Indian Rocks

Introduction – a new book to read

Recently a friend of mine, Dixie Brown, sent me a copy of a book, “Manitou: The Sacred Landscape of New England’s Native Civilization” by James W. Mavor, Jr. and Byron E. Dix. She knew the Mavor family growing up and thought that I might like it, especially as it made many references to Ezra Stiles. I had read a book written by Ezra Stiles in the course of my research about the Friends of the Regicides which I blogged about last month (see here).

The prologue to this book begins with the following:

“The early seventeenth-century English settlers of America called the land New England because, among other reasons, it reminded them of home; they saw stone walls, standing stones and stone heaps like those of the English countryside. This remarkable collection of man-made works, now largely hidden and ignored in the modern forests, is awesome in quantity, size, and complexity, but its origins and functions have remained unknown.”

I’m still working slowly through this book, being deliberate in my reading as there is much detail to absorb and I want to appreciate all the nuances of the authors. It gets confusing at times because the two authors use third person to refer to themselves individually – for example the opening phrase of chapter reads, “In the summer of 1974 Byron Dix discovered …” and a few pages later when Mavor is introduced it reads, “Although Mavor had been only casually interested …”. But from then on it continues using the names “Mavor” and either “Byron” or “Dix” to refer to one of them (or “he/his” as appropriate pronouns). But when the two authors are working together it switches from third person to first person and uses “we/us/our” rather than the more consistent “they/them/their”.

While for the most part I am avoiding reading ahead so that I can let the investigation unfold, I did scan the index before I began – initially just seeing how many times Ezra Stiles was mentioned and in what context. But then I noticed that the city of Waterbury, CT was mentioned on page 133 and thought I’d see where in that city the authors had found something of interest. This blog is about my further exploration into that single reference on page 133.

 

Page 133 – a first sign of problems

There is a single paragraph on page 133 that led me to do some focused research. This paragraph reads:

“The Algonquian dialects contain numerous words meaning cedar swamp, with variants depending upon the environment. Similarly, there are many words for the confluence of streams and for stone mounds, implying cultural importance.²² Curious boulders located at the edge of swamps are part of Indian legend. In the region about Bristol, Connecticut, there was a white cedar swamp which was flooded in the 1870s to make present Fall Mountain Lake, a reservoir for the factories of Waterbury, Connecticut. Norton observed that a large boulder, perched on three smaller boulders was located at the edge of the swamp and known locally as Indian Rock. Also on the edge of that same swamp there is a large rock known as Witch Rock and near it another, balanced precariously on a small area of support, that figures in Indian legends.^26"

Having already noted the issues with first/third person case inconsistency, even before getting into the content of this paragraph, I find two other examples of lack of care in the production of this book. First, the superscript 22 in the third line above is a typo. The prior paragraph has a superscript of 24 and the superscript of 26 is at the end of the above paragraph. This “22” is a misprint of “25” as a quick check of the endnotes of the book confirms. The second issue is that the authors have chosen to put Waterbury into the index of the book and have omitted putting a reference to Bristol into the index. But the rocks mentioned are in Bristol and the fact that the water in the swamp eventually flows into Waterbury is clearly not important to the story.

These evidences of lack of care in the production of the book are only the first signs of problems of actual content. But before getting into the research, let me reproduce the endnote 26 as that is also important.

26. M. L. Norton, “The Story of Fall Mountain” and “Indians of Bristol and Vicinity,” in Bristol, Connecticut, no author, (Hartford: 1907), 15, 125.

M. L. Norton is Milo Leon Norton (1849-1932) who was a long-time resident of Bristol. He was also a distant cousin of mine, as were many of the other individuals he mentions, as the people who lived in the higher elevations in that part of Bristol, like the residents of my hometown of Wolcott to the immediate south, moved to that area in the mid-1700s from other earlier settled town like Farmington, Wallingford, and New Haven (see here).

 

Looking at other sources – and finding errors of fact

I grew up in the north end of Wolcott, CT, and my parents lived in the same house for 60 years. So I am very familiar with all the geography and history of that area. There are a couple of statements in the above paragraph on page 133 that are misleading or just plain untrue.

Name of Lake – The author gives a name to this former cedar swamp of Fall Mountain Lake. While there is a lake of that name just over the border from Bristol in Plymouth, CT, that is not the body of water that Norton references in his writings. Rather, the lake referred to was originally called Cedar Swamp Pond, and is now called just Cedar Lake. Norton never gives the name of the lake, although he does use the term “Fall Mountain” which is the name of that entire area of Bristol. In the below map you can see the “Fall Mountain School” – so named because it served the students of the Fall Mountain school district which occupied the SW corner of Bristol. But giving the lake an incorrect name in the Manitou book is clearly a mistake by those authors, not of Norton. (In this map the Russell family property is at the bottom right corner. The stream entering Cedar Swamp Pond originates in Russell’s Pond, now part of the Russell Preserve of the local land conservation organization. It’s only a mile from our house to the NE corner of the lake where Indian Rock is located.)

[map of Fall Mountain portion of Bristol]

 

Timing of Lake Construction – While it may be correct that the 1870s were significant in the flooding of the cedar swamp, the timing is quite a bit more nuanced than that single date implies. The Wolcott Historical Society maintains a website that include a series of maps of the town. In the 1868 map you can see that an initial dam already exists. In writing about the various bodies of water in the town (see here) , they note that the Mad River Water Company began purchasing water rights in the early 1860s and completed construction of the reservoirs, including Cedar Swamp Pond by 1874. Finally, the Cedar Lake Owners Association, which purchased the water rights from the Mad River Water Company, records on their website that the dam was raised around 1907 that extended the lake to its present size. You can see the changes in size of the Pond/Reservoir/Lake over the years on the above maps. It’s confusing to me that since Norton was writing his article about the area in 1907, the same time as the raising of the dam was occurring, that he does not mention it.

The names of the various rocks referred to are preserved in the Indian Rock Nature Preserve at the NE corner of the lake, and in Witches Rock Rd which runs along the west side of the lake (the name changes to Spindle Hill Rd when the road crosses over into Wolcott).

 

Errors of intent – making the facts match the narrative

The errors that bother me the most are those where it appears that the book authors have a predetermined narrative and have used words or nuance to make the facts support that narrative.

Origin of Rocks – In the second sentence of the prologue (quoted above), the authors call these stones a “remarkable collection of man-made works”. The authors’ intent is clearly to pull together examples that support their narrative about rocks which demonstrate human activity.

Thus, in the paragraph on page 133 (quoted above), they describe these rocks in Bristol using the phrases “a large boulder, perched on three smaller boulders” and “balanced precariously on a small area of support” with the verbs “perched” and “balanced” chosen to represent human activity. Note that they use these verbs only for the two rocks with which they attribute Indian activity. The third rock in the paragraph, Witch Rock, is simply referred to as “there is a large rock”. Because it does not add anything to their narrative, there is no information given about the third rock, Witch Rock, but there are a number of interesting stories about that one (see here).

But these particular rocks were not “perched” or “balanced” with human activity. They are HUGE boulders. The below pictures give some idea of scale. There are two of Indian Rock – one is taken from Norton’s writing, the other is contemporary picture courtesy of Google maps street-view. The other is of the “balanced” rock and is from Norton’s writing but no scale is apparent and I have not been able to locate a contemporary picture.

[Indian Rock]

 

[Balanced Boulder]

 

Rocks of this type are not unusual in southern Connecticut. They were brought to the area in the last ice age. The ice sheet entered Connecticut about 26,000 years ago, reached its maximum about 21,000 years ago, and was melted out of the state by 15,500 years ago. In fact, in Norton’s writing he describes finding a “peculiar” boulder in this same area that he tried to find the source of in New Hampshire and Vermont and then had a friend who discovered similar rock near the St. Lawrence River in Canada. But the authors seem blinded by their narrative of human activity.

Indian Rock – It is true that there is a large rock of this name. But is it named that because of Indian legend? Let’s look closer at Norton’s writing.

On page 11, he recounts an incident where two men, Gideon Ives and Jesse Gaylord (1735-1782), were hunting in the area near the cedar swamp. Gaylord saw an Indian taking aim at Ives and shot the Indian first. Norton notes that “the attempt upon the white man’s life was supposed to be because he was trespassing upon the private hunting-ground of the red man.” He also notes that “the Indian was known to the Whites as Morgan.” He then states that this determined the choice of location for Gaylord’s residence when he later moved to Bristol as “his first house being a few rods south of the big bowlder [sic], known as Indian Rock, or Rock House, from the fact that it was the temporary home of Morgan, who occupied the grotto underneath it when hunting in the vicinity."

Thus, the name of “Indian Rock” is not at all from some long-ago Indian legend, but from a historical incident involving a single individual.

Balanced Boulder – the “Indian legend” associated with this boulder is also fabricated. The picture of the balanced boulder above appears at the top of page 14. As captioned, this boulder is located near Witch Rock. Also on this same page appears a story about an Indian named Zach. A teen by the name of Newton Manruss was fishing in the brook that flows into the mine pond west of Zach’s Mountain when he took refuge under a shelving rock (obviously not the balanced boulder as that boulder is neither a shelving rock nor is it located near the area of the story). Newton found the skeleton of an Indian – it was not known whether he had been murdered or died a natural death and was buried by his friends. Norton then concludes by writing, “How many tragedies, unwritten and unknown, may have taken place on these hills in the far-off centuries, when the red men hunted each other with the ferocity of panthers, and the cunning of foxes!”

Thus, simply because of juxtaposition on a page, the authors have taken the musing of Norton and associated it with a “balanced rock” then stating that it “figures in Indian legends”.

 

Conclusions

I am enjoying reading the various articles in the book about Bristol, Connecticut, and increasing my knowledge of the area. I am also slowly working through the Manitou book. But of the latter I am now doing so with a skeptical eye and a recognition that the authors, in addition to being sloppy with their facts and writing, seem to have been clouded by the narrative that underlies their research and seem to be fitting their findings to the narrative rather than the other way around.