Crossing the Line

Visualization of the map of the Military Tract of Central New York by Simeon DeWitt, circa 1792

This project is a visualization of a map that instrumental in settlement and colonization of Central NY State in the earlier years of the foundation of the United States. A commentary on conflicting and violent history, the installation uses debris of the colonial settlement to visualize the consequence of drawing a map.

A single line on paper can project power and bring about devastation. This installation is a platform for the multiple sides of history to be made visible, acknowledged, and discussed.

In 1792 the future of Central New York was drawn with a quill pen on parchment paper at the scale of 1 inch to 1 mile. The Military Tract of Central New York map (part of Kroch Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, facsimile shown on the back), which is approximately 30 x 40 inches in size, established 28 townships and subdivided nearly two million acres of land into roughly square, 600-acre lots for settlement by the veterans of the American Revolution as payment for their service in the War for Independence. From the standpoint of settlers, this resulting collection of perpendicular lines imposed perceived order onto then unknown geological and cultural formation (Simeon DeWitt used this same strategy in Manhattan 20 years later in the famous 1811 Commissioners Plan). These lines also precipitated the violent dispossession of the indigenous peoples of what is now Central New York.

This structure spans one of the lines on DeWitt’s map—the western boundary of subdivision No. 92 in the Township of Ulysses (#22). At 140 feet, the installation’s span is the width of the ink line at full scale. The top of the structure references the flat sheet of paper onto which the original map was drawn, the bottom negotiates the natural topography of the slope. The grassy meadow on the slope below will become a full-scale projection of a segment of the north-south ink line running directly through Libe Slope towards Falls and Cascadilla creeks.

All living, working, and studying in the Finger Lakes region are affected by the 1792 DeWitt map, a drawing that was undoubtedly instrumental in laying out the path of development of Central New York as we now know it, but that also played a major part in the assault on the sovereignty of this area’s indigenous population—the Haudenosaunee (Six Nations). Dewitt’s stroke of a pen placed national power on the side of the settlers and the last two centuries of the area’s history was written from their perspective. The ancient Greek and Roman names given to these new townships (i.e. Ulysses, now Ithaca) erased many of the indigenous names in public records/maps in the process. A military force, led by Major General John Sullivan, was sent by George Washington to both survey the area and destroy the livelihood of the indigenous population. The quotes on either side of this structure refer to that event. Despite subsequent (and still disputed) treaties, two large reservations on the original DeWitt map shrunk dramatically in the following decades (and by the time of the 1830 New York State Atlas, one of them, Cayuga Reservation, was not shown at all). The struggle of the native populations of this land continues to this day.

This installation, constructed out of two centuries of debris from the colonial settlement of Central New York, is a representation of a past that many now take for granted and that still brings pain and suffering to many more.