#6 Sunset Rock

Appalachian Travel Blog: Episode 6 – Stalking the Lore and Mystery of Place:

Meditating on Chief Wetonah’s Sunset Rock on Mt. Pisgah

 

This is a blog done on different days – thus the time differences.

Finally I had opportunity to visit the summit of Mt. Pisgah in Northeast Pennsylvania when the county park re-opened in May. This is one of the highest mountains in this region and has great views and legends. In the late 1700’s the Oneida Chief Wetonah was said to spend many hours meditating here on Sunset Rock and roaming and hunting along the slopes. Since I know a few Oneida songs I sang one as I approached and during a few hours of roaming around – looking for Sunset Rock. The trails were barely visible in some parts and I have not yet found the rock. I did manage to sit in several spots with long views and meditate. Aside from a few folk when I arrived there was no one on the mountain with me. I was alone in the quiet on a fine May afternoon. When I arrived there were two large crows on the highest of the com towers there – one making a funny woodpecker like call. I considered it a greeting. During the day we talked in crow language as there were quite a few of them around. Other animal friends encountered were songbirds, a rabbit, a tan snake, grouse, turkey, chipmunks, and a hawk. A few days ago my wife found me an old pair of binoculars which proved useful on these excursions. Armed with my Oneida song I wandered alone in the woods, trails, and thickets for quite a while. I have sang these songs at several of the very awesome waterfalls around the nearby Finger Lakes of New York as well. At one point I smelled coumarin – the vanilla-like scent which is present in sweetgrass, sweet woodruff, and other plants. Perhaps it was the recently cut-grass of the park area or maybe even that mixed with the flowering honeysuckle bushes. I suppose being-essence may appear in anything: rocks, trees, animals, elements, sights, smells, and sounds. Before I left I found a small feather of one of the crows – for the medicine bundle of mind. The intelligence or animism of nature seems an intuitive suspicion. We are probably not separate from that intelligence. It seems that it is within us as well. Perhaps if we listen we will hear. The animism of indigenous peoples, the ‘biophilia’ of E.O. Wilson, the ‘biosphere consciousness’ of Jeremy Rifkin, the ‘morphic resonance’ of Rupert Sheldrake, the lore of magick – these all indicate an intuitive knowledge of natural intelligence.

I made a general prayer for supplicating the spirits of place to offer for subsequent visits here and other places:

Oh being-essences of nature

May we talk and work with one another
For the health and balance of we, all, and the world
May we come to know and not fear the deeps
May we smile with one another in simplicity and moderation
May the calm and awareness of here and now accompany us everywhere
May we be careful in our activities, watching out for one another
May our friendliness to all beings be deep and continuous
May we inspire this friendliness in others

Beautiful places beckon us to be aware, if only to‘experience’ the beauty of the special place or event. We tend to want to really experience the sunset, the eclipse, the waterfall, the mountaintop, the gorge, the river, the ancient mound or ruins. As animists, mages, and shamans we look for signs and synchronicities, confirmations that we and the being-essences of nature are in communication. It seems that our very effort in being aware, in being open to such communication fosters it. Seeking signs and synchronicity is the same as seeking dreams and visions. Traditionally one goes to extremes in such seeking: seclusion, fasting, sacred plants, etc. Setting aside such time and preparation is not very practical these days for most, me included.However, being mindful of whatever you are doing is always possible.

 

 

A few days later I was able to visit again briefly – since I am working at a site about 15 minutes away. I think I may have found Chief Wetonah’s Sunset Rock but I am not sure yet since I need to compare pictures. There were a few ribbons on trees right on the spot beyond the very faint hint of a path that leads to it. If so, there is no view there as large Hemlock trees are there but it does seem a nice place and I was able to offer my prayer there. The crows were there again and a buck snorted at me from the bush. I found another crow feather on my way in. Again there was no one else on the mountain. I could hear pleasant birdsong, crowsong, and the chirping of chipmunks.

Natives and Invasives clash and intermingle

The pleasant May Realm materializes
Black Moon yields the sky to Gendenwitha (Venus)
I supplicate the warrior-contemplator
The earth yields its treasures all around
I follow the secret shapes of the deep and the past
I long for meaning and flow and effective caring
The seeker moves to the sought and games of illusion continue
Perhaps only the seekless one knows rest
Motion and stillness are illusion-realities of time and no-time
All situations remain unresolved and yet laughter and play appear
Birth, Old Age, Sickness, and Death, over and over and again
Beings of the Wheel know not the Beyond


     

 Just got a Kindle book about Iroquois Supernaturalism. So far it is interesting but I am not sure how accurate to original traditions it is. It seems that Christianity penetrated these and other eastern tribes quite early in the 1700’s and I suspect from reading that it affected and re-colored their magical traditions quite a bit. I wondered about the demon-bear. The authors mote that it could be an ancestral memory of the giant vicious bears called Arcturus that were present in the area when the natives first arrived (presumably from Siberia).  This area is quite populated in black bears and I was hoping not to have an encounter with them. I have seen them from a distance while walking and many times while driving. I saw fresh scat but I was pretty sure it was deer though I have only seen bear scat thick with berries in the autumn when they are filling up for the winter.

In another visit to the mountain I have confirmed from matching the pictures that I have found Chief Wetonah’a meditation rock – rather quite hidden in woods but also reasonably accessible. I sat there and meditated for quite a while in the comfortable afternoon with my shoes off. The rock is quite conducive for sitting in lotus posture. On the way out very near the rock I noticed a strange oblong mound that I imagined could be the grave of the old warrior-chief. I read about the Huron custom of periodically digging up the graves of ancestors to make offerings to them and to interact with the bones, perhaps a way to keep connections with beloved ancestors. The Huron are an Iroquoian-speaking tribe and so the Iroquois tribes may very well have had similar customs. Next day I returned and played a little flute on the rock and sat for more meditation. The chief was said to spend many hours meditating on the rock. When sitting on the rock cross-legged in the obvious spot one faces directly west. Though there are now large hemlock trees over 100ft tall obstructing much of the view I would say when the leaves are down one could well gaze on the sunset in the deciduous gaps. It is said that the Oneida tribe (one of the six tribes of the Iroquois federation) inhabited the mountaintop with a spring below providing water. In the late 1800s a hotel/resort was built on the hilltop with an 80 ft tower. Windstorms damaged trees and probably weakened the building. It was torn down in 1918. It was marketed as a place of healing with clean mountain air. The Oneida tribe are called ‘the people of the rock’ or the ‘people of the standing stone’ with the rock considered to be like a world tree. Their creation stories have them rising from the earth. They were supposed to have inhabited New York lands more to the east so I am a little perplexed that they lived here. According to maps it would have been the Cayuga that lived this far west. The Oneida were originally near Syracuse and Utica just southwest of the Adirondacks. Their Iroquois neighbors were the Mohawk and Onondaga tribes around Lake Champlain and the Adirondacks.

 

                                            see wind farms on distant Armenia Mountain


                                                                                                    fern and fern shadow

A 2^nd visit to the awesome museum in Athens PA and one to the historical society in Towanda PA brought more knowledge of the native past, often colorful. The land there about 10 miles from the mountain was first inhabited by the Susquehannock tribes –possibly the same overall group encountered by Smith at Jamestown. They spoke an Iroquoian language (as do the Cherokee from which I am said to have some genes.) The Susquehannock were enemies of the Iroquois federation and I read that they were expelled to the south between 1525 and 1550. The Iroquois federation was instigated by the well-known story of the Peacemaker and his friend Hiawatha sometime between 1100 AD and 1500 AD. Often a time period of the 1300’s is given. This allowed a group of tribes to band together against common threats and to stop the frequent warring amongst themselves. According to the woman at the museum the Susquehannock were very tall – bones estimated at 6ft 8 – often. Interestingly there is a story of the bones of Chief Wetonah being dug up and moved by the famed Seneca Chief Cornplanter in the early 1800’s. Assisted by a scientist – he is said to have estimated the height of the chief at 8ft. Beyond what I read from the County Park website and the plaques there, I was unable to find any other references to Chief Wetonah. He is noticeably absent from any websites about the Oneida or any of the Iroquois tribes. This area was really on the outskirts of Iroquois lands and the settlement at Athens was said to be of the Delaware tribe. The area is between two rivers where they come together – the Susquehanna and the Chemung. The word Chemung refers to mammoth – apparently many mammoth tusks have been found in the river and in other nearby areas, even recently. The leader of the Delaware tribe there in Greens Landing/Athens was a half-breed French Delaware named Esther Montour. She was known as Queen Esther and there are many conflicting legends about her. Some say she was tall and thin and very kind. Other say that she was tall and fat and very brutal. She was known to have sheltered some colonists from war-minded braves but one legend has her personally smashing the skulls of 15 colonists in revenge for a raid that killed her son. Another strange legend from the area (downriver) is that of the French Azilum, said to be the place where the ‘dauphin’ – the heir to the French throne (Louis XVI) was taken for safety after the French Revolution beheading of his mother Marie Antoinette. Yet another strange spot is a glacial moraine that makes an odd short hill like a large broad mound. This is called Spanish Hill and has all sorts of legends about it. One was that it was occupied by an Algonquin or Iroquoian Susquehannock tribe who had a few Spanish cannons to aid them back in the 1600’s. There is even a strange word – Carantoan – that has something to do with the hill. Unfortunately it is currently privately owned and inaccessible.

I found a map of old Indian paths – one, the so-called Warrior’s Path runs along the Susquehanna. There are some very nice views on the hilltops and very fertile land along the rivers. This land was farmed by the Native Americans with corn, beans, squash, and pumpkin. I did see that one path – part of the very long Sheshequin Path - leads from the Susquehanna to Mt. Pisgah. I have thought that perhaps two external energies to which we always have access – in a psychic sense – are those of place and ancestors. We are always connected to the place we are and to the blood past in some way – one would think. Another one would be past incarnations but that one
is nearly impossible to know.                                 Confluence of Susquehanna and Chemung Rivers

Another interesting thing about place is that the original place-names have a great staying power. This is true of the name of rivers in Europe when researching Indo-European origins. It is also true of many places in the eastern U.S. where the original and sometimes adapted Euro-Americanized Native American names predominate.

Many early Indian wars were in this area. There were wars between small tribes and wars between the Iroquois federation and other tribes, especially Algonquian speakers. There were the French and Indian Wars, the later War of 1812, and the Revolutionary War – where the Oneida (and Tuscarora) tribes sided with the colonists as the others sided with the Brits and thus the federation was broken up. After this the Oneida became the target of the other Iroquoian tribes and battled especially with the Mohawk. The Oneida are also credited with bringing corn to keep Washington’s troops from starving through the winter at Valley Forge. The US army sent troops to the area to crush the Iroquois, sending them mostly to Canada, some Christianized Oneida went to Wisconsin, and the Seneca stayed on their current reservations around Salamanca, NY and along Lake Erie. The museums had many artifacts from the deep past to the more recent past. There were war clubs, one made of wood with a heavy ball on one end which came to a point. Another was a club-shaped piece of heavy stone. I wonder if there was ever a time of peace among the tribes. The legends and actions of the Peacemaker served to unite a group of tribes. There was a story of a similar figure who attempted the same among the Western tribes who failed to unite them. During the earlier periods of the Adena, Hopewell, and Fort Ancient cultures there were fairly large settlements with some agriculture in the Ohio and Mississippi River regions which may have been broken up due to wars, droughts, and/or plagues. Estimates for the amount of Native Americans that died of diseases introduced by Europeans such as smallpox vary up to 95%. However, it is generally known that the latest phase of the Mound cultures – the Fort Ancient Culture was gone before the arrival of Europeans.

                                                                 Mt. Pisgah

In a subsequent trip I was able to return to the meditation rock for another session. This time I brought offerings of corn and tobacco. We have been growing sacred tobacco, overwintering it in the greenhouse, with much success. I dried a few leaves over a couple of days, ground it, and offered some to the wind and some to the four directions and burned some as incense. Tobacco is by far the most important magical offering of most Native tribes. Though nowadays we see it can be addictive and gradually kill people, its power to be the offering par excellence to those in the spiritual realms among the shamanistic Native Americans is ever emphasized. The kind we grow is Nicotiniana tabacum but the guy we got the plants from also has Nicotiniana rusticum, the Hopi tobacco, aka South American Mapache, that is much more potent, with more nicotine. Both varieties are considered acceptable offerings in the Native communities with rusticum being too potent to smoke in pipes without adding other herbs or tabacum. I guess my wife did get some rustica but it was eaten by our geese so we will have to try to get more when we can. I also learned this summer at a workshop on Taino shamanism that the words ‘tobacco’ and ‘canoe’ are Taino words. The Taino are native peoples from the Caribbean – Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic, etc. Apparently they originally came from South America through Central America during Mayan times – picking up some cultural ideas from the Maya.

The latest visit includes the Global Ajna Chakra Working (a day late as usual):

Having finally gotten a good night’s sleep and a partial day off I made it to the top of the mountain at midday just today to do the Ajna Chakra Meditations. It is a very small park and I was alone on the mountain as usual. I went down into the woods to the hidden hint of a path (took me hours to find several weeks ago) to Sunset Rock, the rock where the Oneida warrior-chief Wetonah was said to have spent hours in meditation and lately has become my favorite meditation spot when in the area. I offered some of our homegrown tobacco to the four directions and to the wind and to the nearby humped ground I imagined to be the grave of this warrior from the late 1700’s. I burned some tobacco for incense as well. I took along a crow feather I found there a few weeks earlier. When I arrived I was greeted by a crow as usual. They seem to be the principle guardians of the place. I then began the Global Ajna Chakra Working. I recited the short invocation to Dionysus. I did the pranayama exercises – the kapalabhati was a bit hard on my nasty headache but the nadi shodhana and kumbacha seemed to help and put me in a very relaxed state. I then practiced outer trataka on a leaf flittering in the soft breeze and inner trataka on the third eye as described. I listened to the chakra tones and then sat meditating for a while. I heard a rustling in the woods. I was hoping it wasn’t bears since I had my shoes off and was not sure how much my leg was asleep after sitting in lotus for a while. Alas it was a fawn who came about 15 ft from me and turned around. The old chief was said to be a hunter and a lover of nature and to curse those who took more game than needed.