Recently, I identified two mounds on my families property (mounds are approximately at 44°48'43.99"N, 69°53'16. 48"W)
in Madison, Maine. They are just above the Kennebec river's flood plain
except for the worst floods. I don't think the flood of 1987 reached
that high.
Anyways, these two mounds are well overgrown with
trees and bush, but the mounds appear to be made up of slate-like pieces
of rock stacked up, with a very large, and unique, pile of quartz
between the two mounds. The quartz is unusual, as, while it is present
here or there on the property, this one spot has loads of it. The mounds
are clearly man-made and are near some bedrock outcroppings, which are
also uncommon on the property. Some of the slate appears to be stacked
atop bedrock (or large traveling boulders, deposited during the last ice
age and only appearing to be bedrock).
My home is about a mile from well documented native populations, including the massacre of 1724 (and the events surrounding http://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3% A9bastien_Rale).
I was wondering if my description of these mounds is similar to
anything else found in this area, or anywhere the Abenaki tribes were
located. Should I investigate further, or is it better just to leave
them to be slowly absorbed by the wilderness?
UPDATE: There is no powerline expansion happening here, the land is currently Weston property and has been since homesteading days about 200 years ago (our house is 5 years from our bicentennial). Its kind of a strange subject talking about the land which the was given away to our family by the State of Massachusetts, in connection with the previous inhabitants which hadn't really been gone from the area when the land was deeded. The earliest of our ancestors settled in 1771, less than 50 years after the Rale incident and in living memory for people at the time. Strange indeed.
UPDATE: There is no powerline expansion happening here, the land is currently Weston property and has been since homesteading days about 200 years ago (our house is 5 years from our bicentennial). Its kind of a strange subject talking about the land which the was given away to our family by the State of Massachusetts, in connection with the previous inhabitants which hadn't really been gone from the area when the land was deeded. The earliest of our ancestors settled in 1771, less than 50 years after the Rale incident and in living memory for people at the time. Strange indeed.
The area is not far north of the falls in Madison
and the well known Norridgewock village, and just south of where the
Carrabassett River empties into the Kennebec. The mounds are only a
couple feet away from the old Caribou Trail, a trail which, according to
our ancestors and other oldtimers in the area, was the caribou
migration trail where they would walk pretty much single file through
the area, year after year, the ground so well-trod that parts of it are
still thought to exist today. At least that is the local mythology, but
certainly it is true to some extent.
In addition to the mounds, there are a number of
other possible features in the area, along a run of exposed bedrock, the
only such exposed places in the nearby area (on our property, anyways).
We never had a brickworks on the property, that I know of, but there
are hematite-rich very red clay deposits only feet away from the mounds I
described, and some evidence of a small dam, which may have been when
the area was used as scrub pasture, too wet in patches to plow, which
most of the rest of the property underwent over the years. Now it is
timberstand.
There must have been an enormous presence of people
here over the millenia, with the falls and the caribou trail which you
can still find loads of arrowheads and what not around. I can't believe
it never occured to us to check for ancient structures, but the area has
been so overgrown in the past 100 years since large-scale agriculture
died down, that things have been hidden from view.
I have notified two friends in Maine, both prominent in NEARA, who would like to see this site,as it sounds important.
ReplyDeleteDo you have any photos of the cairns, particularly the mound with quartz?