Manitous in the Snow

Saturday afternoon I thought I'd visit one of my favorite sites two hours before the snow was predicted to start.  After 15 minutes of hiking, it started snowing heavily.  At this site, the rock projects from the ground in massive outcrops.  The rock is in thin layers that split easily, so the natives took advantage of this and left some ghostly manitous.
     Here is an outcrop with stone broken into slabs.

By this outcrop runs a stream where a  few small slabs have been left in a standing position.  This may be natural, but they seem to have be placed in a group.

Along a trail following the edge of  a cliff, there are some large manitous.  First a tall thin one,

then 560 feet later, a wide, broken one. Perhaps they marked the trail, or the edges of campsites.

At the end of the trail, a view of a group of manitous on the steep slope of a neighboring hill.

Here is a better picture taken a few years ago.

 This group consists of  at least five tall, thin slabs standing close together, and many small manitous standing directly in front and downhill of them. Here is a drawing I did a few years ago, to try and separate out the different slabs.

There are many manitous  at this northern RI site, and some stand in groups.  There are few or no manitous at other sites in this area where the stone does not break into thin slabs. There probably was no reason to move these small slabs more than 1500 feet from the outcrop they were broken from. If the manitous have some spiritual significance, it is linked to their site of origin.  Next time I will show a site with many of these grouped manitous.