Stacking Stones as Prayer

 Taken from: Rock Features of the Upper Klamath Basin (2018 Thesis By Roman Jakien)

As well as something from Chertkoff 

With some photos from a friend, taken sometime in 2012

  “Obtaining power through features on the landscape and stacking rocks were prominent aspects of their traditional religious practice (Deur 2016; Haynal 2000; Ray 1963; Spier 1930; Theodoratus et al. 1990). Deur (2016:36) notes that in Klamath and Modoc oral tradition, the act of stacking rocks during the vision quest is “attributed to the very beginnings of human time, and is rooted in the instruction of the Creator, Gmukamps.” Ray (1963:xiii) noted that the two tribes not only created “artificial rock piles for religious and commemorative purposes” but also “attributed mythological significance” to naturally occurring rock piles…

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-antiquity/article/abs/rock-feature-complex-from-northwestern-california/1C8AD33D31137072F552DADD6BB9D3AD

  It has been written that certain rock feature types, like “rock stacks” and “prayer seats” are sometimes positioned at specific geographic locations that align them with distant landscape features such as mountains, lakes, and rivers (Jankowski 2012). Deur (2016:52) suggests that ritual rock features are sometimes aligned with distant landmarks so that prayers can be focused towards those places, or powers obtained from those landmarks. He also suggests that some landmarks have stories or moral lessons associated with them that can be incorporated into ritual activity or prayer. The importance of visualizing a distant landmark for certain ceremonial purposes explains why many vision quest sites are found at higher elevations with open viewsheds (Applen 2001; Jones 2003)… 

 Deur (2016:56-57) states that the “practice of ritual rock stacking is said to have skipped a generation in many families” due to the assimilation policies and tribal termination, but that there has been a “reawakening in recent decades.” Information gleaned through recent ethnographic studies indicate the practice of constructing rock features in traditional Klamath and Modoc lands continues by current Klamath tribal members, even with the conversion of many to Christianity or secular belief systems (Deur 2016; Haynal 1994, 2000)…”

https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1873&context=etd

Occam's Razor; "Effigy Mounds" & "New England Stone Walls"

 

Ryan Howell writes:

Explanation (1)-"Native Americans who lived in Wisconsin at or around A.D 1000 built the Effigy Mounds that date to this period. Native Americans were present, there are Native American artifacts in the mound fill. The mounds occur next to Native American villages of the same time period."

Explanation (2)- "The mounds were built by the Lost Tribes of Israel because they just were. Everyone knows this who has read the Bible like I have..... I want to believe in the Bible, its how I interpret my world, and I, personally, do not think Native Americans could do it. There is no "real" evidence to support my claim, but I can probably find some if I scwint real hard, interpret the Bible "properly" and don't look at or for any physical evidence that contradicts my pre-formed assumption."

I write:

Explanation (1-A)-"Native Americans who lived in Connecticut, well before the contact period built the Snake Effigy Rows of Stones that date to an as yet undetermined time period. Native Americans were present for 12,000 years or so, there is Native American Iconography, similar to that found in other Indigenous media, present in the rows of stones that may have functioned as fuel breaks for controlled burns as well as management of water features. The rows of stones occur next to Native American villages of the same time period, such as the Nonnewaug Wigwams. The rows of stones along trails or paths that often became modern roads connect, yet separate, many different stacked stone enclosed resource zones that include but are not limited to “blueberry barrens” and wetland gardens such as “cranberry bogs" that may still contain survivor plants.”

 Explanation (2-A)- "The ‘stone walls’ of New England were built by settler colonists and their descendants because they just were. Everyone knows this who has read the Stone Wall Books like I have..... I want to believe in the Stone Wall Books, it’s how I interpret my world, and I, personally, do not think Native Americans could do it. There is no "real" evidence to support my claim, but I can probably find some if I squint real hard, interpret the Books "properly" and don't look at or for any physical evidence, such as vertically and horizontally undulating rows of stacked stones that begin with a snake head, in a number of variations, that contradicts my pre-formed assumption, passed down from the earliest of settler colonists who claimed that Native Americans in what became known as “New England” were too lazy and not intelligent enough to stack stones.

 A complicated series of events is presented as a timeline for the "Yankee Stone Wall Myth:" Field clearing stones tossed into piles against legal wooden rail fences four to four and a half feet high, later used to build stone fences by farmers and their families as well as their slaves, indentured workers, and hired laborers, culminating in a short lived Great Merino Sheep Craze when a number of wealthy people hired trained masons to build Sheep Fences.”

  The simplest solution may well be that pre-existing Native American enclosures became private property, appropriated by the addition of split wooden rails that met the legal height requirement to become "improved" with a minimum of effort compared to that of building rather useless animal containment or animal prohibiting “stone fences.”  

Parsimoniously, it's much easier to leave a row of stones alone than to build one...

It's also said that:

"If the scientific explanation is too hard to understand,

then make up a deceptively simple fable."

It's also said that:

"Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic or racial groups from a given territory by a more powerful ethnic group, often with the intent of making it ethnically homogeneous.The forces applied may be various forms of forced migration (deportation, population transfer), intimidation, as well as genocide and genocidal rape.
      
Ethnic cleansing is usually accompanied with efforts to remove physical and cultural evidence of the targeted group in the territory through the destruction of homes, social centers, farms, and infrastructure, and by the desecration of monuments, cemeteries, and places of worship." 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing

So does claiming that "New England Stone Walls" are almost all post contact constructions, without scientific investigation,  seem to fit the definition of Nationalistic Pseudoarchaeology, quite similar to the case of the "Lost Tribes" & Wisconsin (and other) Effigy Mounds??

Hmm...

 

Nonnewaug Hillside Serpents (CT)

 

Looking for an address of a building lot for a friend,

Google maps took us up a driveway where we’ve never been,

And yes, that serpent row of stones has a bit of steel rebar by its nose,

A modern day property line made marker beside that shared driveway.

 

Single Stone Horn? 

Didn’t know there were houses up there,

Much less such beautiful structures,

Linking an outcrop to a row of stones,

A Serpent Gateway and another Snake Row of Stones

On a hillside in the uplands of Ancient Nonnewaug…

L to R: Gateway Serpent, opening to the enclosure,

a Row of Stones emerging from a bedrock outcrop...

Contemplating the similarities of the Snake Heads,

I'm going to pour a second cup of coffee... 

Colonial Denialism

 

Yesterday, I forgot to say

The words “the deep ingrained denialism in modern-day New England”

 

Rather than a crowded corner of Turtle Island,

Packed with Indigenous towns and villages at the Eastern Gate,

We’ve been taught to think of

"Nomads in temporary camps

In a howling wilderness of disinformation

In dire need of Christianization and Civilization."

 

 

Can’t be a Stone Serpent fuel break

Undulating across a Sacred Landscape

It’s just gotta be "Tree Damage to a Yankee Farmer’s Fence"

Of hastily tossed stones

By the bountiful seashore

By all the floodplain planting fields

Along all the Homeland rivers and roads

 

By the broken stony places

By the Doorways to Other Worlds

On a Sacred, Living Landscape of the Long Memory

The Dreaded Tree Fall Stone Wall Damage Myth

 

Lower Horse Hill,Westbrook CT

  Another one of those persistent Yankee Stone Wall Myths that just won’t go away is the Tree Fall Damage scenario, used to explain away why a “stone wall” can’t be an Indigenous or Native American created Snake row of stones or Qusukqaniyutôk that intentionally undulates vertically, like a snake moving across the landscape. 

  Mr. Oxford Dictionary defines undulation as “a smoothly rising and falling form, outline, or movement.” My old friend Ox uses this example in a sentence, as many other members of the Dictionary Family do in their writings: "The road follows the undulations of the countryside," and one could stick a couple other words in there and say “The Yankee Stone Wall follows the undulations of the countryside.” But that may also be true of a row of stones artistically stacked or laid using elements of Indigenous Iconography, sometimes resembling a Great Snake, often composed of smaller snake effigies as well as other effigies both zoomorphic and anthropomorphic, sometimes appearing to shapeshift into another effigy, possibly related to control of water or fire (sometimes both) on Sacred Cultural Landscapes that are beginning to be recognized as Indigenous Ceremonial Stone Landscapes.”

  From a perspective of distance, the largest of the Stone Snake Qusukqaniyutôk snake across the landscape, crossing over others, sometimes connecting great boulders or bedrock outcrops, sometimes along streams – and sometimes stacked over and hiding a stream, a Musical Row of Stones - the sound of water is the Great Snake contentedly “purring.”

  Inside some enclosures, there were “gardens,” plant resources perhaps tended by fire, perhaps protected from fire, something living kept in balance, kept in production by someone offering tobacco to a serpent guardian before entering, someone singing while stacking stones, picking up and replacing her grandmothers’ and grandfathers’ stones that have fallen.

   Zigzag and linear rows of stones, snaking across the landscape, sometimes can be found still on both sides of a modern road whose origin was an Indian Path or Native American Trail or an Indigenous Road that’s possibly two or ten or twelve thousand years old, and may well be Indigenous made Snake Effigies, connecting those "gardens" and linking Indian Villages…

 

Snake Effigy Qusukqaniyutôk, gently undulating by trail turned modern road.

  While it may be true that trees damage those constructions we insist on calling stone walls even though these alleged fences are not the spaces between floors and ceilings, I’m personally inclined to believe that many of these undulations are intentional and are a distinguishing characteristic of Indigenous Stonework, with many artistic variations, ranging from “slight and gentle” to some that are very “tall and strikingly sharp.”

 An especially good example, on a property that’s been a nature preserve since 1913, begins with a variation of a snakehead on a bedrock “bald” or outcrop connected to a row of stones that smoothly rises and falls, suggesting to the poetic a snake basking in the sunlight when it’s sunny (or something else, depending on local conditions - such as sleeping under a blanket of snow):

 

A series of posts starts here, if you are interested in seeing more of what's around this one above:

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2016/01/oldest-trails-older-trails-and-old.html

Most likely related to and connected with this:

https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/search?q=cranberry+garden

 There’s many more Vertically Undulating Stones of Intention at this place and in others – places where Guardian Great Snakes help humans keep the world in balance, controlling weather, controlling wildfires and ceremonial fires of World Renewal, snake bodies surrounding “gardens” of many types, of many variations.

First Puritan Minister's Estate, Bethlehem CT 

Litchfield County

Killingworth/Deep River

 Sometimes one finds some fairly sizable trees resting on these relatively undamaged undulations:  

Maybe the hired stone masons, rebuilding messy garbage piles of tossed field clearing stones into "proper" Yankee SHEEP enclosures, simply forgot to bring along batter boards and string:

Take a look here - if I fall down dead tomorrow, these will all probably shortly disappear:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/34580529@N04/albums/72157655611451519