More of the Final Days of the Nonnewaug Fish Weir

 Nonnewaug 

People around here say the name every day, but what does it mean? It's a descriptive place name, used by the Indigenous Peoples who lived here in for thousands of years before 1673, when a group of settlers from Stratford moved into the area, originally  the "Pomperaug Plantation." 

  According to William Cothren, who wrote several volumes of the "History of Ancient Woodbury," it means "The Fresh Water Fishing Place." Cothren seems to quickly forget that thought after briefly stating so, and then begins misinforming people that all these things named Nonnewaug are named after the Sachem or "Chief" Nonnewaug, much in the same way that the place name Waramaug, the "good fishing place," and the Sachem Waramaug were rather incorrectly turned into a personal name.

Cothren, William

1854 “History of Ancient Woodbury Volume I.” Waterbury CT

1872 “History of Ancient Woodbury Volume II.” Woodbury CT

A search for the "Nonnewaug Weir" on this blog 

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/search?q=nonnewaug+weir

will take you to posts such as these:

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2021/12/nonnewaug-fresh-water-fishing-place.html

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2009/10/nonnewaug-fish-weir-10152009.html

An older video: 

https://youtu.be/sWFsXcEW1xc?si=BuP80AF1w5VBVID4

Last of Stone Fish Weir at Nonnewaug

    On the 69th anniversary of the Great Flood of August 18-19 in 1955, a record amount of rain fell in this part of the Paugussett Homeland, called Pootatuck by many, a string of floodplains along the Pomperaug River and its tributaries. Here in Nonnewaug, the floodplain filled with water, almost as much as it did during a flood in the mid to late 1990s, quite to that line on the map called the 100 year flood contour, what I imagine was once a glacial lakeshore, described by older residents as worse flooding than the Flood of '55.

  The Nonnewaug Diagonal Stone Fish Weir was washed almost entirely away during this recent major flooding event of 2024…

 I finally walked over there yesterday to take a look (I had attempted an earlier walk, but wasn’t able to. There wasn’t a short enough path I could take through the brush and my arthritic right hip kept telling me to turn around and go back home).

 I had felt the heavy machinery at work, had heard it in the distance over the past few weeks. I saw that the water company was repairing eroded river banks, heard the cultivator in Stuart’s field, and brush cutters along the road in the meanwhile. Yesterday it became clear that the machines and chainsaws were headed to where the remains of the Nonnewaug Fish Weir were located.

 And the weir was very much gone, a few stones at one spot but very much now gone, virtually unrecognizable...

 I was relieved in a way that it was the power of the flood that took the weir rather than those machines I hear over there as I write this...

 I sprinkled the last of the tobacco from a pouch that I carry, meant to be put down as a something like a prayer, something of a sacrifice, an offering under the open sky... 

  It was much like saying goodbye to an old friend, a good friend, a special friend who you can't believe is really gone...

 

 

Indigenous Peoples Day 2024

 There was just a single comment below that photo on the "Lost New England" facebook group page that mentioned Indigenous People at the original post. Someone named Joe said: "I was going to say, the early settlers recounted how clear the land was when they found it. In fact, much of what they found were fields. Possibly from Indians burning the forests to clear the land for agriculture."

 I'd have to add that the use of fire was more sophisticated than simply burning forests to clear land but more of system of maintaining a domesticated landscape that included "forest gardens," that was developed over thousands of tears - oops: "thousands of years" is what I meant to say... 

 The post included this link where I lifted the two separate images: https://lostnewengland.com/2015/06/connecticut-river-from-mount-holyoke-hadley-mass/

This place has a long human history, far longer than that 3% of time that includes the post contact period. Most of the comments spoke about "colonial farms" and Merino Sheep, ignoring that other 97% of the time humans made use of the landscape shown in the two photos.

  Anyone see the Giant Beaver in the distance?

      Do you know the story, how it recalls an actual glacial event??

(Also: I'm not sure if the Turners Falls Sacred Hill Site is visible in either photo, but perhaps someone more familiar with the landscape knows...)

Prove It

 

 I don’t necessarily intend to “prove” anything, really.

I’m just an observer, really.

I’ve been walking around the New England,

Looking under modern layers of “civilization,”

For the remains of Turtle Island.

 

I’m just saying these stones deserve a second look,

That old zigzag border along the road,

That undulating linear row of stones,

That quartzite bear head balanced on a boulder,

Before it is swept away like the diagonal fish weir

That gave the place a name most people misunderstand.

 

Nonnewaug is a place where survivors gathered

After the rats and pigs and fleas,

After the epidemics,

After the Pequots were massacred…

 

I had to add Nonnewaug to that old map:

Farthest away fish weir,

Place of safety,

“Dry (Farming) Land,”

Eeling Place, Fishing Place,

“In the Middle” and maybe more…

 

Fuel breaks among the gardens,

Around the water features,

Along the roadsides and causeways,

Where something is tended,

Where the World is Renewed,

Where the Snake Being allows entry

To all the places where Everything is…

Mr. Freeman's Grandfather and Grandmother; "Never must've read that book..."

"Never must've read that book..."

 Iconic New England Stone Fences along the roadsides,

Old Indian Trails paved in layers of gravel and asphalt,

Chip sealed the day before yesterday,

Rebuilt into estate walls during the days of the WPA…

 

 Mr. Freeman was a regular at the coffee shop in the town I’m from in Connecticut, and he had family there that went way back, reflected in his last name, from a time when a black person’s last name was their own name. He had many a story to tell about the old days in Watertown and many of the surrounding towns. One particular morning, he was talking about how his grandfather was a stone mason who had worked on the famous walls of the Whittemore Estate, over by Lake Quassapaug. My Great Grandfather Giovanni Rinaldi also worked on those same stone walls, part of a crew of three that included one of his brothers and a cousin. I mentioned that to him, added that Giovanni lived nearby, the first farm in Woodbury to have electricity, and Mr. Freeman told me he was familiar with that side of the lake because, as a kid, he used to spend the summers there with his Woodbury Indian grandmother, at the Indian Fish Camp.

 

 Now, this conversation happened in 1990, just after I’d first come across and read an Ancient History of Woodbury CT that had no information about the house my family was living in, but it did get me started thinking about the possibility that I was observing Indigenous Stonework, sort of like waking up to find I was on Turtle Island at an actual Village site. I had just reviewed the old “go to” 1850s History of Connecticut Indians by John DeForest who was under the impression that only one insignificant group of Indians, the Pootatuck, ever lived in the “desert” of Litchfield County in Northwestern CT.

 Mr. DeForest called the Woodbury Indians, the Pootatuck, “extinct,” vanished with barely a trace, and forever gone in that book.  

 When I mentioned that to Mr. Freeman, he remarked that his Grandmother “must’ve never read that book.”

 

 34 years later, I’m driving by some of that Whittemore Estate stonework, thinking about the foundation of my house where I’ve been removing Portland cement and am about to start repairing with lime mortar. I stop for a moment because all these rhomboidal stones have caught my eye…

 

And then, there’s this turtle in profile, and then I start to think about Mr. Freeman’s Grandfather, and Woodbury Indians, and wonder "Just who is a "Real Indian?"