I restored some of the videos

I do not know what happed to the pictures with "click here" to start a video so I went back and added some links to the more recent video clips. Now you can at least watch them.

But now I cannot get "Comments" to work. Did I do this or is it being done to us by Blogger?

A new camera

A bit off my rhythm today while exploring a site in Bolton. The new camera I borrowed has the worst user interface imaginable but it does have incredible resolution. Also the colors are much better in the kind of low light levels we have been having in this rain. For all its bells and whistles the camera, a Nikon "Coolpix", has a lot of trouble communicating with me about autofocus. The result is that 1/2 the photos today were totally blurry and only about one in four was really in focus. But if you look in the backround of this picture, you can see a second rock-on-rock. This depth of field was not available on the old camera: an HP "C-30".
Again the colors are a bit off since I have not mastered the button for putting the camera into a mode where it will correct the colors, auto-focus, not flash and compensate for hand movement. I have a lot to learn about getting the most out of it.

About the first picture: This is a picture of a ledge next to a brook - or a place where water comes out of the ground and starts to be a brook. The ledge has a split which is wedged and, in line with the split, a rock pile is built on a rock at the edge of the water. The sense of alignment is heightened by the pointed wedge which sticks out.

Video clips not working

Something happened to the video repository I have been using: photobucket.com I sure hope the videos start working again.

Stone Masons of the Narragansetts

by JimP

But yet let me add this by way of commendation of the Narragansitt and Warwick Indians, who inhabit in the jurisdiction, that they are an active, laborious, and ingenious people; which is demonstrated in their labours they do for the English; of whom more are employed, especially in making stone fences, and many other hard labours, than of any other Indian people or neighbours.
- Daniel Gookin, Historical Collections of the Indians in New-England (1674)

Narragansett Indians were employed by the earliest settlers of Rhode Island to make stone fences. As we discover more and more remarkable dry stone work in the remaining wilderness, it becomes quite apparent why the English paid them to do such work -- it was most likely a skill they already possessed. The amazing examples found in cairns all over the state, from the Tomaquag site in Hopkinton, to the Queen's Cairns in Exeter, to Parker Woodland, and many more -- few can deny that building these structures took time and hard work. A testament to the workmanship is how these structures have survived hundreds of harsh New England winters, various hurricanes, and countless nor'easters.

One of the earliest Presidents of Warwick was a man named John Smith (1652-1653). Interestingly enough, Smith was a stone mason by trade. Historians generally believe that in 1649 John Smith was responsible for building the famed, "stone castle," in Warwick, RI -- a building that played a historic role in King Philip's War. It certainly isn't a stretch to theorize that the castle might have been the melding of the knowledge of both Smith and the Indians, and built with mostly Indian labor. The stone castle was demolished in 1795.

Following King Phillip's War, Rhode Islanders no longer had to pay for Narragansett stone masons. Instead, they enslaved them. Many of those who were not enslaved were forced into, "involuntary," indentured servitude. Narragansett children were placed into English homes not only to be Christianized, but to work as apprentices to English masters. Many of them remained indentured well into their 20's. More than one historian has written that most of the stone walls built in 17th century Rhode Island were the work of Indian laborers, slaves, and servants. I find nothing in early colonial records that refutes such a claim, but plenty of data that supports it.

The cairn pictured above was taken at the Francis C. Carter Preserve in Charlestown, RI. The preserve is only a few miles from present-day Narragansett Tribal Lands. On display there is an undeniable history of Narragansett masonry. An array of eras is evidenced by the many features, from ancient stone rows, cairns, and split-wedged rocks, to 18th and 19th century drilling techniques. This site, better than any other in Rhode Island, tells the story of the stone masons of the Narragansett Indian Tribe.

Larry Harrop's excellent photo gallery is far more extensive than mine, and therefore (with thanks to Larry) I point you there:

http://www.larryharrop.com/main.php?g2_itemId=552

Stone masonry continues to be a traditional craft of the Narragansetts. For example, Narragansett masons were employed to build the stone walls that criss-cross the Pequot Reservation, home of Foxwoods Casino. The Narragansett Indian Church was burned to the ground and rebuilt twice using granite shaped by the hands of Narragansett masons. Present-day Narragansetts are able to trace the craft back several generations in their families. The skills are handed down from grandfathers, fathers, and uncles.

Many years ago, a wonderful Narragansett woman told me a story of a crowning achievement by ancestors of Narragansett masons that still stands today in Newport, RI. She explained that it was symbolic of a short period of time when the English and the Narragansett lived in peace and worked together. I'll leave it to brighter minds than mine to figure out what structure she may have been referring to -- all I will say is that the history and the evidence has been under our very noses for centuries, and it has gone largely ignored.

Stone Walls And Good Neighbors by Michael Bell -
http://www.quahog.org/factsfolklore/index.php?id=87

One Nation, Two Worlds - Providence Journal Series (registration required - but it's free)
http://www.projo.com/extra/2004/tribe/

Skull in a streambank

By geophile

Photo by Earl Dundore

Forgive me if I've posted this before. I don't think I have but maybe I've forgotten. This stone formation is about five miles from my home. When I first saw it, the 'chin' was still intact, but unfortunately I didn't get pictures then.

It is especially peculiar in that the skull image is apparent only from one angle. From directly across the stream, the rock looks nothing like this, but appears to be a normal worn rocky bank. When I was told about this and shown a picture, I was incredulous. It is in a very popular place I had been to many times and even had considered for the site of our wedding, yet I had never seen anything any hint of it. When I went to the spot to investigate, I located the place in the stream where I had to stand in order to see it by noticing a circle and then a line of stones in the stream, leading out toward a whitish stone well out in the flow. I followed the stones out into the stream and was able to see the skull from the white stone. This picture was not taken from just the right spot, so the skull looks a little misshapen.

I must add it is an odd sensation to stand looking at a five or six foot high skull while all around are families with children and dogs, laughing and playing, none of them suspecting that the skull exists right before them. Whether it was done recently or anciently or in between, it was cleverly done.

Further down the bank is a place where there is a sort of window similarly carved in stone in such a way that you can stand on the bank and look through it. I would not have noticed that if seeing the skull hadn't alerted me to look for lighter places in the rock, the lighter color apparently being the result of a darker patina being scraped away.

Back deep in the woods at Spring Hill in Acton, MA

A couple of split-wedged rocks:
The first is really more of a "table" and has a second support in the shadow. You may recognize the second split-wedged rock as the subject of this video clip.

John Warner Barber - from Norman Muller

Norman writes in:

The Barber mentioned by Tim is John Warner Barber, and the book in question is Connecticut Historical Collections...New Haven, 1836. On page 475 Barber writes: "They dwelt chiefly along the intervale by the river, a part of which intervale is to this day called Indian Field; and several of their burial grounds are yet to be seen in various parts of the town. Their graves are of a circular form, and the persons were buried sitting up, as in a natural position, on the ground." There was no illustration accompanying the description of the graves.

In perusing some issues of the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society from the 1790s, I came across this from Jeremy Belknap and Jedidiah Morse, titled "The Report of a Committee of the Board of Correspondents of the Scots Society for Propigating Christian Knowledge, who visited the Oneida and Mohekunuh Indians in 1796." The date of the original publication was 1798, and this is found on pages 14 and 15: "He regarded the Oneida Stone as a proper emblem or representative of the divinity whom he worshipped. This stone we saw. It is or a rude, unwrought shape, rather inclining to cylindrical, and of more than a hundred pounds weight. It bears no resemblance to any of the stones which are found in that country. From whence it was originally brought, no one can tell. The tradition is that it follows the nation on their removals. From it the name of the nation is derived, for Oneida signifies the upright stone. When it was set up in the crotch of a tree, the people were supposed invincible. It is now placed in an upright position on the earth, at the door of the old man's house. A stout man can carry this stone abourt 40 or 50 rods, without resting; and this is the manner in which it may be said (with the help of a little priestcraft) to follow them in their removals." The authors are certainly referring to a godstone or Manitou stone.

Early writings from the Ohio Valley - 1750-1820

This may be of interest although not rock pile related
[Click here]
(via Plep)

Stone Mounds in New Milford - from Tim MacSweeney

Tim writes in:

From the History of the Indians of Connecticut by John DeForest first published in 1851 (reprinted 1964 by the Shoestring Press in Hamden CT).

In Chapter “X,” “History of New Tribes formed in the North and West of Connecticut (DeForest claimed that this part of the state was previously uninhabited by Indians and was a great “desert”),” I found this stone mound reference:

“The sites of Indian cemeteries are still pointed out in New Milford. One is on the west side of the river opposite the village; another is on the east side at no great distance from the ancient residence of the sachem. Many of the graves have trees of considerable size growing up out of them. The mounds are circular in shape, and, on opening them, the skeletons are found in a sitting posture. The grave of Weraumaug is still supposed to be known, and differs from the others only in being of larger dimensions (398).”

There is an asterisk after the last word in the paragraph and the footnote reads, “Barber, pp. 475,476.”

There must be an illustrated version because this is included in Enduring Traditions, edited by Laurie Weinstien (1994) in the section by Trudie Lamb Richmond: see attachment.

A porthole along (not through) the wall

Some nice people from Harvard invited me to come over to see if there was any interesting stone work on their property along Rt 2. I saw three things and am afraid I did not do a decent job calling attention to them. For example there was a stone wall made of ledge rock and running along the crest of an outcrop. Someone had built a little porthole perpendicular to the wall and it looked like the wall had been borrowed from to get the stones used in the porthole.
Here was another very minor but pretty feature right up near Rt 2. I suppose this is a spirit door.
The third thing was a rock-on-rock. Simple and elegant. The upper rock looks red and burnt.
These folks do not have a lot on their property but it looks like a little of each of the basic types of feature.

Roadside attractions, Harvard MA

On one of the roads leaving Harvard center, at the foot of the hill, is a wetland on the right with a dirt mound. I think the wetland is on private property. I have always been curious about that mound and on Sunday I was driving by and had my camera, so I parked and went a few steps into the woods to get some pictures. Well for some reason I did not take a picture of the mound. But I did take pictures of rock piles around it on the large boulders. This suggests that a rock pile builder thought the mound was significant.

I should have taken a picture of the mound but dogs came down from the house and were barking.

Sacred Video Clip - 125 degrees magnetic

My friends and colleagues who are interested in alignments say they keep finding things which point towards either 125 degrees magnetic or to its diametric opposite (125+180= 305). But what is that direction? Apparently 305 degree magnetic is the August 14th sunset direction. But why is that significant? And why is 125 degrees important? August 14th was important to the Mayans [I am told] but what is with 125 degrees? Is it something to do with the Milky Way? This is an answer looking for a question and I hope my friends and colleagues eventually come up with an explanation. For now, it is simply an observation that these directions are frequently indicated by stonework in the woods. So here is a video which tries both to capture the direction from the Stupid Sheet and show an example of a very subtle stone construction which does point in that 125 degrees magnetic direction.
[Click here]

My Own Personal Rock Pile

by JimP
I wanted to tell you all about my own personal rock pile. While you New Englanders were shoveling snow this past January, I was busy building a backyard pond and waterfall.

I learned a couple of things about rock piles in the process. First, how difficult it is to stack rocks. I definitely got a new appreciation for the time and effort it takes to put together a well-made cairn. It takes patience and hard work without question. It took patience and hard work just getting the jumbled pile that I made to be stable, although admittedly I had nothing but river rock to work with.

Another thing I learned is how capable we are of moving rocks of enormous size. The huge cobblestone I used for my waterfall weighed around 500 pounds apiece. I was able to lift them, carry them to the pond, and put them up on the waterfall terraces all by myself. It was definitely tough, but I did it without help. And I know how much they weighed because I had to buy them by weight. (After 36 years in New England, I never imagined I'd have to BUY rocks).

Here's a link to a photo album of my progress. The pond and waterfall both look different today, but I'm waiting for some plants to grow in and bloom before I take another picture.

http://members.cox.net/jimtheump/pondwaterfall/

Inuit Cairns and stone structures

[Click here then click on the photo]

Places of Power, Objects of Veneration in the Canadian Arctic
[Click here]

California rock pile links

Volcan Mountain, San Diego County:
"...These shrines could be represented archaeologically as rock piles or platforms (Bean 1976:415; Hudson and Underhay 1978:68-70)." [Click here for the full article]

[Click here] for Modoc County Landmarks.

Yellowstone:
"...Battles were fought in what is now park territory, according to evidence revealed by rock piles and other apparently human interference with natural conditions that cannot be traced to white settlers...." [Click here]


Plenty here :
"Returning to the unexplained stone cairns in the Pacific Northwest, Frederica de Laguna (1971:82) in her amplified edition of George Thornton Emmons' The Tlingit Indians: provides the following details:

More baffling than petroglyphs and stone carvings are cairns of piled stones to be found on the mountains well above timberline, both on the mainland and on offshore islands. They have no relation to the Russian occupation, and are not boundary marks. They are away from any trails or lines of travel, at altitudes of from two to three thousand feet, located on clear stretches, generally on mountain tops. The oldest natives can give no explanation of them, beyond the story that when the great Flood covered the earth, those who survived in canoes floated up and moored their craft here with great bark ropes, the decayed ends of which it is claimed can still be seen. [Cairns like these were said by the Tlingit of Angoon and Yakutat to be "nests" or forts made by survivors of the Flood to protect themselves from the bears that were driven to the summits of mountains by the rising waters (de Laguna and McClellan, field notes, 1950, 1952). Stone piles have been noted by some members of the U.S. Geological Survey, who offered no explanation for them. My archaeological party of 1935 explored a pile of stones on a high ridge above the middle Yukon River, between Nulato and Holy Cross; this "cairn" was due to frost action, according to our geologist, Jack Eardley. But this explanation may not apply to all such piles.] The following locations of such cairns are known, others may still be discovered: On a mountain 2,500 feet high, above Union Bay and Ernest Sound, on Cleveland Peninsula, there are four or five pyramidal or circular piles of stones. Watson, half-breed, knows about this. On a mountain on Etolin Island is a cairn of boulders. At Gambler Bay, on Admiralty Island, on..."

California's mysterious stone walls

There were no colonial farmers to claim these [Click here]

Also, if you like tales of the weird, check out the parent website: The Fortean Times [Click here].

Rock piles are considered "tales of the weird" by some, "tales of the foolish" and worse by others.

Turner Lane Harvard, MA - Three piles near a field.

Sunday, after a Saturday of odds and ends in Bolton, I went to Harvard to look at some places by invitation and ended up seeing more as I drove around between visits. I was told by Sue R. about a conservation land trail off Turner Lane, and spent 10 minutes checking it before I had to be somewhere. There were three rock piles within a few paces of the trail head.Although this first one looks like it has been modified more recently, all three piles were made from a small number of quite large rocks (too big for one person to lift).I did not recognize this type of pile. They are in pretty bad shape and I was undecided about whether they might have been farm related. They are right near an open field. But in the end because there were three separate piles, and they were actually built up a bit (not just tossed) I ended up thinking they might be ceremonial.

Boundary marker?

From Bolton, possibly marking a boundary with Stow.

Summer Equinox (by FFC)

(That's Tim Fohl in the background)

Behind the house of the the people with the lost arrow

That first time out to the Bolton Conservation Land we met a lady who claimed the arrow FFC found in the woods. This time out, on the opposite site of their house as I was passing by, I noticed a couple of other structures. Thought I should mention them.