click to enlarge.

http://curtis.library.northwestern.edu/

Joan Luster, President Nipmuc Indian Association of Connecticut, sent this note and asked to pass it along.

Courtesy Nipmuc Indian Association of Connecticut, Inc.

"In case you, or anyone you know, doubt that indigenous people of New England built stone piles, we want to share the following information on "cairns"

Indians of New England built at least two types of memorials, with both brush and stone:

mehquanuma-onk = remembrance of persons, a memorial.

mehquantamoo-onk = remembrance of inanimate objects, a memorial.

Source: Natick Dictionary

A keeper of Algonquian oral history was called a mehquantouy ( one who remembers)"

Yesterday Doug Schwartz lead a field trip to two sites in North Stonington, Connecticut.  I'll just touch on some of the highlights here. There was a lot to see.

This picture shows one of several south facing niches.

A few hundred yards south and lined up with the opening of the niche,

there's a small serpent wall that appears to be swimming out of the niche.

The head is at the top of the picture.

Pictured below is another serpent  located on the side of a ridge and is going towards a swift running brook.

As we were leaving this site, we were taken to this wall by the property owner.

The property owner then took us to his workshop where he showed us some of his beautiful metal sculptures.

Doug and the stainless steel rooster

Check out his web site at http://dansartgallery.com

From here we drove to the second site. This site has several huge donation piles.

The highlight of this site was this 7 foot high cairn. It's about 20 feet long.

close ups of the cairn.

We had 2 other sites on our list to go to, but unfortunately, we ran out of daylight.

It was an interesting field trip.

By Norman Muller

Stone Mound Investigations as of 2009

More

This is a small talus cave with stone work and a stone row. There's also stone work on top.

overview of the site

 video 

In addition to the talus cave, there's a stone row with a standing stone  pictured below with a video.

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This small half circle coming off of a boulder was also found nearby.

See the previous post.

Known locally as "The Old Stone Mill" and  built by native American stone masons for Benedict Arnold (1615-1678), Governor of Newport, Rhode Island.

All additional theories are referring to the tower in Lakeville, Massachusetts .

(removes tong from cheek)

Follow this link for some good info from the Redwood Library and Athenæum

CLICK HERE

The 2009 inaugural conference of the Native American Cultural Landscapes Study Group was was held this past weekend and was a great success. A detailed report will be published soon on the group's web page at http://www.naclsg.org/  along with some of the presentations and videos.

The two day conference was held at  Camp Wightman, North Stonington, CT. and featured guest speakers from across the country using teleconferencing and video conferencing. Of course there were live presentations too.

A mile and a half long dirt road leads to Camp Wightman which is a beautiful camp deep in the woods of North Stonington and abuts the Pachaug State Forest. The following pictures show why this was an excellent choice for the  conference and were taken just a few feet from the conference hall.The good food and accommodation provided by the camp just made it that much more enjoyable.

Doug Schwartz did a good job putting this together.

This camp is private property. Permission to be on camp land is required.

Crevice in an outcrop (rift) with a stone wall built inside.

Close up of the above picture. The wall is about 6 feet tall

 The two pictures below shows a stone wall that goes to the above  ledge.

Walking out of the front door of the conference hall and 100 feet down a path into the woods, there is a large ceremonial complex with walls, cairns and a serpent effigy.

serpent wall

Sunday we went on a short field trip into the Pachaug State Forest.

The first thing we saw was this "U" shaped structure. It's about 6 feet high. 

From there we hiked a mile into the forest to see some serpent walls.

Pictured below is the first one that we saw. This wall was posted on this blog back in December 2008

and can be viewed HERE

Unfortunately, we ran out of daylight by the time we got to the other 3 serpents in the area and I couldn't photograph them.

You'll just have to take my word for how awesome they were.

One row is made up of single rocks that snakes around through the woods for at least a mile. I was told that the end hasn't been found yet due to the thick brush and the terrain making it difficult to follow.