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.
"On Aug.31, l918, the Providence Journal reported the observations of Chief Strongheart, a member of the Yakima tribe. The Yakima Indians live in Washington State.
Chief Strongheart made the claim that the stone tower was not built by Norsemen or the British, but by Narragansett Indians. It was not built for mill purposes, but as a temple! The Indian chief was lecturing in the interests of the YMCA at the naval stations and army cantonments while on a tour of the installations in the Newport district. Maybe the visiting Yakima leader has a point to consider. Many of the miles of beautiful dry stone walls, made from the local field stones, just 1ike those in the Old Stone Mill, were constructed by Indians working for early settlers." from the Providence Journal Aug.31, l918
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.
Note the small shelter in the pictures above and below.
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
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.