At the corner of Center Street and Portage Road, two Tuscarora men in bronze shield a settler mother and her baby — sculptor Susan Geissler's tribute to the morning of December nineteenth, eighteen thirteen, when Lewiston burned. Roughly thirty Tuscarora men charged off the escarpment toward attackers who outnumbered them about thirty to one, blowing horns and shouting until they sounded like an army — a bluff that bought the village's fleeing families time to escape. The British burned the Tuscarora village in reprisal. Dedicated on the event's two hundredth anniversary, the monument carries the coordinates of the spot where the Tuscarora met the attackers engraved on the lead figure's leg, and holds a time capsule sealed until the year twenty-two thirteen. The Tuscarora Nation remains a sovereign neighbor today, just up the escarpment from here.
Eyes right at the corner — there they are, in bronze, a little larger than life: the Tuscarora Heroes Monument, sculpted by Susan Geissler and dedicated on December nineteenth, twenty thirteen — two hundred years to the day after the burning. Two Tuscarora men shielding a settler mother and the baby in her arms: the rescue, caught at the moment it happened. The figures face the street, so you'll catch them even rolling past. And here's the part that matters most — the Tuscarora Nation is not a memory. It is a sovereign nation today, minutes east of this corner, up on the same escarpment those men came charging down. Now, a few blocks ahead, turn left on Fourth Street. We're going to Artpark, parking down by the river.
