stone Landscapes (CSLs)

Alliance for Appropriate Development

We are a group of Franklin County residents and other interested community members concerned with land use, environmental protection, and historic preservation. We are concerned about protection of Native American Ceremonial Stone Landscapes and fragile forest habitat.

Main site: https://sites.google.com/site/allianceappropriatedevelopment/home

https://www.facebook.com/Alliance-for-Appropriate-Development-1403783356616414/

Guidance regarding protection of Native American landscapes

 Information about Ceremonial Stone Landscapes

Below are resources with information about Native American Ceremonial Stone Landscape Sites Article about  Landscape Sites in the Northeast  Turners FallsDecision:  https://www.nps.gov/nr/publications/guidance/turnerfallsdoedecision-redacted.pdf Letter to Town ofWayland:  The Nolumbeka Project:   The National Park Service's Guidelines for Traditional Cultural Places Assessments:  National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Offices Best Practices Guidelines for Tribal Consultation:   http://rockpiles.blogspot.com/2012/08/curious-stone-structure-from-shutesbury.html

http://www.stonestructures.org/html/shutesbury_-_chamber_1.html

More than Just Three Serpents

Triple Snake overlays on a photo used here:

http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2016/01/oldest-trails-older-trails-and-old_15.html

    I'm looking back at these since these stones remind me of the "Hopeskillian" rows of stone in Talking Walls by Matt Bua.

Another nearby gateway in the row of stones parallel to the center serpent, above, while below is messing with another bad photo (going snake-eyed)...

Little Update:

Did I miss a turtle (or 3)??

Matt Bua’s Talking Walls, with their feet in the water

              (even if snakes don’t have feet).

Great Serpents, remember now, live in the Underwater or Underground World,

Travel in the streams that run underground and above,

Travel upward to the high places to battle the Thunder (Lightening?) Beings.

Lightening Fires, water and weather, and a never ending cycle of Renewal,

Sacred Fires on Sacred Landscapes, Sacred Stones in the Great North Eastern Garden,

At the Eastern Gate of Turtle Island...

Matt Bua’s photos of Hopeskillian Rows of Stones (with Snake Tails in the Water),

Slabs of stone mixed with polished river "rock" flowing snake-like up into the high bedrock

Remind me of the Lion’s Woods Rows of Stones near Cranberry Pond

Where Serpent Stones traces the edges and connections of a Cranberry Garden

Where water flows, where the Serpent’s voice is heard like a Sacred Song

At the Eastern Gate of Turtle Island...

Of Course!!

     That's my pattern to consider during foundation restoration! I thought: Why didn't I see this before now?? Snoozing again, but still Waking Up On Turtle Island...

These edges seem "worked" so that these can be "fitted."

Let me go and look again...

Round Yet Rhomboidal White Eyed Snake

In a Row of Stones (Litchfield CT)

    It begins or ends like this - or maybe it is just what remains to date, the end of Spring 2016:

If you look close, you'll see a triangular stone still sitting there - or "standing upright on the top center of this stonewall:" 

Check your regular field guide to Stone Walls and you can assume that this is a well built, possibly formerly maintained, Estate Wall, complete with some flat fieldstone capstones...

Observing closely for signs of possible Stone Turtles since others were present at another section of this long row of stones (or several segments of similar rows of stone assumed to be stone walls, a quarter mile south along the same former trail turned into modern highway), I spot one particularly obvious one with a nice foreleg with the suggestion of toes:

Another, larger turtle effigy in stone:

Nice Rhomboidal Stone - a "diamond:"

To the left:

A couple of quartz turtle heads? 

A quartz inclusion (or two); an eye, maybe a fang as well??

Maybe two eyes, after all, sort of round but sort of rhomboidal - and sort of white:

Step back:

Imagine: stones laid down behind a stone with what looks like a snake head with white eyes, followed by a course of stones to make a snake's body...

Lowest Row of Stones

Touching the Nonnewaug Trail

     Another row of stone that I thought all these years was Colonial in origin turns out to be Contact Period Indigenous. The first course of stones, where the entryway path, the present driveway, meets the original Nonnewaug Trail greatly resembles another snake. At some point in time someone with a great fondness for cement perhaps over ambitiously  pointed at the least or this remaining section of stone wall, in a way preserving the original construction...

This stone appears to have been humanly enhanced: 

It is a little disturbed at the top, but something familiar stands out,

no reason to draw in an eye...

A couple "easy to make" snakes farther up: 

Second Retaining Wall Comes into Focus

Or: The Ograbme that Grabbed Me

     Well now, you see: I think one of the distinguishing characteristics of Indigenous Stonework sometimes involves stacking stones to resemble snakes - Eastern Timber Rattlesnakes especially - and Great Snakes or Big Snakes or Horned Serpents, Great Serpents and all the other ways the Indigenous word for this sometimes protective Spirit Being has been translated into English, found to be so widespread in the western hemisphere in many artistic forms.

      I try to see the courses of stones in stone wall-like constructions as possible snakes. I was once very much surprised when I applied this to a familiar wall at home, observing the pattern in a retaining wall that I had previously assumed was a Colonial wall, built by Euro-American Settlers sometime around 1700:

But what is that??

Since I have had more than one snapping turtle give me this exact sort of look,

I am reasonably sure that this is a Stone Snapping Turtle: 

I stole (and cropped) this photo of a snapping turtle from

http://mentalfloss.com/article/68505/10-biting-facts-about-snapping-turtles

THANKS TO A 19TH CENTURY POLITICAL CARTOON, COMMON SNAPPING TURTLES ARE ALSO KNOWN AS "OGRABMES." 

Urban~commonswiki via Wiki Commons // CC BY PD-US

"Drawn by Alexander Anderson, this piece skewers Thomas Jefferson’s signing of the unpopular Embargo Act. At the president’s command, we see a snapping turtle bite some poor merchant’s hind end. Agitated, the victim calls his attacker “ograbme”—“embargo” spelled backwards..."

I'm adding these photos to this post on January 10, 2019, my When I'm 64 Birthday:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/34580529@N04/albums/72157712603768052

Sometime between 1672 and 1740, European tools in the hands of the People Living at Nonnewaug Wigwams constructed this retaining wall and other stonework...

On 4/12/2022 I sadly add: