Michigan Historical Review

Intracultural Mapmaking by First Nations Peoples in the Great Lakes Region: A Historical Review by G. Malcolm Lewis This article was originally written as part of the first draft of "First Nations Mapmaking in the Great Lakes Region in Intercultural Contexts: A Historical Review," which was published in the fall 2004 edition of theMichigan Historical Review.1 Though revised to stand alone, it complements the earlier paper. The topic, region, and time span are the same, but the focus is /#/racultural rather than ////?cultural. Regrettably, but inevitably, much of the received evidence and most of the currendy accepted interpretations have been mediated by Europeans and Euro-Americans?some of them insensitively so. Hence, retrospective understanding of First Nations maps, mapmaking, and map use in intracultural contexts before our very recent past will always be incomplete. Unknowingly, itwill sometimes perpetuate explanations with which the original makers and users would not have agreed. Understanding will of course improve with the marshaling of additional evidence and the involvement of researchers with new perspectives? not least, current and future First Nations peoples. This historical review is offered in the hope that itwill stimulate awareness and a search for new evidence, accelerate research, and diversify objectives. In common with First Nations peoples throughout North America, those living within the Great Lakes region represented intraculturally their understandings of spatial arrangements. Representations were made for posterity as well as for contemporaries, both present and elsewhere, and they were made for several reasons. The worlds that they represented were geographical, cosmological, and not infrequently fusions of both, but rarely if ever celestial. Many representations were material, using a range of organic and inorganic substances and employing a variety of inscribing, drawing, painting, and constructional techniques. Less frequendy recognized and reported by Europeans, but 1G. Malcolm Lewis, "First Nations Mapmaking in the Great Lakes Region in Intercultural Contexts: A Historical Review," Michigan Historical Review 30 (Fall 2004): 1-34. Michigan Historical Review 32:1 (Spring 2006): 1-17 ?2006 by Central Michigan University. ISSN 0890-1686 All Rights Reserved. 2 Michigan Historical Review probably just as important at the time, were behavioral representations of spatial arrangements in dance, ceremony, and gesture. Material and behavioral representations were sometimes used in conjunction. When they first witnessed material representations, Europeans usually categorized them intuitively asmaps because they were not too different from their own. However, Europeans were slow to recognize the cartographic nature of some artifacts, e.g., wampum road belts. Others were not revealed to Europeans until much later times, e.g., migration scrolls. When witnessed and described, behavioral representations of spatial arrangements, even when recognized as such, were not categorized as maps. However, recent expansion of the operational definition of "map" to embrace more than the material and stricdy graphical now includes them within the field of cartography. It is, therefore, now appropriate to review the historical evidence for awider than hitherto accepted range of intracultural maps and mapmaking within the Great Lakes region. Based on his considerable experience of Algonquian and Iroquoian peoples in the Great Lakes region between 1684 and 1689, Baron de Lahontan observed that "they draw the most exact Maps imaginable of the Countries they're acquainted with, for there's nothing wanting in them but the Longitude and Latitude of Places." These maps, however, were "drawn upon the Rind of your Birch Tree; and when the Old Men hold a Council about War or Hunting, they're always sure to consult them."2 This form of mapmaking was clearly indigenous in terms of materials used, techniques employed, and the purposes for which itwas undertaken. And there were other forms and contexts aswell. What we know of this more indigenous cartography is based on historical accounts and a very few surviving artifacts. The cartographic content of representations was often but part of a greater whole and because the geometry of the spatial content was topological, many examples doubtless went unrecognized and unrecorded by Europeans. Nevertheless, from within the Great Lakes region examples are quite diverse. In 1609 on the Richelieu River at a point just below its outflow from the large lake later to be named after him, Samuel de Champlain with his party of Algonkin...