Call it vandalism, because, “It’s just a Rock”

   I love to get lost in a bunch of photos from places I’ve never been.

  My knees may be screaming while I’m sitting watching the sunrise out my windows, but I’m virtually walking somewhere I’ve never been sometimes by looking at other peoples’ photos.

This morning, I started here:

 

And wandered over to here:

https://trailsandwalksri.wordpress.com/2016/10/09/francis-carter-east-charlestown/

     I even went back in time to look at this beautiful snow-covered Qusukqaniyutôk:

Or "Snake Effigy"

       But then I quickly came across a much photographed split boulder:

  Now keep in mind that many a Split Boulder is sometimes known as:

  A pettutéaonk, a "portal," or a “place of passage between layers of the world”

-          In the Lënape language:  pindaxsenakan (tobacco pouch, petu+hassen+ikun, “device for entering stone;” 

                            And then, importantly, petouwassinug, in Narragansett; (Trumbull 1903:124).”

-          https://www.academia.edu/44991023/Eli_Luweyok_Kikayunkahke_So_Said_the_Departed_Elders_Northeastern_Algonquian_Land_Use_Traditions

-           

Call it vandalism, because, “It’s just a Rock”

  Call it something harsher if it is not…

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

https://www.facebook.com/narragansettrocks

Misinformed about Thanksgiving (2 Stories from 2021)

First Thanksgiving in 1492

“Remember learning about Thanksgiving in grade school? Christopher Columbus set sail on his three ships -- the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria -- and discovered America. In the process he also proved that the world wasn't actually flat. Thanksgiving was a big party where Christopher Columbus and his fellow pilgrims sat down for a big feast with the Indians who, err, lived on the land before Columbus "discovered" it (awkward), they ate turkey, and the Indians showed the pilgrims how to make popcorn!

And they all lived happily ever after…”

And started a T-Shirt business apparently:

https://www.freetobekids.com/blogs/news/new-thanksgiving-tradition-acknowledge-the-land-you-live-on

 

"The first official Thanksgiving did not take place in 1621 when the Pilgrims had a harvest time meal provided largely by the Wampanoag. "Instead, the first Thanksgiving was declared in 1637 by Governor (John) Winthrop of the Massachusetts Bay Colony to celebrate the massacre of over 700 Pequot men, women and children on the banks of the Mystic River in Connecticut."

  https://www.wgbh.org/news/local/2021-11-25/native-americans-gather-in-plymouth-to-mourn-the-violent-history-behind-thanksgiving

 

Overlays for A Developing Situation 01 (Watertown CT)

A massive Snake Effigy built on a bedrock outcrop:

The original:

http://www.native-languages.org/horned-serpent.htm

Above: Zig-zag row of stones featuring one of many triangular flat topped boulders that can be interpreted as a snake head. The zigzag is an element of Indigenous Iconography that can represent not only a snake, but also water and lightning, as well as spiritual power. There was a widespread belief across the continent in a "Horned Serpent," a protective Spiritual Being related to control of the weather and wildfires caused by lightning. 

Below: a photo overlay of eyes added to probable Tûnuppasuonk Kodtonquag, a "turtle effigy in (stacked) stone(s)," according to Nohham Rolf Cachat-Schilling, a  Mohawk-Nashaue keeper of traditional medicine  and narratives and researcher on Indigenous Archaeology and Ethnohistory,  "Invested with prayers for the balance of the universe.”

 

A Developing Situation (Watertown CT)

 

3 X's mark the spot slated for development...

I knew the place well, once a neighbor's farm, 

A short walk from my parents' house,

A place of wonder both back then and now...

I first learned to read the landscape there,

Fields and wetlands and of course stonewalls,

Bedrock outcrops and farm junk and of course stonewalls,

Earthen dams and wildlife,

Turtles and Herons and Beavers,

And of course stonewalls...

Especially if they were "zigzag stonewalls:" 

Flickr Album "Lost Lake" Collection:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/34580529@N04/albums/72157671128700881

By 2008, I'd unlearned  a certain bias against the thought that all "stonewalls" were of post contact origin and that a zigzag row of stones might not be an accidental construction of field clearing stones thrown up against a Snake or Virginia Rail fence made of wood...

Zigzags and linear stone rows on a LiDar image,

Some are quite massive and are easily seen, 

While some others don't show all that well,

Especially those bordering former Indigenous "wetland gardens"...

This photo below was taken facing north/north northwest,

A probable Snake Effigy on the outcrop behind it:

The Distribution Center would obliterate the Indigenous Stonework Effigy:

Another spot along the massive row of stacked stones,

A Qusukqaniyutôk, a ‘stone row, enclosure’ Harris and Robinson, 2015:140, ‘fence that crosses back’ viz. qussuk, ‘stone,’ Nipmuc or quski, quskaca, ‘returning, crosses over,’ qaqi, ‘runs,’ pumiyotôk, ‘fence, wall,’ Mohegan, Mohegan Nation 2004:145, 95, 129) wall (outdoor), fence, NI – pumiyotôk plural pumiyotôkansh.) - Nohham Rolf Cachat-Schilling

Bulletin of the Massachusetts Archaeological Society, Vol. 77, No. 2 Fall 2016

https://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1202&context=bmas

Stones stacked on a boulder,

A "Stone Prayer," 

A káhtôquwuk:

A kind of stone pile,

Or a stone heap,

 something that is heaped high,

 ceremonially,

 religiously, 

by placing one stone above another stone, 

“Invested with prayers for the balance of the universe.”

http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2022/03/kahtoquwuk-stone-prayers.html

I'm pretty sure that this "site" is included in the Nonnewaug or CT Cluster #3

in Dr. Curtiss Hoffman's inventory of suspected Indigenous Stone Constructions:

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

I'm not a Tribal Historic Preservation Officer

and can't give this an official designation as a

Ceremonial Stone Landscape site

but I'm very reasonably certain that it is...

Possibly, a Turtle Effigy:

A smaller Snake or Great Serpent Effigy:

An overlay with an eye and some horns:

  Certain features, such as the linked outcrops and boulders etc., are reminiscent of features found in the Oley hills of PA, some of which are quite possibly thousands of years old, once thought to be "colonial or post colonial field clearing stones:" 

"More than 5000 rock structure sites are found in northeastern United States, but their cultural attribution has long been debated. Some argue than many are prehistoric in origin, while others maintain they all date to colonial times. Few have been dated, and of those that have, the association of the dated material and the rocks can be challenged. Here, we provide luminescence analysis on the rocks themselves at a large site in eastern Pennsylvania. Our results suggest an age coeval with the Adena culture of the Ohio Valley."

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0197693120920492?icid=int.sj-abstract.similar-articles.3

Added Monday, December 04, 2023

To the Watertown CT Planning and Zoning Commission:

   My name is Tim MacSweeney, a former Watertown Resident from 1956 to 1974 who has spent a great deal of time exploring the stone walls, trails, ponds, fields, and woodlands of the Panilaitis Farm, now a proposed site of development that includes a 767,000 sq. ft. distribution center and 150 units of residential housing.

  In 1990, I became interested in what has since become known as Native American Ceremonial Stone Landscapes and have spent the last 33 years as an Independent Researcher of these types of Cultural Landscapes. My particular area of study is the stacked stone structures that are often misidentified as “Yankee Farmer’s Stone Walls.” It was in fact on the property in question, the former Paniliatis Farm, that I first observed what are known as Zig-zag stone walls, conjectured to be remnants of colonial agriculture, the stone remains of field clearing stones tossed against wooden Virginia Rail Fences that have since decomposed, an idea popularized by the artist and writer Eric Sloane in the 1950s.

  In recent years, similar stone constructions, also long believed to be related to farming by European Americans over the last 400 years, have proven to be far older. One such Ceremonial Stone Landscape in Pennsylvania has been dated by a process known as Optically Stimulated Luminescence to 500 B.C. according to a study by James Feathers and my friend Norman Muller.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0197693120920492?icid=int.sj-abstract.similar-articles.3

  Another site in Massachusetts appears to be about 3,595 years old, according to a study by Shannon Mahan of the Geosciences and Environmental Change Science Center.

https://www.usgs.gov/data/optically-stimulated-luminescence-osl-data-and-ages-selected-native-american-sacred-ceremonial

  On the landscape that was the former Paniliatis Farm, these rows of stones border the wetlands, pass over out crops of bedrock, and sometimes become linear rows of stones, all characteristics that are very similar those found in the sites in PA and MA, as well as at a Preserve in Hopkinton, Rhode Island whose age is in the range of 1570-1490 C.E (or 490 ± 40 years ago).

 I'm neither a credentialed Anthropologist/Archaeologist nor a Tribal Historic Preservation Officer and can't give this an official designation as a Ceremonial Stone Landscape site but I'm very reasonably certain that it is...

  My question to the committee would be:

Has an Archaeological Assessment been performed that includes consultation with Tribal Historic Preservation Offices regarding these irreplaceable Cultural Resources?

Sincerely,

Tim MacSweeney

timmacs@yahoo.com

29 Nonnewaug Road

Woodbury CT