(click on the photos for an enlarged view)

The woods are full of stone architecture: stone walls, old house foundations, mill-races, quarries, water drainage systems, and structures whose purpose is not hard to guess. But the woods are also full of curious stone structures whose purpose is not clear. These include short semicircular embrasures, standing stones, isolated short courses of stone wall, stone circles, stone piles, petroglyphs, animal figures, and such a variety of material as to suggest many people over time using the landscape in many different ways.

Over the next three issues of this magazine, we will take a tour with pictures and descriptions of some places in the woods of Concord and vicinity. I will try to show some of these sites. There is often a hint that a structure was created for reasons that go beyond the material and the practical, so this tour will not be just a description; it will also be a search for hints of the sacred in the past and also in the present.

This time, we will take a visit to an arrow petroglyph in Acton, a house at the entrance of Nashoba, and a small stone circle at the top of Revolutionary Hill. They first two are both perhaps connected to the Nashoba Indian Praying Village. (See at right for a list of sites we will visit in the October and November issues.)

There are additional sites in this area, but never having located them, we will not be visiting them here. These include the Littleton Mounds and the underground chamber in Estabrook Woods in Concord.

These sites are fragile, and in some cases are still in use; so I have not given exact directions to the them, only clues.



The Nashoba Indian Praying Village
The Nashoba "Praying Indian Village" was set up during early colonial times, as a place where the Indians could be monitored and taught Christian "ways". There were seven such villages established in 1651-1658 by John Elliot and David Gookin. These were the first reservations. For example, Tahatawan, who sold the land of Concord to the white men, lived in Nashoba part of the time. Nashoba covered most of what is today Littleton and northeastern Boxboro. Parts of Nashoba, such as the Sarah Doublet Forest in Littleton, appear to have been little developed since the Indians lived there. Accordingly, stone structure in these woods may fairly be assumed to have been built by the original Indians or their descendents. Let's visit a stone structure here. (We are lucky to have a book like Trespassing by John Hanson Mitchell, that tells us more details about Nashoba.)

Acton Petroglyph
First we drive up Nagog Hill Road in Acton and cross into Nashoba. Along the way we might spot a petroglyph (top right). This Arrow Petroglyph points to a shallow stone bowl ten feet behind (click photo to see wider view, including the stone bowl). You can see the brush of feathers at the near end of the long line and can make out a triangular point separated by about a foot from the far end of the line. In between are several specific dots and cross-hatches. The grooves are well defined and of uniform depth and width. There is not much growth of lichen on this rocks, so either the markings are recent or perhaps the rock was only exposed recently, when the driveway was put in. One notices that the late afternoon light is full of color and that the pattern looks a bit like writing in the Celtic "Ogham" alphabet.

Continuing our drive up Nagog Hill road, we come to the southern edge of Nashoba.

House at the Entrance to Nashoba
This is just a bump in the woods. A sharp eyed friend (Derrick Gunn from Brant Rock Mass - not the little fellow pictured third from top) spotted this out the car window one time as we drove by. In the picture you can see the corner of a "colonial" foundation behind the right-of-center tree.

Now let's go up to the opening and have a look inside. They must have had a good sized central fireplace here; the whole middle portion of the foundation is filled with a support, rising as high as the walls; a solid sub-rectangle within the larger rectangle of the enclosure. If this was built by the Indians, I imagine them sitting around a large indoor fire, like a long house. The dry stone technique is good but not out of the ordinary for these woods.

Now let's go down inside and look around. Over in the southwest corner (in the upper right of the above picture) there is a little niche in the wall of the foundation. It is a dark inverted triangle. Can you see anything inside (fourth photo from top)? Maybe if we get closer (fifth photo from top)...

Looking in, I see a cross of rock, with its main stem in a slight diagonal from upper left to lower right. The cross-arm is perpendicular, and nicely formed by broken away quadrants of rock. It would not be easy to break a rock in that pattern. In the middle is a greenish rock, pinned to the cross. The "pin" is a larger rock coming down from the right to a point and built solidly into the rest of the foundation. It is all part of the original construction. But let's take a closer look at the greenish rock in the middle (photo second from bottom).

After searching for stone tools for several years, it is not hard to recognize a small handaxe, but the picture is not very convincing. The tool appears to be made of a pale green Gneiss, a different material from the other rocks. [The camera flash bulb also adds some green to the picture.]

To summarize: we have a "colonial" stone foundation, built in a place and at a time when only Indians lived here. This was the southeastern entrance to their imposed reservation land of Nashoba. The house had a large central fire place, not too different from a long house, but also not too different from the kinds of house foundations that are common in New England's woods. In the back, at the base of the foundation, is a built-in niche; and inside is something curious. A green handaxe is firmly pinned against a cross of stone.

Is the appearance of a crucifixion intentional? The niche is intentional, the green stone hand axe is deliberate. A rock, broken in the shape of a cross, and worked so carefully into the foundation probably is intentional. It would be irrational to suppose that this wasn't a deliberate act by the builder. What is the meaning of this? Can we not believe that the Indians of Nashoba were undergoing severe cultural stress? It would be a powerful symbolism to combine the new religion with the old religion: the old religion itself is the victim.

Stone Circle, Revolution Ridge, Concord
An old road leads up the east end of Revolution Ridge starting at Merriam's corner. At the top is a fine view westward, as well as a few features that may be colonial or more recent in origin. There is a shallow rectangular depression indicating an old house foundation, there is a little stone fire place used recently, and there is a small ring made of stone cobbles that are nearly buried in the moss (bottom photo). A few of the cobbles are missing. But you can make out one small cobble next to my son's right foot, and then follow approximately twelve other cobbles around in front of him and perhaps one more behind the pine tree near his left elbow. The circle is about 6 feet across.

There is no basis for assigning any age, origin, or purpose to this structure, except that it is well covered with moss, and provides a fine view westward. Today the ring is about twenty five feet back from the eroding bank It may not mean anything, but one time in the winter I found someone had left a pair of crossed sticks inside the ring. The little fireplace nearby has recent charcoal in it, so other people must know this location.

(part 1 of 3)