Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Angry Landowner Bulldozes Indian Mounds

Pratt Hill, Upton MA.
I am upset and I am angry. I was going to write up a detailed summary of what I have been able to find out about how and why the site was bulldozed but I run the risk of expressing my anger; so I am going to keep it simple and give you a quick run down. I have spoken to or emailed several members of the NEARA board about this, I have spoken with people who accompanied the Narragansetts on their first and also later visits to the site. I have spoken with the man who bulldozed the place. Now I want to put it behind me. None of this is going to bring the site back.

However, I do want to mention that this rape, this murder within our community, needs to be mourned properly. We should be gnashing our teeth, pulling out our hair, wearing sack cloth, singing funeral songs, blaming ourselves and asking what we could have done differently. Later we can try to learn something from the experience and let the happy talk resume. That is why I find it all the more strange that this crime against the past happened so quietly and went so unmentioned. There were a number of bystanders but the rest of us never heard about the events.

Somewhere before 1989, Mavor and Dix surveyed the site on top of Pratt Hill in Upton MA. It consisted of several large mounds of stone, sited along the summit outcrops. The mounds were irregularly shaped. Surrounding them were numerous smaller rock piles in a standard format that I call "marker piles" - often found as satellite piles to larger, centrally located mounds. Mavor and Dix believed the Pratt Hill site was related to the Upton chamber and wrote extensively about it in Chapter 2 of Manitou "A Pleiades and Sun Sanctuary at the Source of Waters". NEARA people helped survey the place and it sat their quietly over the years. No doubt a few snuck up there - on private property - to have a look.

Then, more recently after ~2000 the place got a lot more traffic. NEARA field trips were taken to the site; at least one person got arrested for trespassing and at least one other (who was visiting there with the Narragansett Indians) got kicked off the private property and threatened with arrest. A strong component of archeoastronomy runs through the story and through the site, and its connection with the Upton chamber must have been mentioned in connection with (then ongoing) efforts to preserve the Upton chamber. There was a lot of interest. From what I can gather, the land owner was not happy about the trespassing and may have had trouble taking Native American spirituality seriously.

Then comes the money and the real trouble starts. A cellphone company wanted to place a tower on top of Pratt Hill. This would usually require surveys and permissions from the Native Americans as it involves the FCC, a federal agency. I don't know if this was before or after Indians had been up on the hill looking around. But the landowner sure was not going to have an easy time selling or leasing the land. [He said "If I had known what I was getting into, I never would have bought that property"]. After that, around summer of 2008, the main mounds at the site were bulldozed. Still later, the Narragansetts finally did purchase the land and the astronomical surveying resumed.

So a quick review of possible reasons why the site was bulldozed:
- greed and pride, a way to facilitate selling/leasing the land;
- anger at all the unwelcome trespassing (and possibly unwelcome news stories, of which I am guilty since I blogged the field trip before being told I had to take my photos off the web);
- religious intolerance, denying the existence of Indians and their ceremonies by eliminating the physical representation of those beliefs.

Take your pick, I think it probably is a bit of all three. I feel pretty bad about it. Apparently when a group of Indians arrived on the hilltop, just before they purchased it, they found it bulldozed. Imagine their grief.

A few last words. NEARA should publish some information about Pratt Hill. They have maps and photos. They should re-enforce a (long since established) bylaw of not condoning field trips without landowner permission. There are enough parallels here with what happened at Bare Hill, in Heath MA, that it should be cause for reflection. We should probably work towards some means of ensuring that land transfers include ceremonial site descriptions along with other site/resource survey information. So potential purchasers will not be caught by surprise. Also it was NOT the written publication of this site that caused it to be destroyed.

There are lots of other stray thoughts on the subject. For instance, those might have been horizon piles, as described by M&D. But they could also be burial mounds - the site, as a whole, is not so unique and there are many others on nearby hills where the collapsed inner chambers are plain enough. NAGPRA anyone?

11 comments :

Anonymous said...

i cant believe you actually taked with the person who did this. I would have had a very hard time keeping a level head. This distruction was terrible and has always bothered me. The piles distruction will have not been in vain as we can hopefully learn some crutial lessions here. thanks for reporting this for all to learn.
keith
Keith

Dennis Dee said...

Excuse my language...effing terrible!

Anonymous said...

I dare say Mr Waksman.You and your rockpikes neara people may have just as well bulldozed the site yourselves.Long years gone by youve all documented with foreknowledge the property sales and its characteristic thereof but did not bear the responsibility to seeing it rightly identified before a hardworking families life torn asunder.How dare you fix blame and not bear responsibilty yourself.Had you been culturally responsible this perhaps instead would have been different.No you all instead slither around on private property and blog about it.
Id say you were the first in negligence at the bulldozers gears,and as well I his ex and his children continue to suffer from your negligence as the primary causative factor of this tragedy.Bravo! HOW DO YOU SLEEP AT NIGHT.
His ex

pwax said...

I do take some of the blame.

Anonymous said...

Mr Waksman
Had you done right by the culture none of these events would have taken place.The property would certainly not have been landed to unsuspecting land owners.Your response is lame and of cowardice.
The person you libeled by way of false light in your 5/30/12 rant has 2 young children growing up in the community who deserve not the "gnashing of your teeth".
You have subjected them to recurring scrutiny in addition to the financial and emotional sequelae they again not deserved of.
It seems you owe several apologies.As a parent I would like to see removal of your calling out by their surname..but I know better.It is unlikely it will ever truly disappear from a Google search.
It would as well serve proper to make apology to the American Indian Tribes for your part long prior and probably causative by Root Cause Analysis.
In the future Mr Waksman please engage brain before gnashing of teeth.

pwax said...

In deference to your children I have taken the name out.

Anonymous said...

All and any single one of you geocaching,teeth gnasshing individuals who routinely over several years, if not decades,claim some "expertise" or knoweledge on the subject bear fault.
There was no religious intolerance or any other of your suppositions.The property was purchased with no knoweledge of its supposed characteristics religious,cultural or celestial.And while people like yourselves and NEARA have all been trespassing private properties and publishing as such it stands to reason your pointed fingers be turned inward to selves.
You did not protect and or preserve,you simply for sport ran around mapping and supposing on private property self appointing yourselves as historically and culturally knoweledgable but crucially and causitively took no steps all those years that the land so precious rightly handled.
Instead an unsuspecting hard working family ends up with it.
Let it be said here that I'm still in the community and if I ever even suspect anyone of you is trespassing on my property I will without hesitation and promptly seek appropriate legal consequence.With that said I won't discriminate from what city,state,religion,group,organization etc.of which you claim.Plain and simple.
And by the way Mr Waksman,as I noted prior,
removing the name after the fact doesn't cut it-Google does not forgive-crucial lesson.

pwax said...

One thing "Anonymous" ignores is that there are about 4 competing groups here. I never led a field trip there and had nothing to do with NEARA's promotions or with Indian visit. Painting us all with the same black brush isn't really fair. No one ever asked my opinion about the site.

pwax said...

Still feeling guilty about what 'Anonymous" says, let me give a spiritual response: You guys bulldozed a sacred Indian site. And you blame me for your subsequent emotional problems? You are lucky you aren't in jail.

Anonymous said...

Mr.Waksman...you best back off sir
I have given you and your others far more latitude than you have ever deserved!
As I have said prior, you all COLLECTIVELY and for years trespassed on PRIVATELY owned property and blogged about it!
Do NOT ever threaten me with a good time of single handedly dragging any one of you off my property....if YOU SIR are lucky they when I CALL THEM,the law will show up first. No problem emotional or otherwise.PLAIN, SIMPLE..BACK OFF FAIR WARNING.

Anonymous said...

Purchasing anything for profit exudes risk. The piles there have been known about far longer than those who are stamping their feet to defend their positions on the destruction. It was a spite job, destruction of a paleoindian ceremonial site and the offender should be held accountable to the full extent of the law.