Friday, September 10, 2010

Klamath cairns - more "california fever"

From Bruce McAleer:

Here are 2 links you might like. I think you already have the second one.

http://escholarship.org/uc/item/99h4b4q7;jsessionid=84282DB296382BBB60C6FA44702D5C11

http://www.nps.gov/archive/crla/klritual.htm
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2 comments :

pwax said...

That first one is long but very much worth reading through. It gives a detailed description of the use and construction of "cairns" in the Klamath culture. Mavor and Dix made the point that these Yurok and Madoc are Algonquian speaking tribes that migrated from the East coast ~500 years ago. So here is a living tribe, not too forgetful of its cultural heritage, actively practicing rock pile rituals.

It reads like a somewhat narrow description of the types of piles we have around here in New England, because we also have mound types that are not mentioned in the article. In New England we also have larger stone mounds that may have been burials and are similar to mounds described in Georgia. Can we call these "non-Algonquian"?

Anyway, the linked article is well worth reading. It is in such efforts that we get a glimpse of the things we should be trying to understand around here; which puts some meat on speculations.

3:08 PM
Tim MacSweeney said...

There's also a hint of "wall like structures" in there, one pointing to Mt. Shasta
wiki algonquian language map:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Algonquian_langs.png

7:40 AM

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