By Ruth Samuels

“There is an old Native American legend that the Finger Lakes came into being when the Great Spirit placed the imprint of his hand in blessing on the Upstate land.” So begins the mythology of the Finger Lakes, as retold and recycled by teachers to schoolchildren and devoted local residents to any curious visitors.

The Iroquois or Haudenosaunee are a historically powerful indigenous nation of the Northeast’s Finger Lakes region. In Haudenosaunee cosmology, it is told that the Earth was formed when a Sky Woman fell and was saved by a great turtle, who came up out of the waters. This turtle, or Great Island, is what the Haudenosaunee call North America. The Sky Woman bore twin sons, Enigorio, known as the good mind and Enigonhahetgea, the bad mind.

‘The good mind continued the works of creation,
and he formed numerous creeks
and rivers on the Great Island, and then created
numerous species of animals of
the smallest and greatest, to inhabit the forests, and fishes of all kinds to inhabit the waters… The bad mind, while his brother was making the universe, went throughout the Island and made numerous high mountains and falls of water, and great steeps, and also creates various reptiles which would be injurious to mankind.’ ⁱ

The Great Spirit idea, popularized by Christian missionaries, is a distortion of the “Gitche Manitou” mythos put into monotheistic, white Anglo-Saxon, God-like deification and understanding. It is not a Haudenosaunee or Iroquoian idea at all but one of distant Algonquian origin. From the actual Haudenosaunee themselves, there is no entity called the “Great Spirit.” When they use the term “Creator,” they mean Enigorio, the good mind.

Up high on a hill, way, way up, over the treetops cut for parking lots, over the heads of the townies and the swirling, misty firmament hanging in the valley, elevated over Earth itself, the elite Cornell University sits on its own, perched over the city of Ithaca and Cayuga Lake below.

Cornell University: 745 acres of campus which sprawl out to consume much of the surrounding landscape, growing to about 2,300 acres in actuality. Nestled comfortably among the rolling valleys of the Finger Lakes, the campus offers many vantages from lofty hills to grandiose green spaces.

To the North—whose connection to the heart of central campus is cleaved by the large and cavernous Fall Creek gorge, with its litany of waterfalls and running tributaries which descend and snake down from Beebe Lake—Cornell claims a thick congregation of large, loud dormitories, high rises, apartments, fraternities and sororities, a large soccer field and a small nature preserve known as Palmer Woods with winding trails and a disc golf course. All bleed into the adjacent residential neighborhood of Cayuga Heights, unilaterally linked and also elevated over the town.

To the East, there are more sporting fields, a student run organic farm, an apple orchard with experimental varieties, a dairy barn, a game farm, an equestrian center, and the 4,300 acre Cornell Botanic Gardens—featuring an arboretum, an herb garden, a wildflower garden, a vegetable garden, and a rambling spat of gorgeous green hills, flowers, trees, ponds, and manicured trails known colloquially as “The Plantations”—all stretching out into the vast expanse of rural farms and fields intercepted by forest which become Upstate New York backcountry and confederate flag territory.

To the South—where the slighter but still stately Cascadilla Creek Gorge clefts its connection to central campus—is Collegetown, a mixed-use neighborhood typical of university towns. Here, a dense multitude of apartments and businesses pop up and down in stature: a flash of cafes, restaurants of primarily Asian cuisine, and kitsch concept food spots such as a shaved ice cream joint and a destination serving cookies all night. All vie to catch your eye and fulfill every dopamine need. These loud, stimulating packed minutia of institutions sling down a street similar in effervescence to a New York City block. Collegetown is a space that is rancorously busy during the school year, and especially at night, but which clears out eerily and completely during the summer. Still, for most of the year, the whole area and its sound creeps up into more residential neighborhoods crawling up Ithaca’s South Hill.

To the West is “The Slope,” where central campus slips down a glowing stretch of falling lawn to a perpendicular street and a row of Gothic-style buildings (“the Gothics”) sitting old and staunch in the face, and another row of large residential, insular halls further down the hill beyond, and finally, Stewart Avenue, with its cooperative houses and apartments further beyond, which, after much wading and trenching down, slants into the town.

“The Slope,” sits at the true edge of campus, a precipice below another slanting lawn known as “The Arts Quad.” This verdant square is one of the largest crossroads on campus, a strong visual junction between the academic buildings of the Arts & Sciences college, with their odd and eclectic architectural styles of Classical, Neoclassical, and New England cobblestone buildings- owed entirely to the standard mimicry of ancient European university grandeur. Beyond this square and within the rest of gorge-bound central campus are ornate and eccentric Victorian buildings and more minimal but impressive international and modernist structures, forming a grand but sometimes anomalous mash of aesthetics.

To perch on the Slope is to ponder the magnificent view of the valley. Great minds gather here to muse over the land, but few venture down into town therein. All that students could ever need—3 am food trucks, a manmade lake, boba tea—is hoarded on the hill. A tall statue of the university’s founder, Ezra Cornell, stands just over The Slope looking inward to the Arts Quad, turning his back on the town below. This is what is visible and palpable about Cornell’s scape, and therefore what is known. Ithaca, like many American college towns, has a darker apparition of history cast in subtle wisps that you must already know- or else look for- to see.

Another largely ignored but glaring feature to this distinctive scape is that the university was built on indigenous land, with indigenous land. From the early- to the mid-19^th century, the United States government expropriated nearly 11 million acres of land from 245 indigenous tribal nations by way of 162 violence-backed treaties and seizures. In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed into law the Morrill Land Grant Act. The act promised states 30,000 acres of land per each congressional delegation the state held, provided that the land or the proceeds from its sale would establish colleges specialized in agriculture, mechanical arts (essentially engineering and applied sciences), and military training.ⁱⁱ

This process of genocide and seizure has become so linked to our conception of America’s “progress,” that the stories of and impact on indigenous tribes from this moment fall to the wayside, out of thought when walking the manicured lawns of an Ivy League University, statues of white settlers erected in place of indigenous voices and memories. This erasure was first augmented because the majority of native tribes identified with the British during the American Revolution. As a result, what became known as the Sullivan raids burned down villages, orchards, and homes, forcing indigenous peoples away from the lake and making room for the land allotments to the original white settlers in the late 18^th century.

The Morrill Act assumed that such erasures of indigenous populations had “cleared land.” Eastern states such as New York that were by that point fully occupied and had no “public” land remaining received vouchers—known as “scrips”—to claim distant lands. New York received a bounty of scrips, including a quarter-million acres redeemed in California and carefully selected valuable land for timber in Wisconsin to pay off its endowment.ⁱⁱ

Such moves to appropriate land to fund agricultural and mechanical colleges initially came at a time of war, but also reflected major education reform during the nineteenth century. Previously, higher education was defined only by small, sectarian colleges specializing in classical studies, liberal arts, and clergy training for the white, male elite. The passing of this bill marked a shift from traditional concepts of education to a liberal approach, both expanding what could be taught at colleges and broadening access to higher education in the United States.ⁱⁱ While only around 300 American men graduated with engineering degrees in 1866 from the six reputable colleges granting them, by 1911 the United States was graduating 3,000 engineers a year, with a total of 38,000 in the work force become the leader in technical education just 50 years after the Act passed.ⁱⁱⁱ

A recent article from the Editorial Board at the New York Times touted the Morrill Act’s passage as a strongarm heroism, revering Congress and President Lincoln for keeping their “eyes on the horizon.”^iv The 19^th century, in this view, was truly a time of great progress. The United States had its sights primarily pointed up high towards the future and innovation, ignoring how many of the original inhabitants were displaced and how much such expansion neglected the sustainability of the land, an atmosphere that remains in some incarnations at Cornell to this day.

Cornell was founded at the close of the Civil War in the spring of 1865 as New York State’s land grant institution on Ezra Cornell’s Ithaca, New York farm. Unlike other ivy league schools, it has been co-educational and non-sectarian since its inception. Although technically a private university, many of its activities are state-funded, including several of its constituent colleges and its cooperative extension. The cooperative extension fulfills the land grant’s mission, as it operates 56 offices spread out across each county in the state, each staffed with educators offering open programs in Agriculture and Food Systems; Children, Youth, and Families; Community and Economic Vitality; Environment and Natural Resources; and Nutrition and Health. This is Cornell’s strongest action-based, direct link to serving the community it inhabits. Its mission statement reads: “In pursuit of economic vitality, ecological sustainability and social well-being. We bring local experience and research-based solutions together, helping New York State families and communities thrive in our rapidly changing world.”^v

Just as the erection of a new, rigorous college open to all culminated in generations of white wealth and institutions borne of white supremacy, so too has Ithaca. This liberal college town rich in natural scenery has attracted crowds in recent years, forcing out longtime residents. Down in the valley, straight down the hill from Cornell, is downtown Ithaca. Feet bounding down either Seneca or Buffalo Street may wound up in the city center. Both streets border what is known as the Commons, a section of the main street, State Street, that becomes an open-air promenade full of shops, businesses, restaurants, and other community hubs.

Downtown Ithaca is a motley mix of establishments, the structural manifestation of the melting pot of people who live here. Turning and entering the main Commons from the notorious perpendicular restaurant row on Aurora Street, the shops continue as follows: a new, gourmet pizza joint in a location which fluctuates restaurant ownership each year; a raw minerals store; a Thai restaurant; Silky Jones, which exudes a seemingly sleek, noir feeling from the outside but upon entry a club opens up to reveal college students feasting on a selection of white claws, corn dogs, and hot pockets; a gift and toy shop; custom tailors; an outdoor gear store; an artisan craft store; a smoke shop and vape lounge; an artisanal olive oil store; shoe repair; a brunch place dedicated to waffles; a paperie; a tapas restaurant; a hair salon in a vintage clothing boutique; a Mediterranean restaurant; a suit shop; another headshop; an Ithaca themed t-shirt and giftshop; a nightclub; another headshop; a vape store; a skate shop; a Cornell store, right on the corner.

A lot of the main street savors main streets of old, with crafts and homemade wares. Other spots seem out of place, or upon entry, they transport one to another world. Entering one of the headshops, an establishment by the name 3-D Light – loose threads, which lists itself as a lighting equipment store on Google, you are immediately inducted by clouds of patchouli, frankincense, or nag champa, the exact identification of which does not matter because they will all be burning at once and you will feel high until you leave the store. You will feel dizzy, and immediately your eyes will not be sure where to fall. Before you is a sprouting of clothing racks stocked mostly with earth toned tie-dyes, harem pants of bright colors and patterns and adorned with medallions, and of course, grateful dead merchandise. To your left, an entire wall of incense; further, shelves of hats, scarves, and sunglasses. This place would seem merely a clothing store, if wood carved clocks, glass figurines, and essential oils didn’t inhabit the same shelves. On your way to exit, you peruse a case of jewelry, watches, buttons, earrings, and sitting on top, more essential oils and displays of make-up. Next to it, a case filled to its borders with glass pipes.

Exiting, the whole experience seems a mirage. From any angle you view the Commons, it seems a different world and microcosm of some person’s lifestyle and fascinations. Disparate, discordant, displacing.

The fabric of Ithaca’s downtown is changing, as all things evolve, but has seen quite drastic alterations and cuts in recent years. The Ithaca Voice keeps an ongoing map tracking development, run by a contributor Brian Crandall.^vi The recent plans include one apartment building designated as affordable housing (with 218 units), and four apartment buildings that have no stated claim of offering affordable housing (with the total number of units equaling 548). Two apartment buildings on the brink of this scope bring this number to 608 luxury or otherwise unspecified units. There is one new hotel completed no more than three years ago, bringing the number of hotels on the commons to six, with a new Hilton being planned in the same block radius. According to a 2000-2010 report written by the Tompkins County Office of Human Rights, there has been a 3% decline in black residents in the city of Ithaca: “Several local officials say… That many of the city’s African Americans are being forced to move to surrounding towns in the county as a result of gentrification and Ithaca’s extensively documented housing crisis.”^vii

Something under the surface of this terrain reigns, an integral thread running through this land and running too through our very bodies, calling all to ponder and reflect.

The great social equalizer—the point at which students and residence, youths and families, locals and travelers may meet, to inaugurate advancing days of sun and warm weather and, in the warmer months, to celebrate the glory of being in a place so beaming with life—is Six Mile Creek.

Nowhere is this region untouched by water. Ithaca, New York has had the fortune of thriving thanks in great part to its location right on Cayuga Lake. And from the lake twists a profusion of wandering rivers, creeks, brooks, and tributaries which stake their claim over every possible inch and acreage there is to accompany the land. Viewing Ithaca on a map is like viewing a splatch of splattered rain on a window shield- spatters of pools in troves everywhere the eye could fall. Like hair growing out every which way from a very large head, like tree roots and rhizomes growing infinitely until they’ve run out of room, like constellations, the presence of the Finger Lakes is named and made so bewitching by the touch of water. The physicality of land here is inextricable from the fluidity of water.

That gushing call, a hush awash in wet trickles like whispers, coaxes heads to turn to contemplate the splash and rush of a river in toil, eddying motion, to consider the weight of eternal flow. The water that runs with and through and beneath the town has the memory of all that has come before, the geologic time underpinning ten thousand years of human habitation. The Haudenasaunee think their people have been here for 8,000 years. The names given to local towns and lakes are often attributed to the classical education of early nineteenth century surveyors, but they also reflect the names that the people who lived here gave to themselves. Sometimes these are difficult to untangle. Names that strike one are Ithaca, Cayuga, Seneca, Iroquois, Cascadilla, Taughannock. What gets left behind? Who decides this?

The blessing of the Finger Lakes, of Six Mile Creek in particular, is that it is the meeting place of things human and nonhuman, living and nonliving. Walking over its sloping paths—which arch up along bluffs that tower the creek, coming to cliffside views that peer over the water snaking up to a reservoir in the distance—you feel your body’s positioning at the convergence of nature’s element; air that smells of earth that smells of water that smells of sky; land that meets water that meets air; and the breath, the fire of the body, hanging in between attuned and alive.

The land of Six Mile Creek grants roots to remind the feet of the rugged patchy nature of paths, and trees so big they remind the body of its smallness but also its airy matter. The bark of trees gift texture, the messy incomprehensible substance of the natural world; unorderly chips of bark with striations running up and down like a river. The land has been cleaved by living gorges of slate carved from glaciers long ago, with icy water where diving in is like a baptism- the body emerges supine, stomach floating along the surface, ears submerged but face entirely encircled and staring straight up into the sky, mind swallowed up by its eternity and mesmerized by feeling as though it is swimming in that other pocket of blue. The land and water are sprinkled with a profusion of rocks in dirt, the small inescapable sediment of a natural invasion from the glaciers that retreated centuries ago. This is the sky, water, scattering of rocks, and life, where residents of all walks of life gather, connect and confront, within an entanglement of history, remembrance, grace, gratitude, grass, trees, rocks, river, fish, snakes, herons, and the discordance of the destruction which does not fit.

In the spring, evidence of student partying litters every inch of the creek in intolerable, hideous profusions: empty beer cases stacked on rocks, crusting towels sometimes a score of them festering in the dirt, speakers booming trap music sometimes competing with other speakers for domination of the airwaves, inflatable pool toys and floaties adrift in pollutant limbo in the water. This is a confrontation on how disconnection from the land and a paucity of stake in it, mixed with entitlement to it, breeds neglect, exploitation, and destruction. White settlers continue to use the space as they see fit, unconcerned, and the developing constitution of Ithaca’s residents dictates that mostly white, wealthy people have access to such green spaces of clarity in the first place. This is what Ithaca as a university town has bred; this is the hidden subtle violence of the great American university, and what it must stare in the face.

The answer is to venture here- one odd hiking path that twists up into the density of woods around the creek has trees and rocks with small totemic figures painted on the backs of them, but you may only spot them if you pause and look around.

Communities must acknowledge the history of all their peoples and the land they take up. Bolster spaces where these connections are startlingly clear. Find where you can see history, avail oneself of millions of years of geologic change, mingle with the convergence of a landscape’s past, and witness directly the evidence of human activity. See the example of Cornell, how taking up space and remaining confined to one area which leeches off others breeds an ignorance, a lack of awareness of history and what lies around and beneath the surface to remind us of our linkage and lineage. Everyone should stare into the depths of such spaces where they may see the impact we have merely by existing in a space and be called to see the weight of their own presence; the water of the Finger Lakes, of Six Mile Creek, calls us to reflect, and every disturbance ripples.

---

[i] https://exploringupstate.com/how-the-finger-lakes-was-named/

[ii] https://web.archive.org/web/20080228163104/

[iii] https://www.tbp.org/pubs/Features/Sp09Williams.pdf

[iv] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-inequality-america.htmlhttps://ithacavoice.com/tracking-tompkins-development/

[v] https://cce.cornell.edu/info/about

[vi] https://ithacavoice.com/tracking-tompkins-development/

[vii] https://ithacavoice.com/2015/09/as-rents-rise-fewer-black-people-live-in-city-of-ithaca/

---