Beaver Brook Pt 1- "Sachem Seat" & Over-look

Beaver Brook Pt 1- "Sachem Seat" & Over-look 

Beaver Brook is the brook that runs behind the College Rock/ Rocky Woods hiking trails in Hopkinton, Holliston and Milford, MA.  These conservation woods are immediatley down-hill from Echo Lake, and are loaded with stone-works.  To put this series of posts on Beaver Brook into better perspective here is a link to a post I made about the Echo Lake Chamber/ Stone Lodge- http://www.nativenewenglandstones.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-echo-lake-stone-lodge-chamber.html 

So, this is all a part of the "Greater Echo Lake Area", land that native people in the area held on to up through 1715, well after the last Indian war of this area to break up the native nations, the King Philip's War of 1675/76.  What is today Echo Lake is the headwaters of the Charles, Sudbury and Blackstone rivers, a very ceremonial place to pre-colonial native people, obviously remembered into colonial times, perhaps one of the places that was heavily populated thousands of years ago after changes to the landscape happened such as flooding and earthquakes.  Here is a link to Dr. Jack Dempsey's timeline for more information on these catastrophe's/ changes to the New England landscape that native people experienced thousands of years ago-  http://www.ancientlights.org/tl1.html

In pre-colonial times Beaver Brook was navigable by canoe/ mishoon (dug-out).  As we will see in the later posts in this series, the sides of this river are terraced with stone walls, a great feat of ancient engineering design, probably to prevent flooding and /or to direct the flow of water.  We will also see that there are terraced water-falls and worked-out boulders within the brook, creating a fountain effect, also to direct the flow of the water, as well as a stone fishing weir.  There are also stone mounds on the upper banks of the brook, as well as a collapsed stone structure of some sort, possibly a chamber, with a standing stone still in place.  All along the hill-side are cairn fields over-looking the brook.

For this first post, hitting it hard-core on Beaver Brook I've decided to focus on what some researcher's would call a "throne" stone, or as I put it, a "sachem seat" over-looking the brook on a high ledge and some of the surrounding features.  Check it out-

On a high elevation over-looking the brook is this worked-out boulder and placement arrangment, the "Sachem Seat".  A placce where Earth, Sky and Water meet-

Another angle-

Stone wall meandering up the ledge, going right up to the boulder-

The boulder in the distance w/ the stone wall meandering towards it-

A cairn a few yards away from the boulder, probably an astronomical alignment-

Standing Stone-

Stone circle next to a propped boulder on the ledge-

A platform that has been placed on the ledge, over-looking the brook-

Stone wall spiraling up the ledge-

People would tell you that this old backroad is an old colonial path.  Well, seeing as how this place was Indian territory until 1715, it was obviously a Native route/ path long before colonial times, at least in parts.  Note how the street spirals, which is a classic Native feature-