Cutting down the summer's screen of iris and fern and phlox, yesterday at the Nonnewaug Watch House, the stone serpents that make up the retaining wall in the front of the house are more easily seen.
If the courses of stones are laid down in a manner that resembles a usually larger snake head and body of stones of diminishing size
- and sometimes a lighter colored stone for a rattle -
then you probably looking at distinguishing characteristics of Indigenous Stonework.
Call it "Serpent Stacking" in your field notes, if you like...
More Pix & Overlays:
I actually disagree. I believe Natives were well aware of how to make diagonal layers - as a way of using the previous layer as a ramp: to roll/lever the rocks of a new layer up over the old layer and into place. To me, a typical "Indian" wall is one made with diagonal layers - one ramp on top of another. If you look at walls on a slope, it is clear they just rolled each layer up over the previous one - doing minimal lifting.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, a typical "European" wall is made in horizontal layers, like the one in your photos. The heavy capstone, running along the top is a kind of beautification I associate with 18th century estates.
Peter: Come by and take a look in person. Jannie Loubser, Curt Hoffman, and Luci Lavin have seen it in person. All three agreed that it was Indigenous Stonework, with obvious metal tool marks. I'm trying to figure out how to keep it from falling apart...
ReplyDeleteI will come by soon. I told you my reasons, what are theirs?
ReplyDeleteIt would be great to see you! The shaping and placement of the stones into larger and smaller snakes and turtles rather than rectangular quarried block and brick-like rectangles. Jannie and I talked about the guarding of the entrances by Uktena-like snakes that "knows your intentions. Other details that make it similar to the snake effigy-like rows of stones...
ReplyDeleteSince you say the so-called serpent below the massive cap stones bore metal tool marks, obviously the wall must date from the Colonial period. Therefore Indian labor must have been used to construct this colonial wall. Or what am I missing?
ReplyDeleteNorman: From 1672 until about 1740, the Sachem Nonnewaug had a contact era village here, five miles from the center of the Pomperaug Plantation. The house probably served as a Watch House, nominally owned by John Minor, the Indian Interpreter and Military leader of the group. It may have been a welcoming gesture for the Pootatuck band to build a house for the new English settler colonists as part of the Treaties made and witnessed by Minor - although they may have been paid laborers. In Cothren's history of Woodbury, he claims that all the "intervales" were planted in 1672 by the settler colonists, with the exception of those here in the Nonnewaug floodplain - because the Indians were living here and using them.
ReplyDeleteIn contrast, a retaining wall in the center of town with the bricks and blocks of English stone masonry: https://wakinguponturtleisland.blogspot.com/2016/04/retaining-walls-in-woodbury-ct.html
ReplyDeleteNote the use of mortar along the base.
ReplyDeleteAdding: the material is a type of rock that fractures horizontally. The absence of square blocks is not much of an explanation.
ReplyDeleteYou have (a) steel tool marks; (b) use of mortar; and (c) beautifying capstones. These are all hallmarks of non-native walls. As Norman comments, it could have been made with Indian labor, but hiding snakes in a wall is an activity with no explanation.
At times you have shown pictures of walls with "heads" and "eyes". Some of these are pretty convincing. Not this one. On the other hand: if all walls are snakes, then what does this tell us?
The cement was added by my wife's stepfather in the 1960s - which caused water to back up behind the stones, causing some of them to pitch forward.
ReplyDeleteWhy snakes?
"According to (James) Mooney (1900:458-459), the name Uktena is derived from akta, or eye, and implies being a “strong looker,” as everything is visible to it (i.e., it can see thoughts). From the same root is derived akta’tĭ, “to see into closely” which is also the Cherokee word for a magnifying lens and telescope. So the name Uktena implies that it sees thoughts and it does so in an accurate way; knowledge that comes in useful to predict enemy tactics (Jannie Loubser - E-mail communication July 21, 2015). "
Again, after visiting in person, Jannie Loubser, Curtiss Hoffman, and Luci Lavin all agreed that these were snakes (and turtles), Indigenous Iconography if you will, executed with metal European Tools, most likely sometime around the time of Contact in 1672.