Skitts holds on to mysteries

[LarryKS]

Skitts holds on to mysteries
By Matt Weeks

Mound's origin could date to the 'Hopewell culture'

Sometimes a camera lens uncovers a mystery. It was an aerial shot of Ray Rogers' property on Skitts Mountain in southern White County that first revealed the raised, mound-like embankment.

For years he and relative James Rogers walked over and around the Indian mound without noticing what it really was.

"You can't see it from the ground," he said.

The photo, made during a survey, led him to take a closer look.

A June visit from Max White, a professor of anthropology at Piedmont College in Demorest and an expert in local history, was supposed to shed some light on the issue. But in some cases, more questions were raised.

"It's not a temple mound; the temple mounds like the ones in Nacoochee Valley were usually square. My guess is that this is from the Hopewell culture, dating to the first 400 years after Christ," White said after arriving. "We don't know the function of it."

According to White, the Hopewell people were spread across the nation and centered in Ohio. They traded with each other regularly, which explains how seashells found at Rogers' mound made it inland here and to primitive graves in the north.

But it doesn't explain why the mound was made.

"They built it for a purpose, we just don't know what it is," White said.

He believes the mound was created by scraping away dirt and leveling off a hill that was in place.

A dig on the site probably wouldn't yield anything significant, White said.

The Rogerses did previously make a small hole where they found some baked stones, but nothing of historical importance.

There's no written record from the time. The only marking found on the mountain is a native marking on a gneiss stone near the mountain's peak.

No one has yet been able to translate it.

The mound is now overgrown with foliage that is bright green with muted reds and dotted with wild yellow and purple flowers. Dandelion, clover and weeds spread over the mystery.

White scans the mound with purposeful steps. He's looking for something, an arrowhead, a shard of pottery, anything to provide a clue to the identities of the ancient people of Skitts Mountain.

James Rogers said there are arrowheads strewn across the mountain. He asks if he can show White where rocks are cut and marked in odd ways.

The mound, he adds cryptically, is not the only mystery on the mountain.

As if to prove the point, Ray Rogers tells about a hole on this side of the mountain. During the fall equinox, and only during that time, Rogers said, a light shines straight through it, touching the earth near the mound.

White said he'd like to see that in the future. But for now, the party sets out for the mountain's other face.

The mystery grows

On the other side of the mountain, property owner Ron Wiley has his own mysteries to explore.

After guiding the party around dusty hills and through light brush, he points to a slab of rock with five shallow holes primitively hacked in a straight line.

"What is that?" he asks White.

White tells him it was probably early white settlers trying to break the slab to make a chimney.

Wiley nods. White's the fourth professional to guess at the stone's markings. A geologist, an archaeologist and another anthropologist have already cast their opinions.

"The geologist said he didn't know. The archaeologist said Indians did do it," Wiley said.

The anthropologist, a Native American, told Wiley it was a marking indicating five medicine men in the area. He also told Wiley that a rock a few yards away with a line running down its center like a split in old wood marked the grave of a dead Native American.

"He said he'd help me out so he got a great horned owl's feather and tied it on the tree there," to scare spirits away, Wiley said.

White didn't believe the story; he thinks the rock's line is caused by erosion.

Wiley didn't buy the tale either, but he added that if something comes to get him for messing with the rocks near the grave, "I'm putting those rocks back quick."

The stone marking

At the top of the mountain, Wiley shows off a light marking in gneiss stone. The light gray etching is fading into the gritty rock, becoming almost invisible.

White said the marking looks like it was made purposefully, but it doesn't match any text he's ever seen.

"I don't know what to make of it," he said.

So the marking remains, looking like a circle and a half moon connected by a line.

Rogers and Wiley remember the spot from a story James Rogers' father used to tell.

Old men used to sit on the rocks and let their dogs loose to chase foxes. They'd shoot the foxes as they ran past and sip white liquor in the downtime.

This story, and the others that Wiley and Rogers tell, are the first documented stories of Skitts Mountain.

Their blood is tied to the mountain.

The pace hasn't changed must since the old times. Wiley rides on a tractor about as fast as a man can walk. He's spent enough time in the woods to know which rocks show their souls through perfectly symmetrical holes.

He directs visitors around the graveled curves and dusty hills to show off sun-impacted boulders and trees with goblins in them.

The machine of the mountain is his to oil now.

"I'm not gonna skin it up anymore," he said. "I'm just gonna beautify it."

On his daily journeys, Wiley has found arrowheads, a grinding stone and the bowl of a pipe. All remnants of past cultures who inhabited the area.

He keeps the arrowheads in a sealed bag at his home near the mountaintop. He's stuck a hollow reed into the pipe bowl.

"It still smokes pretty good," he said.

Some of sharply tooled arrowheads date to 4,000 B.C. They offer evidence that even before Jesus' time, people called the mountain home.

Today Rogers and Wiley are the guardians of the mountain's cryptic history, a charge they both take seriously.

Before he left, White pulled Ray Rogers aside.

"Don't let anybody mess with this," White said, referring to the mound.

"I won't," Rogers replied. "I just need to cut the weeds."

[Satorilost]

No pictures?
"It still smokes pretty good," he said.
That's Classic.
I wonder if he found a long enough stone knife
if he'd be cuttin' his steak with it

Robert