About 7 feet above the ground on the front of a former YMCA building in Pittsburgh, a small horizontal plaque reads “HIGH WATER MARK / MARCH 18, 1936.” This was the crest of the St. Patrick’s Day Flood.

Today the idea of water that high in the Golden Triangle seems absurd: The plaque isn’t a warning but a curiosity. Pittsburghers know that in the 21st century, while the valleys and ravines of the Allegheny Plateau will always be vulnerable to some flooding, the water just doesn’t rise that high anymore.

But, we suspect, most Pittsburghers don’t know why the risk of a repeat of the great flood is near zero, and who we have to thank for it. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine Pittsburgh as it is today — especially the stadiums and growing neighborhood on the North Shore — without a major intervention over 60 years ago.

This is the Kinzua Dam on the Allegheny River in Warren County. And the people to whom Pittsburghers must be grateful are the members of the Seneca Nation, whose lives were upended and legacies destroyed by the project.

It is an ongoing injustice that this sacrifice is so little remembered, and we propose that Pittsburgh take steps to remind its residents of the debt we owe.

BETRAYAL IN THE 1960s

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is working more closely than ever with the Seneca Nation as the Corps prepares for a significant rehabilitation of the aging dam, built between 1960 and 1965.

At 179 feet high and nearly 2,000 feet long, holding back a reservoir with a capacity of more than 400 billion gallons, Kinzua is one of the largest dams east of the Mississippi. It is absolutely essential for flood control from Warren through dozens of riverfront towns and cities down to Pittsburgh. For instance, the flooding caused by Hurricane Agnes in 1972 would have been far worse without the dam.

Even though it is 100 miles away, it may be Pittsburgh’s most important piece of infrastructure. But building it violated both a treaty and a personal promise made by George Washington himself.

By the early 1960s, most of the land promised to the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy in the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua had already been annexed by the United States. But what became known as the Allegany Reservation of the Seneca Nation, along the upper Allegheny River in New York state, remained under Native control.

Most prominent among these lands was the 1,500-acre Cornplanter Tract, the only Indian lands in Pennsylvania, which in 1796 had been given to the descendants of the great chief and diplomat in perpetuity. While this settlement was in terminal decline, overall around 600 people lived in the upper Allegheny floodplains.

The federal government determined that was the perfect place for the long-planned dam to protect the communities dowriver. After years of litigation, the courts ruled in favor of the government, which went on to clear cut thousands of acres of Seneca land, exhume hundreds of Seneca remains, and relocate those Seneca still living in their ancestral homes. The tract and about one-third of the reservation were flooded.

In 1790, Washington had written to the Seneca chiefs: “If any man brings you evil reports of the intentions of the United States, mark that man as your enemy. … The United States will be true & faithful to their engagements.”

REPARATION AND REMEMBERING

This history, and the ongoing reliance of Pittsburgh and the entire Allegheny Valley on the (compulsory) sacrifice of the Seneca people, raises a very difficult question: How can reparation be made for a sin, when it is impossible to repair the harm done and undoing the damage — removing the dam, as some advocates demand — is simply not an option?

In 1967, Congress did authorize a $15 million payment for the roughly 600 people relocated from the site of the reservoir. That’s nearly $150 million today, or about $250,000 per person. That was something, but not enough. The Seneca didn’t just lose homes. They lost their ancestral home. No amount of money can replace the centuries of history and legacy lost, a loss that continues for generations.

Further, that so few of the dam’s beneficiaries are even aware of it makes the sacrifice of the Seneca all the more painful and unjust. We’d like to propose three ways to make this historical episode more visible for today’s Pittsburghers.

First, there is very little acknowledgement of the Seneca at the dam itself. The U.S. Forest Service is currently planning recreation upgrades at the reservoir, which is within the Allegheny National Forest. We propose marking the site’s Seneca heritage not just with signage, but a joint state-federal museum memorializing the Seneca and telling the story of Cornplanter, his tract and its destruction by a government that did not keep its word.

Second, there should be a public acknowledgement of the Seneca Nation in the city that has benefited most from their betrayal. The most obvious options are the bridges spanning the Allegheny, of which there is only one that doesn’t already carry a memorial title: the Highland Park Bridge.

Renaming this bridge for the Seneca, or for Cornplanter himself, would be more than fitting — if insufficient, as all such gestures must be. This would require state legislation, since it’s a state-owned bridge. We urge Pittsburgh’s delegation to introduce the notion in Harrisburg.

And third, the story of the dam and the Seneca Nation of Pennsylvania and New York should feature in all local history classes in the region’s public schools.

There is no way to undo the damage construction of the Kinzua Dam did to the Seneca people. But Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania can finally and publicly acknowledge the suffering forced on the people of the Seneca Nation, and in so doing lay the foundation for future generations to know the story of this region, and those whom we must thank for its prosperity, all the better.

— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette via TNS