R.I. Pond’s Drawdown Reveals What Could be Native American Burial Ground
By Dan D'Ambrosio / ecoRI News contributor
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Rhode Island state archaeologist Charlotte Taylor said she
has not yet been able to visit the site, which is accessible only from the
Connecticut side of the pond. There are many unknowns about the site, according
to Taylor, who has seen photos.
“It does not look like a typical Rhode Island Native
American past period burial,” Taylor said. “These burials weren’t usually
demarcated by rock piles on top in a rectangular way.”
It’s also not clear who owns the site.
“It could be private property; then it is the property of
the owner of the land,” Taylor said.
Even if the site turns out to be on private property, it
would still be protected by Rhode Island’s law prohibiting disturbing burial
grounds, according to Taylor.
“Someone going in and digging up a possible burial would be
against the law,” Taylor said.
Connecticut state archaeologist Sarah Sportman first learned
of the possible burial ground in January, when she got a call from a reporter
for The Day newspaper in New London.
“She reached out to me about information on it because someone locally reached out to her,” Sportman said. “They were draining the pond water level and there was local oral tradition that there was a Native American burial ground there.”
The water level in Old Killingly Pond has plummeted by some
10 feet since last fall, when the private owners of the dam that forms the
pond, Wright Investors’ Service Holdings Inc. (WISH), in Mt. Kisco, New York,
opened the lower outlet of the dam for safety reasons. An investigation by the
Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) showed
significant seepage from the dam, clouded with sediment, which may indicate
“piping,” an erosion of the dam from the inside out.
After being tipped off by The Day reporter, Sportman started
looking into the site and quickly realized it was on the Rhode Island side of
the pond straddling the border with Connecticut, and therefore not in her
jurisdiction. She reached out to Taylor to let her know about the site.
“It would fall under Rhode Island’s purview to protect this
place,” Sportman said.
Curious nevertheless, Sportman did some further
investigating and dug up a short item from the 1960s in the newsletter of the
Archaeology Society of Connecticut, which said the editor of the newsletter had
recently received word of an ancient cemetery just over the Connecticut border
with Rhode Island.
The newsletter item said people were digging for gravel in
the area when they discovered a human skull and took it to Brown University,
where it was determined to be of Native American origin.
“This could go as far back as the 1950s that this happened,”
Sportman said. “I don’t know for sure it’s the same spot — there’s no map — but
it does say a pond just on the other side of the Connecticut line, so it fits
with the story.”
Once the weather permits, Taylor is planning to
“reconnoiter” the site. If the site is clearly marked as private property,
Taylor said she would turn back, but she wants to make sure people aren’t
already digging into the rocks.
“Hundreds of thousands of people have lived here over
thousands of years,” Taylor said. “There’s some places where there are known
Native American burials in large numbers. They do turn up during discovery for
construction and projects. I review every project in the state that needs a
state or federal permit with concerns about unmarked Native American burials.”
Whenever possible, Taylor does not reveal the location of
these burial sites publicly.
“You want to protect them, you don’t want to tell people
where they are,” Taylor said. “There are people who will go to a burial site,
dig up a skull and put it on their mantlepiece.”
John Brown is the historic preservation officer for the
Narragansett Indian Tribe. Like Taylor, Brown has not visited the site at Old
Killingly Pond. He said he’s waiting for the state to work out the jurisdiction
of the site, but suggested a scenario that would ensure its preservation.
“If people wish to give us the property, we’ll take it and
protect it, but for right now we don’t know who the responsible party is,”
Brown said.
Both Taylor and Brown agree the best way to protect the site
would be to put it back underwater, which would not only block access once
again, but would also prevent damage from exposure to the environment.
If historic properties have been underwater for 75 or 100
years, anything that interacts with the air has the potential for being
destroyed. That includes stone.”
— John Brown, historic preservation officer for the Narragansett Indian Tribe
Putting the site back underwater would require WISH
repairing the dam, something the company has not so far shown a willingness to
do, much to the consternation of Killingly residents who live on the shores of
the depleted pond.
WISH has 30 days from Feb. 6 to tell DEEP what it plans to
do with its ailing dam. If it doesn’t want to repair the dam and return the
water level of Old Killingly Pond to its former level — covering up the
potential burial site — then it will require a new permit from DEEP to keep the
lower outlet on the dam open, which will trigger public hearings.
WISH owns a total of five historic dams in the area, built
two centuries ago to power sawmills and textile factories, and has been trying
for years to give them away. Both the state of Connecticut and the town of
Killingly refused the offer, citing the economic liability the dams represent.
Brown said the Narragansett Tribe would take the dams if
WISH offered them. He reached out to WISH, but did not hear back.
“My office is open for the idea of attaining the properties
and maintaining the dams,” he said. “That’s what we’re there for. It’s not like
we don’t have other properties we take care of in Rhode Island, Massachusetts,
Connecticut and Vermont.”