What Does Indigenous Stonework Look Like? (Eastern Gate of Turtle Island)

 "What Does Indigenous Stonework Look Like?"

That’s always the question.

    In the early spring of 1990, I had two woodcut illustrations of Indigenous Stonework to observe, described as gravesites by a historian writing in the middle of the 1800s.

 Today, Leap Year Eve 2024, I look at my phone or turn on the laptop to see who saw what where yesterday or the day before or two or twenty years ago.

   Today I can ask several guys named Dave if it’s okay for me to use a photo or two on my blog to again make a case that yet another alleged “colonial stone wall” is Indigenous stone construction, an obvious Snake Effigy.

  Yes, I’ll probably overlay some “Eyes and Antlers” on the image, gratifying some people and angering all the rest. Yes, I might even show the stones covered up with a cross and rail fence, those easily constructed wooden stakes and riders recognized as “legal” by the local fence viewer, remind you that the row of stones just might be of an as of yet undetermined age, compare one more Stone "Big Snake" to the same old Stone "Big Snake" still grinning on the hillside across the fields I can see out my front windows...

 Today I might convince someone that I’m not “totally bonkers,” and yet today another person might send me yet another definition of Pareidolia in a condescending tone. Somebody else might tell me again that it’s a construction made by the “people before the Indians”  - and before the so-called glacier and before the comet and before the flood. Today somebody might send me a link to my own poorly written blog, asking “Did you ever hear about this?” – and it’s one of those old woodcut illustrations.

And today I might just say “Thanks” to all the Daves,

And all the Stephanies, Anns, and Jerries,

All the Mikes and all  the Matts,

All the Charlies,

All the well-known Starrs,

And especially all the Unknown Rising Stars who saw something for the first time yesterday -

Thanks for posting those pictures that show the great beauty in all that stonework here at the Eastern Gate of Turtle Island.

We've just begun to scratch the surface

and there's much more to see and learn from...