Slide Sets

The first two thirds of the eighteenth century in North America were characterized by a jockeying for power by the French, the Spanish, the British and many American Indian groups as the Europeans attempted to strengthen their position on the continent through military, religious, and commercial settlements. One way to understand these various groups’ attempts to assert power is through the maps they produced. This slide set links research in the history of cartography with historical studies of frontier relations between American Indians and European colonizers in North America. Historians have relied primarily on written sources to explore interactions between native peoples and European colonizers and to categorize British, French, and Spanish colonial “styles,” or ways of going about their respective imperial goals. Recent work in the history of cartography has drawn upon the cartographic record to explore Indian concepts of space and European assertions of power through maps. Combining history and cartography, one can see that eighteenth-century North American maps produced by Native Americans and Europeans negotiated identity, power, and relative importance, hiding or highlighting another group’s position or relative strength through map symbols, text, labels, and legends.

The way in which Native Americans and Europeans were or were not represented in the symbols and text on maps clarifies how each mapping culture viewed itself and, more importantly, others. Although these six maps span a fifty-year period, vary in scale dramatically, and range from the eastern seaboard to the Great Lakes to the Sonoran gulf-coast, they share an outlook common to eighteenth-century maps. To understand how maps portray power, one must analyze the labels used, the size, style, and shape of symbols, the wording of text on the map itself. All of these communicate the map producer’s conception of others and, in the Europeans’ case, the place they granted Native Americans in their respective colonial systems. For example, most Spanish maps use a standardized set of symbols and labels to depict the Spanish system of organizing Indian peoples into missions, pueblos, and rancherías under Spanish control. The French maps tend to represent the native people’s continued presence, and indeed close connections with French settlements. On the other hand, many colonial British maps either ignore Indians’ presence or disassociate them from a specific geographic location, and instead use labels to indicate a general location where native peoples continued to live.

Acknowledging or denying others’ physical presence and asserting one’s own geographic claims through maps fit naturally into Europeans’ imperial claims of sovereignty over the land, its resources, and the indigenous inhabitants. In contrast, many Native Americans created maps to represent their perceptions of their position in commercial or military networks in relation to other Indian groups and European settlements, as seen in the “Catawba” map. Some Native Americans learned quickly that maps served as the visual representation of European land claims, and they produced maps to counter European boundaries or to support a legal effort to protect native lands, anticipating future European expansion. Paradoxically, Native American geographic knowledge and military history could be incorporated into European maps to European advantage. The result were maps that made land claims against imperial rivals using the Indians’ past occupance of the land as a foundation for the European claims. Yet in the process, these maps erased Indians as autonomous, independent operators in frontier interactions in the mid-eighteenth century. The best example of this is John Mitchell’s 1755 map in this slide set.

In addition to the geographic information that maps communicate, they also contain clues about political and social relations. These relations preoccupied colonial leaders as Europeans inserted and then rooted themselves into the commercial and geopolitical life of North America. Historians have examined this very process primarily through written sources of the colonial period. But the contest for power latent in textual sources leaps out of the cartographic record, too.

Decades of exposure to European diseases in the seventeenth century resulted in inestimable numbers of deaths and cultural erosion among the indigenous Piedmont peoples. Those who lived through the epidemics sought other survivors and began to consolidate with Indians who had formerly been identified as “strangers,” or not of their own group. This process of consolidation took place over a number of decades, and although it had begun by the time Governor Nicholson received the map in the early 1720s, it clearly had not run its course and would not for another thirty years. The English, however, had already begun using the name “Catawba” as a collective label for the Indians of the Piedmont at least a decade before the arrival of the headman and his map. “Catawba” did not appear on the headman’s map, argues historian James Merrell, because “the word was not an important part of his vocabulary. Where Anglo-Americans envisioned one people with one name, the map maker pictured a collection of independent nations.” By 1760, the Suttiries, Succas, and Nustie joined with the Nasaw to live on a new reservation assigned by the English to the Catwaba Nation.

Using circles to represent individual Indian groups, a common practice of Native American mapmakers, the cartographer placed the Nasaw at the center of the map in the largest circle. Unlike most European cartographers of the period, this native mapmaker concerned himself more with the placement of groups relative to one another and with connections via pathways and less with distances, scale, or topography. The sizes of circles, their proximity to the Nasaw, and the pathways linking them reflect the relative strengths of relations between the various Indian tribes. In the upper left hand corner is Charleston, South Carolina and in the far right is the colony of Virginia. The rectangular shapes for both English locations contrast with the circles representing the distinct Indian groups; clearly, the mapmaker saw the European colonies as an entirely different kind of settlement inhabited by different people, otherwise the two colonies would also have been represented with circles. Instead, the difference between Indian and English settlements is accentuated by the grid marks within Charleston’s rectangle, which depicts streets within the town. This suggests that the mapmaker perhaps found the English organization of the town unique and worth depicting. Or, he had seen how the English represented cities on their maps and so represented them in a similar way on his own map. In marked contrast to European maps, the Catawba headman did not locate each building or structure within either the English or Indian settlements or use building symbols of any kind. The “who” relative to each other was more important than the exact “where” or “how many” or “what location,” which dominate European produced maps.

However, there is one more category of settlement, rancherías. These contained small groups of Indians either hostile to the Spaniards, such as the Seris along the western coast, or not yet fully missionized peoples like the Papabos (Papagos) near the Gila River. The red dot for these settlements contrasts with the stylized representations of buildings for the other types of settlements under Spanish control. Ironically, the Indians least incorporated into the Spanish colonial system stand out most — with a different symbol and with the retention of the Indian groups’ names in spaces that are otherwise blank because there is no Spanish presence. The Spanish symbols for missions, pueblos, and mines mask other Indians’ presence, inundating the map with Spanish names and locations, so that the Indian group names are overwhelmed and lack specific geographic locations. That Indians were still a prominent presence in the area is clear from historical documents. An observer estimated in a 1678 report that over 20,000 Indian converts lived in 50 villages. However, as late as 1760, Spaniards numbered just 8,000 in Sonora, most of them in the southern part of the province. Although historical evidence indicates a significant Indian population and minimal Spanish population, the importance of describing the Spanish colonial administration dominates the map and masks integral role of Indians as the economic and religious cornerstone of that Spanish colonial system.

The presumed date of 1715 is significant to decoding both the visual and textual portions of the map. British settlements in western Massachusetts experienced frequent raids by the Abenaki, often with the encouragement of the French, from 1676 to 1712. The Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 transferred Acadia from the French to the British on paper, but in practice created the “Pays les Abenaky,” an Indian buffer zone between the two European powers in eastern North America. Abenaki country, symbolized by dense trees and a single label emblazoned across the green on the right hand side of the map, provides a stark contrast to the meticulously drawn fields and buildings in and around the numbered English towns. The text reveals that the Abenaki’s presence was felt well beyond the “Pays les Abenaky.” According to the text for the villages numbered 48-51, the French and Indians ruined four English towns. Entry #28 for Deerfield describes the town as a fort with 50 houses, which had been raided by the French twice. An active trade between the armed residents and the Abenaki was in place by 1715, although the Abenaki had joined the French in the 1704 attack.

Unlike the table accompanying the English woodcut map, the textual panels on either side of the French map do not include much information about Indian attacks. Instead, they are filled with details about population estimates and commerce for each town. They inventory the strength of English military preparedness by calculating how many armed men there were, as well as commercial strength by listing what each town sold or produced. The information in these panels suggests that the French were measuring the strength of English settlements, even as the Treaty of Utrecht had ostensibly eased tensions between the two imperial powers. Through the use of visual representation and textual narrative, the French cartographer crafted a multi-layered map that revealed not only European imperial tensions but also the persistent conflicts between Indians and Europeans settlers.

The map resembles other maps of French forts, which also have longhouses and forts in close proximity. Built near where the St. Lawrence River flows into Lake Ontario, Fort Frontenac was designed originally as a mission and a trading post to facilitate the fur trade between the western tribes and Montreal. In 1673, Father Louis Hennepin brought “‘a considerable number of the Natives, in order to make a little Village of about Forty Cottages to be inhabited by them.’ There the Recollects oversaw an experiment in bicultural living,” (Richter 1992, 121) with longhouses and language exchanges between the French and Indians. Quickly, the mission gave way to the lucrative fur trade, which was also characterized by the side-by-side settlement of fur traders near the Indians. In the 1680s pro-English Iroquois attempted to evict the French and their western allies from the Great Lakes region. The French retaliated in 1687 and destroyed four Seneca villages. By the early eighteenth century, however, the Seneca themselves occupied the longhouses adjacent to the fort to earn wages as “scouts, porters, guides, and construction laborers.” (Richter 1992, 262) Fort Frontenac served as the gateway for the lucrative western fur trade and then as a strategic position until 1758, when the British captured it during the Seven Years’ War.

From western New York to the western bank of the Mississippi River, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, the French and British disputed sovereignty over the land. Mitchell used blank spaces in this area, sandwiched between rivers or footpaths or other physical features on the land, to place text that articulated British sovereignty. Much of that claim to sovereignty rested not on British occupation, but on the appropriation of Iroquois history and successes over other Indian tribes. Dotting the map are references to the Iroquois conquering, subduing, and expelling specific Indian tribes, often those who were French allies such as the Hurons. These references included statements of British sovereignty over the Iroquois. One example appears near the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Mitchell argues: “The Six Nations have extended their Territories to the River Illinois ever since the Year 1672, when they subdued, and were incorporated with the Antient Chaquanons, the Native Proprietors of these Countries and the River Ohio… The Ohio Indians are a mixt Tribe of the Several Indians of our Colonies, settled here under the Six Nations, who have allwaies been in Alliance and subjection to the English.”

Although Mitchell used the Iroquois to establish British sovereignty by indirect means, the Iroquois were less than eager to take sides early on in the Seven Years’ War. Choosing neutrality initially, the Iroquois joined the British in 1758. Although they picked the victors, they quickly learned that in doing so they had also chosen a dependent position relative to the British, confirming Mitchell’s cartographic interpretation of British and Iroquois relative positions of power.

When comparing this 1765 British plan with the 1720 French plan of the same fort (image 4), there are some immediate differences that can be explained by the passage of time, the context of war, and differences in Indian-White relations in New France and the British colonies. Although the earlier map showed a powder magazine, clearly the fort operated more as a military storehouse and center during the 1750s, reflecting increased imperial tensions. It has a “Shot and Military Yard” and an external “Military Store-House.” These have replaced the extensive gardens and Indian longhouses from the earlier period. Although there are “Houses for Indian Traders” in the later plan, they are inside the fort, and there is no Indian settlement like that which existed when the trade was still centered near Lake Ontario. Fort Frontenac had evolved from a place where Indians lived and traded into a supply center for the western forts and trading posts. This is born out by the booty that the British force appropriated after the capture; there were weapons for French Indian allies, cannon, cloth, and clothing to ship west, and animal skins destined for the eastern ports. Finally, the title of the map refers only to the European name, “Frontenac.” Gone is the Indian name for the place, which on the 1720 map had symbolized the co-existance of Indians and the French.

1. “A Map Describing the Situation of the Several Nations of Indians between South Carolina and the Mississippi River” (Washington, 1873), in Archer Butler Hulbert, The Crown Collection of Photographs of American Maps, series 3, vol. 1 [London, 1914-16], plates 7-8. Newberry Library call number: Ayer 136 H91 1914, vol. 1
2. “Provincia de La Nueva Andaluzia de San Juan Baptista de Sonora” (1733), tracing from the original in the Mexican Archives, Historia 16. Newberry Library call number: Ayer ms Map 190
3. “Partie de la Nouvelle Angleterre” (ca. 1715), from the [Cartes Marines] (Paris?, ca. 1726). Newberry Library call number: Ayer ms Map 30, No. 88
4. “Plan du Fort Frontenac on Cataracouy” (ca. 1720) from the [Cartes Marines] (Paris?, ca. 1726). Newberry Library call number: Ayer ms Map 30, No. 108
5. Detail from John Mitchell, A Map of the British and French Dominions in North America (London, 1755). Newberry Library call number: Ayer 133 M66 1755
6. John Rocque, “A Plan of Fort Frontenac,” in A Set of Plans and Forts in America ([London]: M. A. Rocque, 1765). Newberry Library call number: Ayer 135 R68 1765

Anderson, Fred. The Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766. New York: Vintage Books, 2000.

Bannon, John Francis. The Spanish Borderlands Frontier, 1513-1821. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1974.

Black, Jeremy. Maps and Politics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998.

Buisseret, David. Mapping the French Empire in North America. Chicago: The Newberry Library, 1991.

Eccles, W.J. The Canadian Frontier, 1534-1760. Revised edition, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1983.

Edney, Matthew H. Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765-1843. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999.

Fite, Emerson D. and Archibald Freeman. A Book of Old Maps. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1926.

Harley, J.B. The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography, ed. Paul Laxton. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.

Hubbard, William. A Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians in New England. Boston, 1677.

LePore, Jill. The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity. New York: Alfred. A. Knopf, 1998.

Lewis, G. Malcolm, ed. Cartographic Encounters: Perspectives on Native American Mapmaking and Map Use. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998.

Merrell, James H. The Indians’ New World: Catawbas and their Neighbors from European Contact through the Era of Removal. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1989.

Radding, Cynthia. Wandering Peoples: Colonialism, Ethnic Spaces, and Ecological Frontiers in Northwestern Mexico, 1700-1850. Durham: Duke University Press, 1997.

Richter, Daniel K. The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.

Schwartz, Seymour I. and Ralph E. Ehrenberg. The Mapping of America. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1980.

Smith, Clara A. List of Manuscript Maps in the Edward E. Ayer Collection. Chicago: The Newberry Library, 1927.

Waselkov, Gregory A. “Indian Maps of the Colonial Southeast” in Powhatan’s Mantle: Indians in the Colonial Southeast. Ed. by Peter H. Wood, Gregory A. Waselkov, and M. Thomas Hatley. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988.

Warhus, Mark. Another America: Native American Maps and the History of Our Land. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997.

Weber, David. The Spanish Frontier in North America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.