Native American Geographic Knowledge Maps And Cartography Ku Common

Leo Migdal

-Dec 14, 2025, 8:49 AM

native american geographic knowledge maps and cartography ku common

This land acknowledgement recognizes that Indigenous people are traditional guardians of the land and that there is an enduring relationship between Indigenous peoples and these traditional territories. Our School recognizes, advocates, and supports the sovereignty of the four-federally recognized tribes of Kansas, the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, the Kickapoo Tribe in Kansas, the Sac and Fox Nation of Missouri in Kansas... This acknowledgement reminds us to continue advocating for and supporting Native students, staff, and faculty while working towards decolonizing the systems of power and oppression. - KU School of Social Welfare 2021 Common Work of Art Native Host, Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds We can help with your research questions -- contact us by chat, phone, email, text or at a Research Help desk.

If you prefer a paper copy, that's an option! We will reach out later this summer to encourage students to request paper copies. If you are faculty or staff interested in including the book in your fall courses, please complete the form at: Get the Book Have a question? Need assistance? Use our online form to ask a librarian for help.

The selected materials below focus on Native American maps, map-making, and other related geographic information. The print materials below link to fuller bibliographic information about each title in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to digital content are provided when available. This section of the guide suggests specific geographic and mapping resources related to Indigenous peoples, Indigenous land sovereignty, and treaties. It is important to note that most geographic names and categories are often different from the placenames Indigenous peoples use for their ancestral lands. Not all tribes offer public access to mapping of their lands, as tribal land information is proprietary.

For example, the Uintah and Ouray are a sovereign nation and do not share their maps with the public. Please consult tribal governments directly with requests for mapping. Beyond the static lines of colonial cartography lie maps that breathe life, knowledge, and sovereignty: maps of Native American traditional knowledge protection. These are not merely geographical representations but intricate tapestries woven from centuries of ancestral wisdom, cultural identity, and an unwavering commitment to stewardship. Far from being quaint relics of the past, these maps are dynamic, living documents, crucial tools in the ongoing struggle for self-determination, environmental justice, and the revitalization of Indigenous cultures in North America. For the traveler and the student of history alike, understanding these maps offers a profound gateway into the enduring legacy and contemporary resilience of Native American nations.

To understand traditional knowledge protection maps, one must first decolonize the very concept of "map." Before European contact, Indigenous peoples across North America possessed sophisticated systems of spatial understanding and knowledge transmission. These "maps" were embedded in oral histories, ceremonial routes, seasonal migration patterns, star charts, pictographs, petroglyphs, and even intricate fiber arts or wampum belts. They encoded vital information about sacred sites, resource availability, ecological processes, kinship networks, and historical events. This knowledge was not abstract; it was inextricably linked to identity, spirituality, and survival, passed down through generations. The arrival of European colonizers introduced a new, alien form of cartography: one of conquest, division, and ownership. Colonial maps flattened complex cultural landscapes into grids for resource extraction, land speculation, and the forceful removal of Indigenous peoples.

Rivers became boundaries, mountains became resources, and ancestral territories were erased or renamed. This imposition of foreign geographical frameworks was a deliberate act of dispossession, severing Indigenous peoples from the lands that defined their existence and sustained their knowledge systems. In response to this historical trauma and ongoing threats, Native American traditional knowledge protection maps have emerged as powerful tools for reclamation and assertion. These contemporary maps are multifaceted, serving several critical functions: Unlike colonial maps, which often sought to simplify and control, Indigenous protection maps embrace complexity. They integrate qualitative data—stories, songs, personal testimonies—with quantitative geographical information.

They are often dynamic, designed to be updated as knowledge evolves or as new threats emerge. Have a question? Need assistance? Use our online form to ask a librarian for help. Maps drawn by Indians and Indian mapping abilities have been documented in a number of sources, but because of their ephemeral nature, relatively few Indian-created maps exist today. The indigenous population was often sought out by European explorers to guide or provide geographical information about unknown lands, and Indian guides were also often enlisted to provide reconnaissance data for military and commercial...

The cartographic and geographic information provided by Indian guides could appear in the explorer's report and might eventually be incorporated into published maps. Maps drawn by Indians, as well as evidence of their contributions to European-created maps, are valuable and rare documents for studying Indian peoples' geographical knowledge and spatial understanding. They complement the oral record, and they also help establish and clarify the Indians' role as guides and informants in furthering European explorations in North America. The Geography and Map Division does not have original examples of Native American cartography that pre-date European contact, but it has two eighteenth-century manuscripts created by Indians for use by Europeans and a few... The maps in this section have been digitized by the Library and are available for viewing and download online. Select the link on the map or in the caption to view a copy of the map that can be enlarge to view the detail.

Mathematician Thomas Harriot and artist John White were among the first English colonists settled at Roanoke Island in 1585. Their manuscript map of the Outer Banks was revised and engraved by Theodore de Bry, and published in 1590 to accompany his reprint of Harriot's A briefe and true report of the new found... The map covers the North Carolina Coastal Plain, including the Chesapeake Inlet, Pamlico and Albermarle sounds, and Roanoke Island, and extends westward to the sources of the rivers of the sounds. It includes information derived directly from Native American sources and observations, such as the names and locations of Native American villages, most palisaded as in their actual construction; pictorial representations of individual Indians, taken... This map, based upon a three-month survey by boat by Captain John Smith and a small party of colonists, is the first published map of the Chesapeake Bay region. The copy here accompanied the 1624 edition of Smith's The generall Historie of Virginia.

Sailing up the major rivers flowing into the bay from the west, Smith and his party encountered numerous Native American villages, in the process recording their names and populations. The legend on the map and its concomitant symbols differentiates between areas and features that have been discovered by the English and those learned about by Native American informants. Indeed, the Maltese crosses on each river indicates the extent of the party's actual personal knowledge, versus the remainder reported as being taken from instructions furnished to them by local Indians. A cartouche in the upper left hand corner illustrates the chief of the Powhatan federation of Indians in council. The University of Kansas prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex, national origin, age, ancestry, disability, status as a veteran, sexual orientation, marital status, parental status, gender identity, gender expression,... Retaliation is also prohibited by university policy.

The following persons have been designated to handle inquiries regarding the nondiscrimination policies and are the Title IX coordinators for their respective campuses: Director of the Office of Civil Rights and Title IX, civilrights@ku.edu,... The University of Kansas is a public institution governed by the Kansas Board of Regents. Have a question? Need assistance? Use our online form to ask a librarian for help. In general there has been limited effort to produce historical cartography portraying the wide range of social, political, economic, and cultural themes of Indian life.

Historical coverage is usually limited to depicting ethnographic or linguistic distribution, battle sites, and the locations of villages and reservations. Exceptions are found in a few atlases, including a Comparative Studies of North American Indians (1957), Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History (1987), Atlas of American Indian Affairs (1991), Atlas of the North American... More generalized coverage of Indian history is usually in thematic and historical atlases of the United States and in individual state atlases. In spite of their deficiencies, historical maps can prove to be valuable resources not only for their recreation of past events — both correctly and incorrectly — and for their documentation of tribal distribution... And, although Naive American participation in the two major world wars of the twentieth century is well-documented, maps depicting their roles — either as infantrymen or as code talkers, i.e transmitters of coded tactical... The maps in this section have been digitized by the Library and are available for viewing and download online.

Select the link on the map or in the caption to view a copy of the map that can be enlarge to view the detail. This pictorial map satirizes America's westward thrust in the late 1820s by depicting expansion as a struggle between an alligator and a turtle, knotted at their tails, moving in opposite directions. They are mounted by ten Anglo-American promoters or investors. At the top of the scene is a group of ten Native Americans, commenting on the action below. Prepared after World War I, this map depicts Native participation during the War, including the twenty-eight sectors where they were awarded military decorations in France and Belgium. Also indicates the locations of graves of Indian war dead and noted battles in which they fought.

An inset includes a "Special sketch of noted battlefields, comprising Verdun & Meuse, Argonne & St. Mihiel operations, where the Indians occupied so many sectors and won such fine distinction"; whereas a series of three lines and dots indicate Dr. J. K. Dixon's line trips over the battlefields as leader of the Rodman Wanamaker Historical Expeditions to the North American Indian in Europe. Outlines Path Forward on Troubled Legacy of Federal Boarding School Policies in Remarks to National Congress of American Indians

Opinion: Deb Haaland: My grandparents were stolen from their families as children. We must learn about this history Lost Lives, Lost Culture: The Forgotten History of Indigenous Boarding Schools We can help with your research questions -- contact us by chat, phone, email, text or at a Research Help desk. If you prefer a paper copy, that's an option! We will reach out later this summer to encourage students to request paper copies.

If you are faculty or staff interested in including the book in your fall courses, please complete the form at: Get the Book Have a question? Need assistance? Use our online form to ask a librarian for help. Because the collections of the Geography and Map Division are comprehensive, as well as formidable to approach as primary resources, this guide is by necessity selective, while the descriptions accompanying each are abbreviated. Each map, however, has its own story, and here we examine a few of them at length below to illustrate for the researcher the richness of Native American history across a variety of cartographic...

The fourteen maps displayed below have separate entries elsewhere in this research guide. Joan Vingboons. Manatvs gelegen op de Noot [sic] Riuier. 1639. Library of Congress Geography and Map Division. This pictorial manuscript map of Manhattan and its environs was copied around 1665 after a 1639 map by Joan Vingboons, the principal cartographer for the Dutch West India Company.

Native American Geographic Knowledge Maps And Cartography Ku Common

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