Standing Stone

The stories handed down through the generations tell about an upright stone that would appear near Oneida villages.  Back in the time before the arrival of the newcomers, Oneida villages would relocate to better conditions and shortly thereafter the upright stone would be standing in their vicinity. Their are accounts of such stones in our present day community – one stone was said to have fallen from the sky and lodged so deep in the ground that it took a backhoe to remove it;  the other is back in the bush and bears the bands of a wampum belt. Because of this stone, Oneidas are called the “People of the Standing Stone”  or Onʌyota:aka.