You can duck into the woods off Wataquadock Hill Rd, there where I drew a blue outline on the map fragment, and you are confronted with a rocky wet slope like this (road in the background):There are actually several rock piles here. One:Two (with the first in the background or possibly connected to it):Three:This last might still be in somewhat of its original layout - smeared a bit - but with a ring of large outer stones, smaller stones inside the ring and, at the center, a colored rock, possibly burned:
So...
Further up the valley were occasional traces of other ceremonies:Finally, deeper in, several rock piles on support rocks:They should make that into a conservation land.
Wataquadock Brook, Hill & Road, Worcester County - "place where we get fire-wood (branches of trees)"; or perhaps "lookout place".
ReplyDeletefrom http://www.nativetech.org/Nipmuc/placenames/mainmass.html
"The name I believe may be a corruption of Wuttuhqohteuk, Wuttuhq, 'Branches of trees,' or ' wood for fuel,'—ohteuk, a 'field or land which is cultivated,' signifying a tract of open land over which fallen trees were scattered—' a wood-land.'"
ReplyDeleteINDIAN NAMES OF PLACES IN WORCESTER COUNTY MASSACHUSETTS
WITH INTERPRETATIONS OF
SOME OF THEM
By LINCOLN N. KINNICUTT
1905
"Your rivers guard our ancient names."
"Your mountains are our monuments."
Cool piles, I am sure you were pleased to find these.
ReplyDelete