As a boy, John Brown remembers traveling with his family to the wooded hills in northwest Rhode Island where his fellow Narragansett Indians gathered near stone piles they believe were left by ancient ancestors.

That belief is now at the center of a struggle between the rural town of North Smithfield and a developer who wants to build a 122-lot subdivision on the land.

The town suspects the piles are burial mounds, and has filed a lawsuit asking a judge to declare the land a historic burial ground. But the developer contends the piles were left behind by farmers or loggers, and has been pushing since 2001 to build.