Rereading the Maps of the Columbian Encounter

Abstract

Maps of the Encounter have been judged by the agenda of a positivist geographical history seeking to reconstruct the pathways, landing places, and settlements of European explorers and discoverers. They were studied largely for their practical use as tools of navigation, as aids to wayfinding on land, as plans for new colonial fortifications and towns, or as public propaganda images to attract new settlers to America. This paper argues that Native American mapping belongs in the cartographic record of the Encounter, and that European maps of the period can be viewed as statements of territorial appropriation, cultural reproduction, or as devices by which a Native American presence could be silenced. Recent studies in anthropology, art history, and ethnohistory identify a corpus of indigenous maps that represent valid “alternative’ cartographies, different from European maps, yet important in the history of spatial representation. In Mesoamerica, further decoding of cartographic elements in the pre‐Conquest genealogical and historical manuscripts may well require revision of ideas about the cradles of cartographic innovation. Even in North America, where such artifacts are more fragmentary, there is a growing sense of the universal presence of mapping in a wide range of cultures. In Colonial America, Indian maps not only helped to guide the invaders, but Indian geographies were incorporated into the fabric of European maps that would become standard images of America for much of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. There also appears to be an ideological transformation in the indigenous use of maps as native peoples sought to resist Colonial power with the maps that were once part of their traditional culture.

The Archaeology of Native Societies in the Chesapeake: New Investigations and Interpretations

“…New and recently annotated editions of colonists' accounts from the early colonial era, including those emanating from Jamestown, have been published in recent decades, providing a documentary foundation for contact-period archaeology (e.g., Grumet 2001;Haile 1998;Sloan 2007;Smith and Barbour 1986;Smith and Horne 2007). Studies of historic cartography, including John Smith's Map of Virginia, have provided a geographic framework for understanding native settlement locations (e.g., Turner and Opperman 1993), political geographies (Gallivan 1997;Potter 2009), colonial strategies of appropriation (Harley 1992;Hatfield 2003), contact-period semiotics (Boelhower 2003), and native toponymy (Potter 2002). Several small-scale excavations conducted prior to 1990 identified evidence of European trade items in Native American contexts that date to the protohistoric 16th century and the early 17th-century contact period (Hodges 1993).…”

Un diario de viaje inédito de Basilio Villarino y el mapa de la travesía: más de un siglo de periplo por los archivos

“…Con respecto al río Negro, consta que era "nombrado por los indios [como] Río Grande" y es interesante notar que debido a que dicho río sólo había sido reconocido parcialmente, su representación se encuentra incompleta. En relación con esto, además, advertimos acerca del modo difuso en que Villarino incorpora en su diario y su mapa la información provista por los indígenas, tal como demostrara Harley (1992) en relación con los mapas del "encuentro colombino" y, en la región patagónica, estudiaran De Lasa y Luiz (2011) con respecto a los mapas confeccionados por los jesuitas. Por ejemplo, esto ocurre no solo al situar en el mapa el río Negro "nombrado por los indios Río Grande" sino también en el diario al señalar que a través de una cautiva indígena procuró enterarse de las circunstancias, costumbres y habitantes de la zona.…”

Mapping a Future: Archaeology, Feminism, and Scientific Practice

“…These highlight the existence of alternative ways of representing space and place, repositioning our current methods as one of several options rather than the only one (e.g. Colwell-Chanthaphonh and Ferguson 2006;Harley 1992;Lewis 1987;Mundy 1996;Rundstrom 1990). Native American, Mesoamerican, or Inuit maps are often cited as examples of historically existing local traditions that do not conform to "scientific" cartographic rules.…”