A Small Example of Serpent Laid Stonework

 

Here on the Ground

 

Here on the ground, on this Nonnewaug landscape,

The zig zag "stone walls" are anything but

Tossed stones where a wooden worm fence used to be...

"A stone wall of no great importance..."

 

I’d show you this Stone Serpent, guarding the roadway,

 Protecting the enclosure closest to the west bank 

of the Nonnewaug Fish Weir,

But it was crushed and buried  

by a partially federally funded town road realignment in 2007…

 

Those “Stone Walls” aren’t so simple as you may have been told,

In conjecture after conjecture based on older conjecture of

Yankee Farmers flinging stones up against the snake rails

    – or under those cross and rails  -

But here on the ground, on the Nonnewaug landscape,

The Great Serpents keep watch where they still can,

Where they haven’t been bulldozed or buried or plundered.

Guarding against Thunderbird fires

       – or Grandmother’s fires around the blueberries –

   Grandfather’s fire to drive the deer,

Sometimes by clearing the roadway

Or perhaps renewing the forest and the upland high places…

   “Land documents show that the most freely shared lands are termed cotinakeesh or, alternately, cotinakeel ([kuttinakíś/akíl] ILDHC 1923:folios 84–86). Kuttinakíś derives from the Nipmeuw word kuttahham, given as “he digs (it)/he plants” (Trumbull 1903:84; probably “you and 2nd person plant;” viz. kutkihcámun, “you and I plant” [Mohegan Tribe 2004:56]), and aku, “land.” Kuttinakíś refers, then, to the planting lands—lands that lie mostly in the main floodplain and in alluvial areas along creeks in the uplands. These kuttinakíś the survivors of the genocide readily leased because, tragically, the massacres had left the fields unused. Secondarily, keesh occurs as a pejorative ending, so these may be “lesser/poor” planting lands. The second land type leased rather freely is the village site (otan(ak), “village(s),” otanèmës, “small village” Nipmeuw [Gustafson 2000:28]; viz. otanik, “to the village,” Mahhekanneuw [Miles 2015:14], also Odanak/St. Francis, Québec, “at the village,” Abenaki, ùtane, “village,” Modern Unami Lënapeuw), which places also lay emptied by tragedy (ILDHC 1923:passim). However, upland areas are the subject of restrictions and reserved rights for use by the Nipmuc and Pocumtuck. Reserved rights to hunt, fish, trap, and set up temporary living spaces (as well as to secretly worship) in the upland woods are repeated throughout the land documents for Western Massachusetts…” https://www.academia.edu/44991023/Eli_Luweyok_Kikayunkahke_So_Said_the_Departed_Elders_Northeastern_Algonquian_Land_Use_Traditions

Turned Around by the Park (Middlebury CT)

   I had just passed by the park entrance, when a big "stone wall" caught my attention, down below the old turnpike. Quite massive and not far from a parking spot, making it an easy walk on a bright and warm spring day. 

  So I turned around to take a little look around...

  It's obviously an old house site, from the time before the dam was built for flood control after the Great Flood of 1955 - and that's all I really know about it. Except that the blue periwinkle has persisted, growing over the old foundation and retaining walls - and an old car appears to be buried in a certain spot, marked by a piece of chrome that hasn't tarnished very much at all that glistened in the sunlight...

"No obvious Indigenous Iconography," I was thinking.

Nothing jumped out at me...

"Maybe," I thought...

Fancy old garden fence someone was compelled to add on top:

And there's an opening into the wetlands

 that made me ponder if this were a barn foundation...

But as I step through it and look back, I start to doubt that,

and notice the big boulder at the end of the Big "stone Wall:"

The wetland side of that other row of stones gave me a little pause:

I don't know what to think of that:

But turning around to see where this "door" takes a person,

I happen to notice a boulder, split and filled with stones:

So I duck under big thick rose branches with gigantic thorns,

circle around to see the boulder at the beginning (not the end)

of the row of stones emerging from the

split in the boulder:

A Horned Serpent Overlay

Split-filled Boulders: "A total of 386 sites contained split-filled boulders. A possible Algonquian term for this type is pindaxsenakan - literally, "a living being enters into something," on the idea that these were considered spirit portals to the underworld," Dr. Curtiss Hoffman writes in “Stone Prayers” (2018).

https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/Products/9781634990493

And I find Nohham writes that a “Skuguisu káhtqwk refers to a "boulder-based cairn" which is possibly an emerging serpent form…”

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2020/02/an-emerging-serpent-ri.html

I did take a photo of the other side:

But like finding one wild strawberry,

suddenly some more stacked stones

seemed to be hiding under all those invasive roses

and barberries in that wetland:

Stepping back into the house site, looking to the wetland:

Old metal junk:

Old metal tools:

Old metal tool marks:

Our Hidden Landscapes by Lucianne Lavin and Elaine Thomas

Indigenous Stone Ceremonial Sites in Eastern North America

by Lucianne Lavin (Editor), Elaine Thomas (Editor)

 "Challenging traditional and long-standing understandings, this volume provides an important new lens for interpreting stone structures that had previously been attributed to settler colonialism. Instead, the contributors to this volume argue that these locations are sacred Indigenous sites.

This volume introduces readers to eastern North America’s Indigenous ceremonial stone landscapes (CSLs)—sacred sites whose principal identifying characteristics are built stone structures that cluster within specific physical landscapes. Our Hidden Landscapes presents these often unrecognized sites as significant cultural landscapes in need of protection and preservation.

In this book, Native American authors provide perspectives on the cultural meaning and significance of CSLs and their characteristics, while professional archaeologists and anthropologists provide a variety of approaches for better understanding, protecting, and preserving them. The chapters present overwhelming evidence in the form of oral tradition, historic documentation, ethnographies, and archaeological research that these important sites created and used by Indigenous peoples are deserving of protection.

This work enables archaeologists, historians, conservationists, foresters, and members of the general public to recognize these important ritual sites."

Contributors
Nohham Rolf Cachat-Schilling
Robert DeFosses
James Gage
Mary Gage
Doug Harris
Julia A. King
Lucianne Lavin
Johannes (Jannie) H. N. Loubser
Frederick W. Martin
Norman Muller
Charity Moore Norton
Paul A. Robinson
Laurie W. Rush
Scott M. Strickland
Elaine Thomas
Kathleen Patricia Thrane
Matthew Victor Weiss

Silly Yankee Farmer William Nilly in 1740

 

Silly William Nilly in 1740

Yankee Farmer on a Hill Top

When there’s all those abandoned Indian Villages

Surrounded by already cleared agricultural fields to be legally acquired

By simply using split wooden rails to “improve” his homelot…

 

Silly William Nilly in 1740

He built a stone fence,

And a post and rail fence,

And piled his stones, Willy Nilly, on the other side,

Silly William Nilly in 1740...

Mr.Wikipedia writes:

 "Diorama in the Fisher Museum (Harvard Forest), Petersham, Massachusetts, USA. This diorama was created by Theodore B. Pitman and his staff at the Guernsey and Pitman Studio. It is in the public domain because it was first published in the United States without copyright notice prior to 1978. Photography was permitted without restriction..."

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Case_02_-_An_Early_Subsistence_Farm_%281740%29_-_Dioramas_in_the_Fisher_Museum_%28Harvard_Forest%29_-_DSC07368.JPG

"Serpent Stacked/Serpent Laid" Indigenous Causeway (CT)

 "If the courses of stonework are laid down in such a way as to resemble Big Snakes,

           Then there is a high degree of probability that it is an Indigenous made feature..."

The capstones create an even larger Serpent:

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2021/10/culvert-like-causeway-like-paugussett.html

Almost a "Good Fence" (NY)

Six rails are said to make a legal worm-fence; 

          Heavy rocks are often placed- under the corners

And a fence built with 1 1/2 to 2 feet of stone,

With 3 rails above,

                      Is deemed a Good Fence.

From 1989, I had to make some additions

 to some of the illustrations I lifted:

https://www.dutchessny.gov/Graphics/Stone_Walls_of_Dutchess_ocr.pdf

(Originally, I was looking to steal this image:)

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2020/01/legal-snake-fence.html

(Never a mention about Native Americans, Indigenous Peoples:)

There might be some effigies here:

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2022/04/more-cross-and-ridercross-and-rail.html