Another America: Native American Maps and the History of Our Land [Hardcover]

Mark Warhus (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1997

Opening a window for modern readers to see how the original inhabitants viewed the American continent more than three hundred years ago, this unique and valuable reference combines rare maps made by Native Americans with essays on their historical and cultural context.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Europeans who conquered the Americas and their descendants were not the first to map the hemisphere, museum curator Mark Warhus writes in this fascinating, richly illustrated study of Native American cartography. Indian maps--made on buffalo skins, rocks, bark, and, later, paper--claimed territorial rights, explained treaties among nations, delineated trade routes, and showed the locations of resources. Many of those maps wound up in dusty attics and the back shelves of museums, where Warhus has hunted them out; his stories of finding these lost treasures are as illuminating as his interpretations of what might be called pre-scientific ways of graphically describing the land. These maps, he writes, are of importance today not only for their own sake, but also as evidence of historic holdings in current claims over lost territories.

From Kirkus Reviews

An absorbing exploration of Native American ways of mapping the land. Warhus, a museum curator, unfolds an account that is at once full of scientific complexities and of human interest. In looking at Native American maps, he invites the reader to consider the detailed knowledge of ``geography, political allegiances, and economic relations'' reflected in them, knowledge largely destroyed in the course of conquest. In case study after case study, he shows how maps made on buffalo skins, rocks, birch bark, and paper, maps that claimed territorial rights and explained treaties with other Indian nations, were simply ignored; many of those maps wound up in the drawing rooms and attics of the conquerors. Some eventually came to rest in museum collections. Warhus has been diligent in hunting these maps out, and we should be glad of it, for many of them are astonishingly detailed--one, made by an Iowa Indian in the mid-1850s, shows the tributaries of the Mississippi River nearly as well as any modern chart, while another, made by one of the last members of the Beothuck people of Newfoundland, is an extraordinary cultural atlas of the northern Atlantic seaboard at the time of the European arrival. To his account of the making of these maps Warhus adds a rich anecdotal history, telling the stories of the kidnaped Indian Miguel, forced to make maps of the southern Plains for the Spanish conquistadors, and of other Native Americans whose knowledge of the countryside was used to the invaders' advantage. Warhus closes his book with a look at modern efforts by the Hopi, Zuni, and other peoples to combine traditional geographies with modern mapmaking techniques, efforts that may be fruitful in pressing indigenous claims to lost territory. This richly illustrated work is a valuable contribution to Native American studies. (90 color and b&w illustrations, not seen) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 242 pages
• Publisher: St Martins Pr; 1st edition (April 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312150547
• ISBN-13: 978-0312150549
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #593,197 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars can't seize the land before it's been described, November 10, 2001

By 

simpcity - See all my reviews

This review is from: Another America: Native American Maps and the History of Our Land (Hardcover)

This is a story of dispossession and of cultural memory. Mark Warhus reveals an astonishing legacy of native American cartography. Most of the maps are snapshots of important moments in the collision of two cultures. Some of these maps are the absolute last artifacts of tribes who have disappeared, such as the maps of Shanawdithit (Nancy) the last surviving member of the Beothucks (or Red Indians of Newfoundland).

Other maps demonstrate the deep ties to tribal lands once lost but more recently regained.

Native American mapmaking is intertwined with oral history. Therefore, these maps are also historical treasures.