History and Maps

I have always been a visual based learner.  Part of the reason why I enjoy history so much is the physical representations of history, like the ones that you can find in a museum.  As far as reading about history and trying to grasp the significance of the land that was traversed during battles and wars, I have always gravitated towards maps to assist in gaining perspective on the significance of the geographical layout of the land and the distances covered by the participants.  In this post, I will include two different maps.  One map, in black and white print, shows the entrire United States prior to 1776.  The other map, is was published in 1836 and demonstrates the lands that were allotted to the Native Americans west of Missouri and Arkansas.  The second map also lists the approximate numbers of each tribe in each area.  It is incredible how detailed the second map is compared to the first.  In the first map, the Chocktaw tribe can be seen occupying the territory to the south known as modern day Louisiana.  In the second map, the same tribe falls under a list that represented the estimated quantity of land assigned to the tribes who have emigrated from the Eastern to the Western side of the Mississippi River.  The Chocktaws are listed at the top with 15,000,000 acres of land.  The wording is absolutely misleading as it should state that the tribes were forced to relocate, not emigrate.  Whether it was by force or subversion, the end result was still the same.  



PRE 1776


RESERVATION 



I did not take a screenshot for these as the Reservation link allows you to zoom in and out on the map to make it easier to read everything.  The image may be blurry in some spots, but zooming in a bit more seems to help.  

Comments

  1. UnknownOctober 26, 2018 at 8:51 AM

    Patrick, unlike you I am not a visual learner but learn more from reading. But I did look at some of the maps in the resources for module two. The one I liked the most and the one from which I could glean the most information was Maps of Native American Tribes in the United States. The map shows all the individual states and below they are listed so you can click on one. It brings you to a page that gives you the tribes originally from that state, the tribes now in that state, teaching and learning activities, recommended books and other resources. For instance, for the tribe I selected for my project, the Hidatsa, I was able to learn about their language, culture and even Hidatsa Indian Legends. I found out that the Hidatsa share a single nation with the Mandan and Arikara. They merged in the 1800s after many people died from smallpox. Today they are known as the Three Affiliated Tribes.
    Maps of Native American Tribes in the United States. (unknown date). Retrieved from http://www.native-languages.org/states.htm October 26, 2018

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  2. UnknownOctober 28, 2018 at 11:10 AM

    Constance,

    I took a look at that website that you mentioned and I am kicking myself for not including that in my original post. It could have replaced both maps that I included and stood alone to accomplish the same task. The merger that you wrote about with the Hidatsa, Mandan, and Arikara is seemingly a normal process that these tribes went through over the course of European arrival and the American Westward Expansion.

    Thank you,

    Patrick

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  3. UnknownOctober 28, 2018 at 6:19 PM

    I really enjoyed that you used maps to conceptualize the history we are learning. I find that looking at the maps gives me a more realistic big picture of relocation. I often look around when i'm outside and try to imagine what the world looked like in that very spot hundreds of years ago. The history of America is unlike most other countries. The entirety of America was filled with so many different civilizations and the majority of them are gone. It hit me really hard when reading the mortality rates in Treuer's Atlas. In a lot of those regions up to 95% of people died and these are heavily populated areas. Could you imagine seeing all of that death around you? I wonder what kind of horrors happened in my own backyard.

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