For thousands of years, the Original People of this region have visited, lived, and been laid to rest at the confluence of the Wantastekw (West River) and Kwenitekw (Connecticut River), in what is now known as Brattleboro, VT. The significance of this place as sacred, both holding balance and exchanging Spirit, is acknowledged by the rare presence of petroglyphs – submerged due to hydro development over 100 years ago – and historically documented Indigenous burials.
With the adjacent riverbank under threat of development and extensive disturbance, Elnu (Vermont state-recognized) with Atowi Project in partnership with Vermont Land Trust, raised the funds to purchase the 2-acre parcel on the open market.
We are now renovating the building which has become our new tribal headquarters and a future cultural center where we can hold community gatherings and offer workshops and programs.
Significance of Place
Those who have an understanding of the cultures that create these physical, cosmological manifestations appreciate that contextual location is critical to their significance. The symbols in the bedrock are there for specific reasons, and they fulfill (in an ongoing manner) requisite roles, in the cultural understandings of the People who realized them. A lasting message to successive generations, they speak to a balancing of power, as an acknowledgment of the interplay of relationships and connections between the three-layered worlds: above [sky], middle [earth surface], and under[water or ground]. These carvings in the living rock are created by informed individuals on behalf of the communities for whom they are responsible and proximately situated in locations that allow access to these portals of exchange between worlds.
An illustration (drawing by T. Fitzpatrick) of the primary panel at “Indian Rock” from Edward Lenik’s “Picture Rocks” 2002
Current dispositions
Scuba diver Annette Spaulding has made it her lifelong passion to search for these symbols hidden deep beneath the river’s surface, with the added barrier of an accumulation of silt. With thousands of hours underwater over many years, she has recently begun to have some meaningful results. In the fall of 2015, she located a single face, similar to those on Bellows Falls, previously noted only once. Last year, toward the end of 2016, she thinks she may have found a partial thunderbird. She has returned since then to confirm that new lead. Local Abenaki representatives are in regular communication with her, to advise her as to protocol and stay apprised of the current status of her search. Annette remarks that bald eagles are often perched above her as she dives.
A single face relocated in 2015 by diver Annette Spaulding.