On November 1, we hosted From The Vault: Indigenous Geographies.

Highlighting Indigenous geographies and guest curated by Amira Madison, the Supporting Indigenous Communities Fellow at the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics, we explored collections that document Native life and land in New England and beyond. Look through the maps and captions below from Indigenous Geographies to further many histories and perspectives explored in this selection of maps.

Gideon Hawley, Plan of Mashpee (1785)

Prior to being a town, Mashpee was first named an Indian Plantation. and this is one of the original drawn out plans. This is how the United States planned to manage Tribes west of the Mississippi, but first piloted the policy in Massachusetts. The Dawes Act, also known as the Dawes Severalty Act or General Allotment Act, was passed by Congress in 1887 to break up tribal lands and assimilate Native Americans into mainstream US society. The act was named after Senator Dawes from Massachusetts, who was the primary proponent of the legislation. 

Margaret W. Pearce, Coming Home to Indigenous Place Names in Canada (2017)

What does it look like for an Indigenous person to create a map from the Indigenous perspective with Indigenous collaboration? How can Indigenous languages explain the land more accurately than any typical map?

United States. Office of Indian Affairs, Map showing Indian reservations within the limits of the United States, 1906 (1907)

Today, we have 574 Federally Recognized Tribes across the United States. In 1906, according to this map, there are only a few communities highlighted that are east of Mississippi. Why is that? Well, here in Massachusetts, treaties were initially created with the English, not the United States government. Over centuries, as the founding colonies expanded and the United States became a country, the old treaties were disregarded or blatantly ignored in favor of colonial expansion. 

Don Bloodgood, Navajoland, U.S.A. (1960)

There is something quirky and fun about this map design! The Navajo Nation is the largest reservation and has the biggest Tribal population in the United States. This was a map authorized by Navajo Nation’s Tribal Council as a part of a visitors guide brochure and includes everything from important natural sites like the sacred mountains to the areas where rug designs are created.

Nathan Braccio, Praying Towns Relative to English Borders, Algonquian Country, and Major Algonquian Path

“Praying Towns” were created in the 17th century to christianize and forcibly assimilate Native Americans in Massachusetts. As Puritan authority over the region grew, so did the number of praying towns. Additionally, these towns were deliberately placed along major Algonquian paths that were highly frequented by the Indigenous people of the area, almost guaranteeing interaction with the Puritans determined to convert them.

James Mooney, Map showing distribution of indian stocks and tribes, between 1710-1720 (1904)

This 1904 map is depicting the perceived historic ancestry/Tribes of Indigenous people across the United States - think of how this map compares to some of the more modern, Indigenous-created maps also on display. Currently, all Federally Recognized Nations are managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which sits under the umbrella of the Department of Interior. The present Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, is the first American Indian to lead this department since its founding in 1849.

U.S. Department of the Interior Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, Federal Indian Boarding School Sites (2022)

In June 2021, Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, announced the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, a comprehensive effort to recognize the troubled legacy of federal Indian boarding school policies. In these boarding schools, Indian children were forcibly abducted by government agents, sent to schools hundreds of miles away from their families and homes, and beaten, starved, or otherwise abused when they spoke their Native languages. The goal of the modern initiative is to address the schools’ long-standing intergenerational impact and to shed light on the traumas committed in the past. For a time, some Native children from Massachusetts were sent to one of these boarding schools, the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania.

United States. Commission to the Five Civilized Tribes, Map of the Indian Territory : showing the progress and status of townsite appraisements, under the supervision of the United States Indian Inspector for the Indian Territory, June 30, 1902 (1903)

In 1900, the Cherokee tribe of Indians in Indian Territory had their lands appraised for their market value, with some exceptions, as a part of the negotiations for the cession of lands. This was due to the passing of the General Allotment Act, or Dawes Act, in 1887, some 15 years earlier, that aimed to divided designated reservation land into parcels, with the goal of breaking down tribal relationships and assimilating Native Americans into mainstream society by breaking up communal, reservation land into individually owned plots of land. Before the Dawes was repealed in 1934, the US government, in addition to land swindlers, had commandeered about 90 million acres from Native Americans, or close to two-thirds of their land.