More Than One Mastodon (CT)

 

May13, 2009  woodbrgct 038 (1)

Naugatuck "High Place" Mastodon 

There is nothing more obvious on Turtle Island...

...than "Aesthetic Farm Maintenance."

https://pahistoricpreservation.com/finding-meaning-stone/

In my experience, in the Nonnewaug Cluster, a boulder is used for a carapace:

Allen or "Turtle Rock"in Alabama:

A Boulder and Stacked Stones Variation:

http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2014/05/scuppo-rd-box-turtle-surprise.html

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2015/12/arguing-with-my-hero.html

Where Rye Hill Was

     I finally stumbled upon an archaeological paper from the town I live in, in an online reproduction of THE SUSQUEHANNA HORIZON AS SEEN FROM THE SUMMIT OF RYE HILL (6LFlOO), WOODBURY CONNECTICUT by DAVID H. THOMPSON (of the) GREATER NEW HAVEN ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETY (1989) from the "TOC's" of the CT Archaeological Society. I found a bunch of downloadable articles from past bulletins that I thought I might read on my tablet if we lost power at Happiness Farm during Hurricane Sandy.

     I found 'em here: http://www.connarchaeology.org/html/tocs.html and the Rye Hill document here: http://www.connarchaeology.org/ASC52.pdf#pagemode=bookmarks&view=fit&page=17

      So of course I start wondering "Where is Rye Hill?"
      And then the author let's me know in the first paragraph:

  "Today, thanks to the rumbling of the bulldozer, it is impossible to see anything from the summit of Rye Hill in the literal sense. This small, glacially deposited hill upon which the site was located has been entirely leveled in the quest for top soil and gravel. Ruth and Edmund Sinnott salvaged what they could in 1965 over several weekends, while the area was being obliterated during the week by the bulldozer. If it were not for their efforts, nothing would be known of the site."

     So it's just another bulldozer story, where money 'talks' - or "quests" after topsoil and gravel - and a thousand year or two year old nonrenewable cultural resource 'walks' off into oblivion.

      So of course I start wondering, "Where, at least, was Rye Hill?"

       And then the author shows me Figure One:

So I find my USGS topological map of the Woodbury quadrangle and look for the old Indian Trail that's now known as main Street as well as CT Rte. 6 (but marked U.S. 6 on the map above), the Pomperaug River and something called South Brook, the one ingredient I'm not familiar with.

(1955 - updated 1984)

      "Hokey Smokes!" I exclaim (in a G-Rated version of the story) when I find the location. I've been by there a million times, parked my car there by the back door of the Natural Food store a few hundred times, and even walked down across the levelled ground to the river, picking up a stone or two along the way, wondering if they just might be perhaps an abrader or nutting stone - just like the ones found in figure 9, on page 36.

(Google Earth 2012 - and I've made the circle too small, I think)

I can take you back to 1934, thanks to the CT State Library, and show you how Rye Hill used to look back then, an actual hill perhaps at one time planted in rye:

The same State Library magic allows me to show you a photo from 1965, bulldozer included:

When I imagine sitting up on top of Rye Hill in the distant past, by a stone lined pit that might be a cremation burial site or an acorn leaching pit - or both, although not at the same time, of course - I think about the Cultural Landscape of a thousand or two or more years ago, and find so does the author of the paper: “The black fine grained soil that formed the fill of the pit also contained many small carbonized (partially burned) nuts. Upon excavation the Sinnotts did not immediately notice them. There was rain during the night, and the next day the nuts were found washed out of the pile of fill from the pit. These did not entirely fill a pint-sized peanut butter jar...the majority of the cotyledons not only belonged to the white oak group, but were from the dwarf Chinquapin Oak Quercus prinoides...Chinquapin Oak is a low wide-spreading shrub which grows in thickets. These spread radiating underground stems which send up new shoots. As do other members of the White Oak group, the abundant acorns mature in the first autumn. It is sometimes called the Scrub Chestnut Oak because the leaves resemble the leaves of the Chestnut. The dwarf Chinquapin Oak has minimum of tannin and a sweet kernel which contributes to its food value. Upon maturation Collins believes that the acorns are quickly consumed by birds, mice, squirrels, and deer. However the low size of the shrub might make collecting the collecting of the nuts easier for hunters and gatherers who would otherwise have to wait for the nuts to fall to the ground from the large species... Some speculative questions ought to be raised concerning the frequency and distribution of this species under aboriginal ecological conditions when the forests were periodically burned either by lighting, or deliberately by the natives in order to reshape and manipulate the ecosystem (Cronon 1983:47- 51)...(t)he burning minimized the understory plants, in order to produce and open park-like forest with widely spaced trees, few shrubs, and much grass and herbage. The larger oaks, particularly the white, since they are more fire resistant than the black oaks according to Collins, would have been an important component of these forests. A thinner forest canopy would have permitted a sunnier, warmer, and dryer forest floor which might have been conducive to the propogation of Chinquapin Oak as it was for a variety of different kinds of berries. The fact that this oak may be propagated by shoots growing up from undergound stems, may have been a significant survival factor when the forest was burned. Consequently Chinquapin Oak may have been more prolific in the past than it is today, and consequently of greater aboriginal economic significance than has previously been recognized…”

Turns out these Scrub Oak Shrublands are “fire dependant,” are found on ridge tops like they say, but also in and around “frost pockets,” ice in glacial Kettle Holes that are all over the place in that part of town, scrubbed more deeply by glacial action than anywhere else in CT except the CT River Valley. Pollen studies show evidence of intentional burning by native Americans, going way back and this pdf tells you a whole bunch about it:

https://www.mass.gov/doc/scrub-oak-shrubland-0/download

And it turns out the word “chaparral” comes from the Spanish "chapa" or scrub oak...

More Zigzags

The rows at the edge of the Preserve also show up...

1934

I was thinking of "plum thickets" in Westbrook, ending up here: http://www.westbrookcouncilofbeaches.org/MapIndex.htm, where I found Hayden as the name of the shipbuilder I couldn't remember who builtmy mom's house, and then somehow ended up in 1934 (the year my mom was born), looking at a photo of my house from the sky, with a view of those zigzag rows destroyed when the road was realigned.

So I lifted these photos from the the Connecticut State Library's Digital Collections (http://cslib.cdmhost.com/index.php).

Mom's Back Yard, Westbrook CT

I can’t find what I started writing about last, but it was after July 5, 2008, the day I discovered the bull’s eye ring associated with Lyme Disease. It was a rough 3 weeks and then some, feeling the effects of the disease and suffering from the side effects of the anti-biotic.

But I ended up camping in my mom’s back yard down in Westbrook CT at the end of those three weeks, slowly feeling better. It's the house circled in red on this 1940's map - and found an interesting Rock Pile on a Stone Row that is the big red dot:

“Westbrook was settled in 1648 as Pochoug, an Indian word meaning "at the confluence of two rivers", the Pochoug and the Menunketesuck, by the residents of the Saybrook Colony. Pochoug was the dwelling place of Obed and his tribe until 1676. The community was incorporated as Third or West Parish in 1724 by an Act of the General Assembly.

Westbrook is the birthplace of David Bushnell, the American patriot and inventor of the submarine (He called it the Turtle). It was visited by George Washington in 1776 and by the Marquis de Lafayette in 1824.

Pochoug was renamed Westbrook in 1810 as a town by Act of the Connecticut General Assembly of 1840.”
http://www.westbrookct.us/townhistory.php?PHPSESSID=95d44b578f52c50aa0e54ee771257020

That name, Obed, pops up alot in the area:

TOWN OF WESTBROOK.By James A. PRATT
The History of Middlesex County 1635-1885J. H. Beers & Co., 36 Vesey Street, New York1884

"…(T)he Indian name of the settlement was Pochoug, a word signifying the place where a river divides, and descriptive of the location of the principal tribe at OBED's Hammock, at the confluence of Pochoug and Menunketesuc Rivers. The large quantities of arrow heads, broken pottery, shells, and other Indian remains that have been found and are being unearthed in that vicinity, are evidence that it was some time the abode of a numerous and powerful tribe.

A very common name for the western part of the town, in ancient annals, is Menunketeset, or Menunketesuc, in Indian dialect, Ma-na-qua-te-sett. The name is of Mohegan origin, and was applied to the West River, and the section bordering upon it, after its possession was claimed by UNCAS. In his deed to Saybrook, in 1666, it is written, Menunketeset, and it has been spelled and pronounced every conceivable way since. The significance of the word is lost. The soil on both sides of the rivers is a mass of shells, the remains of clam and oyster feasts before the discovery of America. A remarkable feature of the vicinity is the great number of broken or unfinished arrow heads to be found at Round Hill, on the east side of the river. The only explanation for this is, that it was the headquarters for the manufacture of these implements from the late and quartz found on the beach near by. This Indian settlement was probably abandoned at the annihilation of the powerful Pequot tribe, to which they belonged, in 1637.

The Hammock was subsequently occupied by OBED and his tribe, from Niantick, on the western border of Rhode Island, and within the jurisdiction of the Connecticut colony at that time. The small tribe were living here at the time of the arrival of the first whites, and were known as the Menunketeset Indians. They returned to Niantick about the time of the King Philip war, in 1676."
http://www.dunhamwilcox.net/town_hist/westbrook_hist.htm

I can quote myself here:

"Histories of the Saybrook, CT area include mention of Obed and "Obed's Sacrifice Rock." Obed appears to have been a "son of a Hammonassett Chief; and after the subjugation of the Pequot, a servant to Gov. Fenwick: that Fenwick did give him...two acres more or less near the confluences of Pychaug & Menunketezuck rivers, known as Obed's Homake."

He later lived near Springbrook Rd, "passing most of his time in the retirement of his wigwam or the solitude of the chase." Obed's Sacrifice Rock was a boulder "contiguous" to his "aboriginal structure." The author continues to write in a language somewhat similar to American English, "Upon this symbol of pristine faith, was kindled from time to time, a fire which consumed the sacrifices tendered, with sweet incense from bay and birch; mingled with the fumes of tobacco." "

http://www.neara.org/macsween/macsween.htm

A little more OBED from

The History of Middlesex County 1635-1885

J. H. Beers & Co., 36 Vesey Street, New York

1884

Pages 282-320
TOWN OF OLD SAYBROOK.

BY WILLIAM B. TULLY

After the Indians were subdued, some of them were servants to the whites, and others lived near them and became partially civilized, many of them taking English names. They gradually decreased, however, till at the beginning of the present century, only a few stragglers remained. The tradition has come down to us, that Obed, one of these Indians, sacrificed a deer to the Great Spirit on a hill about half a mile north of the head of Main street. The hill is still known as "Obed's Alter Hill," though the exact rock on which the sacrifice took place is not known. It was, however, one of the high rocks on the east side of the hill, and it is not visible from the turnpike. Who this Obed was is not known, but an Indian of that name was a servant of Colonel FENWICK, and it is probable that he was the one. Years afterward he laid claim to a piece of land, which the following entry in the town acts explains: "The Teste of William HIDE and Morgan BOWERS, who certife & say that wee do well Remember that Obed the Indian was a servunt of Mr. FENWICK the space of four years, & we are able to say he was a faithful servant to him, & that for his service, Mr. FENWICK Did Ingage a parcel of Land to him, We cannot Justly Say what Quantity, But we Do conclude it was not less than four acres, and that Obed's father Did Possess the Land before the Serviss of the said Obed was out. To this we Can Safely take our oaths.

"This was given in before me, John MASON, the 19th of May 1673."

http://www.dunhamwilcox.net/town_hist/old_saybrook_hist.htm

My mom's yard today - and the rock pile again in red:

There's been lots of newer stone walls built since the 1600's, but I think I see the "Indian Look" of the oldest of stone rows (built very similar to rows I've follwed in Rhode Island) and I wish I'd had the time to just follow those stone rows rather than just glimpse them from my bicycle as I rode by, especially in the property newly acquired by the Stewart B. McKinney National Wildlife Refuge (http://www.fws.gov/refuges/profiles/index.cfm?id=53546).

But here's the one at the edge of the property.

In the distance is I-95; that sort of hump in the middle of this section of stone row is a sort section of stone row that ends with a big end stone above what's now a little pond, but probably was a spring:


I stepped onto the highway side to take this photo of it, a steep bank below the big stone at the right, a curious collections of smaller stones on the row to the right of the the big boulder in the middle...


The few stones I did pick up, I turned in my ands until I found some comfortable way to hold it... .. hand axe, maybe...

...but I think it's that pile of stone tools, sitting on a stone row at a spring, maybe an old camp, maybe just a spot where tools were left rather than carry around hand axes and hammer stones, abraders and nut crackers and who knows what else, right there in my mom's backyard.

It's Time to "Wake Up"

I went back to my second post (http://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2006/06/little-history-native-peoples_07.html) of “Waking Up on Turtle Island” to “copy and paste” this quote in order to repost it once again.

“Native people’s histories and stories have been told by others – rather dispassionately at times and not always with accuracy. Something is missing when we cannot and do not know our true past. Something is terribly wrong when our past is not accurately recounted,” Trudie Lamb Richmond writes in Enduring Traditions; the Native Peoples of New England, edited by Laurie Weinstein.

And also to repost this from my very first post, explaining why this blog is called “Waking Up on Turtle Island:”
“It's been many years since I woke up to the fact that I live in a special place on Turtle Island.Not that I was actually asleep for a long period of time, but rather I gradually became aware that remnants of ancient stonework was all around me, dismissed as Colonial construction, but really (were actually) part(s of or, more accurately “remnants of,” that remain still to today) of a managed cultural landscape that may be hundreds or thousands of years old.”

To go back to sometime in the 1990s when I first met Trudie, I should add that she mentioned a book she had heard of called “Manitou,” that also suggested that there existed remnants of, as the full title of the book says, “The Sacred Landscape of New England’s Native Civilization.”
I ordered the book since I couldn’t find it in any libraries nearby and got it just in time to take with me on a family camping trip to Burlingame State Park in Rhode Island. It was a life changing experience to read that book in that place – and then to walk trails in the greater Charlestown area, following stone rows of all sorts. In particular I remember following one, inside the park itself, that was a spiral – a motif I’d seen before as petroglyphs and designs on Indian baskets.

The very first page I read in James Mavor and Byron Dix’s “Manitou” also led me to seek out a group they sent acknowledgements to, The New England Antiquities Research Association, or NEARA (http://www.neara.org/ ), which is how I first met Peter Waksman (http://rockpiles.blogspot.com/), who in turn introduced me to Norman Muller at a NEARA conference in Danbury CT.

I was very lucky to say the least to make all these associations.

I was also very relieved to find that other people were seeing the same things as I.

The sad part is that 17 years later for me (and much, much longer for others), the scientific community, for the most part, remains hostile to the idea that there still remains, on “Turtle Island,” an incredible amount of stonework that represents perhaps thousands and thousands of years of remnants of a Sacred Cultural Landscape, some of it hidden but also in plain sight along the scars of the present Cultural Landscape of the last five hundred years.

And I’ll add, “While more and more of it, through ignorance and prejudice, disappears every day.”

While there are some enlightened and courageous individuals doing ground breaking work to combat the bigotry of the scientific community, like Doctors Curtiss Hoffman and Lucianne Lavin for example, I think that the time has come for that community to “Wake Up On Turtle Island,” so to speak.

After all, the empirical evidence is literally “written in stone.”

First Zigzag

The first zigzag stone row I ever came across, sometime in the 1960's, that got me wondering, "Why a zigzag?" was in a wooded area of my neighbor's farm.

This 1955 map shows my parents house as a barn, which it was then, later to be converted to a house by my grandmother's brother.

I used to follow the brook that runs through the property and then take that old dirt road that led to what looks like a house but by the mid-sixties was just a chimney and an old out house in the woods. Other roads led to more places to cut firewood, a bunch of fields, and what my family called "Lost Lake."

Today it looks like this, a soon to be developed parcel of land, to the east of the Hamburger and Car Lot Edge of Town:

The swamp that became Lost Lake must've been dammed when I was a baby, maybe - this recent map above shows it as a body of water.

This is not the actual row below, but there are many up there that look just like this pattern.

Eric Sloane in Our Disappearing Landscape offered this explaination, echoed by many other writers:

I've really wondered about that explaination in the last 15 years, following these sorts of stone rows that seem carefully made, that seem to be something else entirely, rows that may have already been there long before 1700.

By the way, this row travels across an outcrop:

It continues on the other side; here I'mlooking back at it:

In another place, at a right angle and to the west of a very long zigzag row, an immense linear wall meets up with another zigzag row, blocked sort of by the big fallen tree:

I would have stitched these three together, but somehow that panorama function has dissappered from the program it used to be in...

I'll meet you by the old chimney - it's there still, but the outhouse is gone....