The Eagle Wing Press of Naugatuck CT published a book entitled "Rooted Like The Ash Trees; New England Indians and the Land" in 1987, edited by Richard G. Carlson. On page 20, is the illustration below, "A replication of a 1793 site-map and surveyors report ordered by the Connecticut War Department to determine the boundaries of the Mashantucket Pequot Reservation. The reservation had already been pared down to under a thousand acres at the time the survey was undertaken."
The text above accompanies the drawing, and below are some details of the map...
There is no credit given for the drawing that accompanies Kevin McBride's contribution called "The Mashantucket Pequot Ethnohistory Project," so one might assume it's his drawing, sort of like assuming a stick is a stake in a stone fishweir but not so embarrassing when it turns out to be a stick...
There was a blog post here, some time ago, about early Massachusetts Land Deeds. Many of them referred to rock piles in their descriptions of property boundaries.
ReplyDeleteI could not locate the post.
The naysayers argue that the surveyors themselves built the piles to mark corner boundaries or to mark a point along a line. Sadly, we will likely never know how many of the stone heaps were built by the surveyor and how many were extant at the time of the survey.
ReplyDeleteAre those "heaps" and the "rock with stones" still there?
ReplyDelete