Sculptor Russell Beebe, whose towering story poles are prized for their artistry and details, watched as two of his weighty works were loaded onto a truck at his Medford studio on June 23 to be transported 3,000 miles east to Upstate New York.

One of the 12-foot-tall poles depicts the Iroquois story of creation, with a celestial panther circling above a woman descending from the sky and supported by geese as she gently lands on the hard shell of a turtle that represents Earth. The second story pole, also hand carved by Beebe from an incense cedar tree and weighing 1,200 pounds, shows a smoke dance with an eagle guarding a family. At the base are geometric symbols associated with the Six Nations of the Grand River of northeast North America.

The captivating poles were commissioned by a private collector who will install them side by side on his property. The permanent site in Austerlitz, New York, was the home of the Oneida Indian Nation, a key ally of the United States during the Revolutionary War. Settlers, however, “rolled into the area like a herd of buffalo,” said Beebe, and pushed the Native people west to Wisconsin.

“Destiny has some control over my life now and I’ve been totally unaware,” said Beebe, who was born 81 years ago in Wisconsin and is of Anishinaabe heritage, Ojibwe and a first degree member of the Three Fires Midewiwin Society. “I’ve been a perfectionist with these story poles and now I believe I know why.”

Beebe had been working on the poles project for three years, but recently discovered another connection. A woodworker, who like Beebe is a member of Southern Oregon’s Siskiyou Woodcraft Guild, alerted him that the sculptures will be near the Beebe Hill State Forest.

“I’m stunned by this,” said Beebe, who is researching his ancestry to learn more about the Beebes in New York. “I feel my Beebe relations there probably did their part in displacing the Oneida and I’m thrilled that fate has given me this opportunity to speak through my work.”

In 1977, Beebe, an artist, furniture maker and designer of Fiberfab’s fiberglass sports car body called the Jamaican, moved to his land along Medford’s Coleman Creek, where he built his house, wood shop and cabin-like classroom.

In 2006, he completed his most famous public work, the powerful “We Are Here” monument that honors the Shasta, Takelma, Athabaskan and other First Nations people of the Rogue Valley. The 20-foot-tall bronze sculpture, at North Main Street and Lithia Way in downtown Ashland, serves as a gateway to the art-centric city.

The original piece, created from an alder tree after more than 1,000 hours of Beebe’s time and creative talent, was erected two miles away, inside Southern Oregon University’s Hannon Library. Two branches of the tree were sculpted to look like a woman’s arms open to the sky. Her face is filled with pride and resolve. Beaded necklaces, fringe on her dress, and other fine details hold viewers’ attention.

David West, director emeritus of Native American Programs at Southern Oregon University and an enrolled member and elder of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, blessed the “We Are Here” monument and 17 years later, Beebe’s two new story poles.

Beebe, and his wife, Yan Fu, hope to attend the dedication ceremony after the two poles are installed in the ground in August.

“I feel my effort was successful, because my intention was to create something that any of the Haudenosaunee (of the Six Nations of the Grand River) could look at and relate to and feel what they need to feel,” he said. “If that is true, I feel good.”

Beebe promised his wife the story poles would be his last large, physically challenging project. He vowed to focus his artistic energy on teaching others to use hand tools to achieve a sense of movement, shadows and other dramatic effects in wood.

But then a failing pine tree was cut down on his property and sawed into three parts that are each long enough to be transformed into a bench. The logs are tempting.

Beebe made benches resembling a bear, cougar and salmon that circle around the “We Are Here” monument in the university library, allowing people to sit and ponder the sculpture with two generations of a family intertwined — “in balance,” said Beebe — with nature.

“My wife is suspicious” about the pine logs, joked Beebe. “But I intend to let my students do the work.”