The Bangor Daily News’ Newspapers in Education, The Maine Geographic Alliance and Casco Bay Energy present Mapping the Americas

Accurate maps do useful things and may vary from culture to culture. There is also the matter of practicality. Jorge Luis Borges’ short story “On Exactitude in Science” is set in a land where the king’s cartographers were encouraged to such accuracy that their maps grew to the size of the entire kingdom. The scale was one to one; it would be as though a map of Penobscot County were the actual size of Penobscot County. Such a map would be inconvenient to use, a point on which Borges elaborates.

The armies of the early Romans traveled by means of an itinerary – a sequence of destinations. They had the sort of maps we would recognize, but the Romans displayed them during a triumph to dazzle the citizens with the greatness of the general and the source of the booty obtained.

Closer to our notion of a proper map is the Domesday Book (1086), which surveyed William the Conqueror’s newly acquired land. William’s motivation is clear: It is more profitable to tax people than to steal from them. The purpose of the maps in the Domesday Book we can all appreciate.

The purpose of the maps made by American Indians was different still. They made maps of destinations, territories and significant resources, but there are also maps of the sky and of ancient cosmology. The earliest maps are literally on the ground in the form of great earthworks created by “The Moundbuilders,” as the 19th century dilettantes referred to them, because they could not credit these vast works of squares and circles measuring hundreds of yards across to American Indians.

The Hopewell Earthworks, named after a pious Ohio farmer on whose land one of the largest earthworks is found, date to between 200 B.C. and A.D. 400 and is thought to map the sky. The Great Circle of the earthwork represents the horizon, and the sight lines provided by other parts of the earthwork point toward astronomical events important to the ancient builders. Any speculation about what may have been recorded on leather or bark is doomed to failure as nothing from such an early date is likely to have survived.

But there do seem to be prehistoric maps. When we say “carved in stone,” we mean something permanent, but even this may not always be so. There are some petroglyphs that are probably maps – most convincingly the Map Rock Petroglyph in Idaho – but they are likely only hundreds, and not thousands, of years old.

There are also maps on shell that can be dated to prehistoric times. The 14th century archaeological site of the Spiro Mound in Oklahoma contained among its hundreds of artifacts an engraved conch shell that shows interconnected lines and circles. This is very like the maps drawn on skin or paper by historic southeastern Indians, which show large circles as the locations of various tribes, including the English.

One possible candidate for a genuinely prehistoric map drawn on skin is the magnificent Pawnee Star Map, now curated by the Field Museum in Chicago. It was collected in Oklahoma in 1906 as part of the Black Meteor Star Bundle, said by the Skidi Pawnee to be in existence before they knew of Europeans. On this approximately 3-foot-by-2-foot elk hide map can be seen the morning and evening stars, the Milky Way and the North Star. It really is a map of Pawnee cosmology. “The Lost Universe,” written by Regina Weltfish, indicates Pawnee priests would use their sod lodges as an observatory and likely referred to such maps.

American Indian maps drawn on skins are the most familiar to us. They often combine topography with historical events such as a hunt or a raid. One of the oldest such maps, mid-18th century, is a depiction on buffalo hide of a Quapaw (Arkansas) raid showing scalps taken, skirmishes and villages, some French and some Indian, visited. The maps drawn by American Indians eventually show European influence.

An ingeniously practical medium for mapmaking was the blaze of a tree. The message was painted in bear grease and charcoal on an area from which the tree bark had been removed. G. Malcolm Lewis (whose books and articles this account draws upon) notes a blaze recording the military record of a Delaware warrior complete with trails, forts, scalps and prisoners taken. A more recent use of this method was by the North Vietnamese who would leave signs on tree blazes along the Ho Chi Minh Trail during the Vietnam War. No bear grease though; Magic Marker.

Perhaps the most common material for maps was birch bark. The most exciting of these birch bark maps, the Red Score or Wallam Ollum, purporting to record the travels of the Delaware Indians across the Bering Land Bridge and across North America to the East Coast, is an overly ambitious fake. But there are many others that are authentic and detailed and match up scrupulously with contemporary geography. Red Sky’s Migration Scroll records a traditional route from the St Lawrence River to the western Great Lakes. With a bit of guesswork, one might use it today.

Message birch barks were very common. These were (and in places still are) brief messages giving directions, typically placed in a cleft stick beside a stream or trail, giving information as to who had passed by and the nature of the route ahead. There are many early accounts of this practice. The oldest extant message birch bark dates to 1841; the latest to 1970.

Undoubtedly the most uniquely North American map medium is wampum, an elegant form of beadwork made from white and purple cylindrical shell beads used to record events, signify treaties and announce wars. The well-named Road Wampum, or Road Belt, often of great length, would give precise directions of the route, destination and purpose of a message. Often it was an invitation to peace.

Central and South America

It is tempting to think of the Aztecs of Mexico and the Incas of Peru as ancient prehistoric societies, known only to archaeologists. But the Inca and the Aztecs have been recorded in the full light of history and much of their early record has survived. The Aztecs were a fully literate society and many of their maps, typically written on bark, reside in the national museum of Mexico.

These maps show routes anciently traveled by the founders of Tenochtitlan, the line of march indicated by footprints. Other maps show the locations of cities, conquests and trade routes. One of the more delightful maps from just before the conquest of Mexico shows the King of Texcoco serenely sitting on his throne at the center of an elaborate map of his complex residence.

The Incas of Peru never developed literacy as we would understand it. Instead they relied on records contained within an elaborate system of strings and knots called quipu. Mastering this system was extraordinarily difficult and no one now living has any thorough knowledge of how it works. It is clear that some of these quipu were in fact detailed maps. They are mentioned as such in Colonial records and the wonderfully illustrated letters to the King of Spain written by Guaman Poma show a messenger with quipu, which is labeled in Spanish as a map, carta.

Series Contributors: Dr. Brad Dearden, Associate Professor of Geography, University of Maine at Farmington;

Allison L. Hepler, Associate Professor of History, University of Maine at Farmington; Dr Jon Oplinger, University of Maine

at Farmington; Margaret Shaw Chernosky and her geography students, employing GIS technology, Bangor High School, Bangor; Susan Lahti, Maine Geographic Alliance, Department of Social Science and Business, Roberts Learning Center, University of Maine at Farmington; Stacy Doore, National Science Foundation GK-12 Sensor Fellow, University of Maine Spatial Engineering; The Maine Geographic Alliance. Photos: iStockphoto; Additional content: National Geographic; Maine Office GIS; ESRI

Geography Action Week is sponsored by Casco Bay Energy.

For information regarding the Bangor Daily News’ Newspapers in Education program, contact Pat Lemieux, Bangor Daily News, 990-8076. For additional copies, subscriptions and general information, contact the Bangor Daily News at 990-8000 or

800-432-7964. Bangor Daily News’ Newspaper in Education editor: Pat Lemieux

Series editor: Julie Harris

Design and graphics editor: Eric Zelz