Digging deeper: The Importance of Native American Maps in the Discovery and Exploration of North America



John Smith’s 1612 Map of Virginia

It's time to dig deep in our archives again and this time I'm focusing on the most popular article from Terrae Incognitae: Journal of the Society for the History of Discoveries.

 

'The Importance of Native American Maps in the Discovery and Exploration of North America' by Louis De Vorsey emphasizes the importance of, yet lack of attention paid to, the mapping traditions of the Native Americans encountered by European explorers and settlers. It introduces readers to various methods for representing spatial understanding used by North American natives, many of which were vital to European exploration and later mapping of North America.  

The article begins with the following introduction:

"The story of Native American maps begins with Christopher Columbus in 1492. Upon his first landfall in the Bahamas, the admiral was impressed by the dugout canoes paddled by the first “Indians” he met. He described them as being “fashioned like a long boat from the trunk of a tree . . . and wonderfully made . . . some being so big that in some came 40 or 50 men, and others smaller, down to some in which but a single man came.” Columbus lost no time in taking captive some of the awe-struck natives to serve as guides. In Columbus’ words, they “made signs to me that there were so many other islands that they could not be counted, and they called by their names more than a hundred [islands].” While there is no mention of Native American maps in his account of his progress through the Bahamas to Cuba and Hispaniola, it is certain that Columbus relied on captured native pilots for his safe passage."


De Soto. Mapa del Golfo y costa de la Nueva España, c. 1544

Dr De Vorsey continues to argue that it was not only Columbus who relied on Native guides:

"It was an amazing fact of synchronicity that both the southwest and the southeast of North America were first explored by Europeans at the same historical moment. That moment came in 1539–1540, when Hernando de Soto and Francisco Vasquez de Coronado led large, well-equipped companies into land now embraced by the United States. Both expeditions were dependent on Indian guides and informants, some of whom were capable and, as we will see, challenging cartographers."

The article concludes by quoting Dr Patricia Galloway:

"Indian maps and geographic information were so important a factor in the European development of knowledge of the American continent that it is impossible to gain an adequate idea of the process without taking them into account."

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Jamestown: America's birthplace?



Aerial view of Jamestown Island

In light of last week's American Independence Day on 4th July, I revisited the 2006 special issue of
Post-Medieval Archaeology on the founding of England's first permanent settlement in North America, Jamestown, Virginia in 1607.

In her article 'Archaeology and the construction of America's Jamestown' Audrey Horning reviews the history of archaeological research on the site and the use of archaeology in the symbolic construction of Jamestown as 'America's Birthplace'. It is argued that the archaeological construction of Jamestown as an American icon ultimately constrains understanding of the site in terms of its broader Atlantic world context, obscuring the motivations, experiences and expectations of the Europeans who made their way to Virginia, and rendering the considerable native presence invisible. Findings from the most recent projects on the Island, placed in the context of past investigations, allow for an evaluation of the significance of Jamestown's archaeology in the twentieth-century. 

 

The following is an excerpt from the article's introduction:



Jamestown: Girl Scouts hunting for artefacts at Well 20 in 1956

"Jamestown, where England first gained a permanent if precarious toehold in the New World by depositing a fractious group of gentlemen, boys, labourers and ex-soldiers on the shores of a modest island inland from the Chesapeake Bay in 1607, is perhaps the most archaeologically investigated historic site in North America. Since the 1890s, trowels, shovels, bulldozers, and even dynamite have been employed to shift tons of Jamestown soil in search of the roots of a country. Thousands of artefacts were extracted from the earth, the crumbling remains of nearly 100 buildings exposed to curious eyes — even the river was dredged in the hunt for John Smith’s legacy. For over 100 years, the scant physical traces of this early English colonial settlement have been accorded a status and significance arguably far beyond the information provided about the lived experiences of those newcomers and natives who once trod the same muddy soil now deemed sacred."

Dr Horning goes on to conclude that:

"Jamestown is not significant because it was settled in 1607 and therefore can lay claim to being the ‘cradle of the Republic’, or the place where America began. Such a notion not only denies 10,500 years of native life, as well as the 16thcentury Spanish colonial presence in North America and earlier English colonial and commercial endeavours, but more  importantly would have seemed ludicrous to Virginia’s settlers and leaders. It is from their perspective that we must try to understand the meaning behind Jamestown’s archaeological remains. Jamestown’s archaeology can inform us more about the culture of 17th century England than it can about the origins of an elusive American identity."

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