Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette
The Guyasuta sculpture watches over as Mario DeBlasio, right, drills the anchor holes for the figure of George Washington along Grandview Avenue. Helping drill the base are David Bagley and Frank Insana.
Click photo for larger image.

Before we met him in grade school history, George Washington had already led a fascinating life in what would be his new country.

Sculptor James West found him in 1770, sitting in conference with the Seneca leader Guyasuta, and hankered to show the rest of us an enigmatic moment in time that demands questions, discussion and attention.

Yesterday, a crane and crew maneuvered Mr. West's 750-pound bronze renderings of the two men, face-to-face equals, onto a stone pedestal in an apron parklet on Mount Washington, on Grandview Avenue at Sweetbriar Street.

The statue will be veiled until a public dedication ceremony Wednesday, and a fundraiser will follow that evening.

The parklet is being renamed "Point of View Park" by City Council proclamation. Although the two men were not known to have met there, the site affords a view of the place where they did meet -- somewhere near the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers.

Mr. West, of Fox Chapel, whose day job is as a land developer, said his passion and his life is sculpting and that seeing his gift to the city realized "is really a gift to me."

He had approached the Mount Washington Community Development Corp. more than two years ago with the idea of producing in bronze this 1770 reunion of two men who had met almost 20 years earlier when Washington, then a major in the provincial army, hired Guyasuta as a guide to Fort LeBoeuf near Erie.

By 1770, they were both veterans of the French and Indian War, having fought on opposing sides.

Lynn Squilla, president of the CDC board, was researching that war for a film for WQED, and her passion for the subject joined that of Mr. West. They went to the city with the idea, and then-mayor Tom Murphy embraced it. The city donated the parklet to the CDC, and the Department of Public Works committed stones and Belgian block it had in stock for the pedestal. The city added a handicapped-accessible sidewalk within the parklet. The Heinz History Center contributed details to the story.

Mr. West said the materials cost about $130,000. He sought private donors to pay for it.

Ms. Squilla said it is fitting that "one of the first conversations about the region would begin as Pittsburgh's birthday approaches." The city turns 250 in 2008.

No one knows what was said, but tension surely arose over the apparent intention of white settlers to violate the Proclamation of 1763, which restricted white settlement west of the Alleghenies. Washington was in the area to survey in anticipation of such expansion and Guyasuta wanted the proclamation honored.

Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette
Artist James West looks at the placement, along Grandview Avenue on Mount Washington, of his work of Guyasuta and Washington.
Click photo for larger image.Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette
George Washington's face on the new sculpture atop Mount Washington.
Click photo for larger image.

In the bronze rendition of that discussion, Guyasuta is perched on a rock with the peace pipe side of his tomahawk turned upward. His expression is unsettled, asking for explanation. Washington, his hand squeezed but not too tightly, also looks perturbed. Their noses are less than a foot apart. The space between them is charged, but their respect for each other is the compelling nuance. It allowed two men who represented peoples contesting rights to the same land to sit for hours in discussion and agree to part as friends.

"The Indians wanted to continue trading. They depended on it," said Ms. Squilla. "And so they discussed the fate of the region and future trading, but George was the great self-censor. He didn't record details of the meeting in his diary, except to say they agreed to part as friends." The weighty issues between them were, of course, resolved by the cascade of settlement that ignored the 1763 proclamation.

The fact that Washington is facing west has intended symbolism, she said. "He is facing what the Seneca refer to as 'the western door.'"

Mr. West glowed as a crane lowered the figures -- strapped and protected with cloth -- onto the pedestal.

"I'd love it if this becomes a place people come to resolve their differences," he said. "Maybe city officials and the unions could shake hands up here. A husband and wife could bring their argument here and resolve it, watch the sunset and then go to dinner."

The public dedication ceremony will be at 2 p.m. Wednesday. A member of the Seneca nation will dedicate the monument in the native language and re-enactors will perform a militia drill and musket salute. At 6:30 that night, a $75-per-person gala at LeMont Restaurant will benefit the Mount Washington Community Development Corp.'s Grandview Scenic Byways Park. For more information, call the CDC at 412-481-3220.