Half a Lifetime

   Could that possibly be correct? I’ve been questioning that “New England Stone Wall Myth” since the spring of 1990, when I found that illustrated copy of William Cothren’s History of Ancient Woodbury Connecticut in the local library and figuratively woke up on Turtle Island. Prior to then, I was familiar with the myth that, as others still put it, that Indians around here learned the techniques of stone building from Europeans and every stone fence or stack of stones had something to do with property lines and field clearing, cows and sheep, and a howling wilderness transformed with metal axes and plows into a “New England” in a “New World.”

   It was quite different when I started all those years ago, when I was half the age I am now. Back then I didn’t have a little computer device in my pocket that was a phone and a camera. I couldn’t “look stuff up” unless I went to the library, or the school, or the museum, couldn’t instantly be in touch with the few people at the time who considered the idea of pre-contact Indigenous Stonework in the Northeast as a legitimate possibility. Used to be that I had to buy film for my camera and pay for developing and printing, waiting to see if those photos were actually conveying what I wanted to convey about my observations. I was scribbling down notes in sketchbooks, those old photos rubber cemented onto the pages, next to drawings of what I thought I was observing, carrying the sketchbook to lectures, museums, and Pow Wows, and putting up with a great deal of skepticism from a great number of people, as well as the occasional person who seemed genuinely interested in what I was suggesting.

   Back then, for the first 6 years, I was also blissfully ignorant, for the most part, about the “Lost Civilizations” that, like those first European explorers and colonists, supposedly taught Indigenous People how to shape stone or stack one stone on top of another, hyper-diffusing all sorts of superior knowledge to this half of the planet. The book “Manitou” by Mavor and Dix, recommended to me by Trudie Lamb Richmond as a work that suggested that Native Americans did in fact build with stone in this corner of the world, actually exposed me to these pseudoscientific beliefs, still promoted strongly by many individuals. I still don’t fully understand how anyone can take seriously all those people who still claim that Celtic Monks (sometimes spelled as “Keltic”) or a “race” of red-haired giants or angels are really responsible for any sort of “advanced ideas” these fictitious people brought to the “savages” – before vanishing without a trace. Other than some “Dolmens” and astronomically aligned structures made with liquid stone that could be poured like concrete that honor Greek Gods in “Megalithic Montana” or “Ancient Vermont.”

   It’s very different now, sort of. I can livestream a report on a “site,” or access a video of a presentation I missed. I can hear leaves and snow crunch under the footsteps of someone making a video of some explorations up the side of a mountain hundreds of miles away. I look at 3-D models of Stone Prayers and Serpent Effigies that work on one electronic device but not on another, even if I don’t understand why.

   And yes, I can photograph an interesting phenomenon of light that illuminates the eye of a Serpent Effigy that’s part of a zigzag row of stones on my way back home from the store and moments after my arrival home, I can post up the image and some thoughts about it on the World Wide Internet and hear within minutes:

   “It’s just a rock,” or “That’s Ogham writing,” or “That’s a stockpile of stones a Yankee farmer left there when he was plowing,” or “That’s Fred Flintstone’s house.”

   Thankfully, these days I’ll find that someone somewhere says: “This is something similar that I’ve found,” with a spectacular photographic image of some incredibly beautiful stonework…

 

Friday, March 24, 2023