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