The second supporting question, “how did the physical features and natural resources of North Dakota affect where Native Americans chose to establish settlements?” helps students use sources to unwrap the context of the time and topic being examined. How did early Native Americans in North Dakota interact with their physical environment to meet their needs? What geologic features (rivers, lakes, etc.) and natural resources (plants, animals, etc.) impacted them? What tribes lived in what is now North Dakota, and where were their traditional homelands? What treaties impacted their land claims? Where do they live now? What do you know about their culture? What kind of homes did they live in? What food did they eat? How do we know what we know?
The maps in this document collection, dated from 1804 to the 1905, were all created by non-native explorers to the region. Native Americans did not rely on maps drawn on paper or hide the same way Europeans and Americans did. They often only kept their knowledge of land forms, river courses, and villages in their minds and transmitted the information orally from one generation to the next. At the prodding of Europeans and European Americans they sketched the landscape features in dirt or snow or on paper or hide. Most of their knowledge was personally learned from their own travels, but some was acquired from conversations with visitors from distant villages and cities. Europeans and Americans created maps with specific features such as political (nation or state) boundaries, mountain ranges, rivers, valleys. Maps were drawn to scale as accurately as possible with the knowledge available at the time. They used latitude and longitude to measure distance. They also developed common standards and practices for depicting cardinal directions. North is generally always up on maps created from a Western perspective. This provides a common reference point in viewing maps, but also suggests the way Western Europeans viewed themselves in relation to the rest of the world.
The series of maps presented here have been selected to provide insight into the process of changes wrought by human interaction with the land as well as changes in human occupation of the region over a period of several hundred years. They represent only a small portion of the map collection of the SHSND. Complete the following task using the sources provided to build a context of the time period and topic being examined.
Formative Performance Task 2
Either working individually or in groups, have students study the featured sources A-H and discuss the following questions. Using the sources provided, and their maps from Formative Performance Task 1, have students create graphic organizers that categorize the opportunities and constraints of the physical features that affected Native American settlements.
Featured Sources 2
The sources featured below are examples of primary sources. Primary sources are the raw materials of history—original documents, personal records, photographs, maps, and other materials. Primary sources the first evidence of what happened, what was thought, and what was said by people living through a moment in time. These sources are the evidence by which historians and other researchers build and defend their historical arguments, or thesis statements. When using primary sources in your lessons, invite students to use all their senses to observe, describe, and analyze the materials. What can they see, hear, feel, smell, and even taste? Draw on students’ knowledge to classify the sources into groups, to make connections between what they observe and what they already know, and to help them make logical claims about the materials that can be supported by evidence. Further research of materials and sources can either prove or disprove the students’ argument.
Who created each of these maps? What do these sources tell us about early exploration of the northern Great Plains? What can you learn from these maps about the people who lived west of the Mississippi River? Who were the Native American tribes living in what is now North Dakota? What features suggest commerce or trade between the people of the west and the people of the United States? How did they travel? How has the naming of different locations changed over time? Who were Maximilian zu Wied and Karl Bodmer? Why did they travel to the northern plains? What did they contribute to our knowledge of the early history of North Dakota? Compare the size and number of reservations in Dakota Territory with those of Montana, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, and Wyoming. Which states or territories have the most or largest reservations? Why did some states have more reservations than others? Compare this map with a current North Dakota map. Have reservations in North Dakota changed in size since 1885? What else can you find?
| Source A |
Source: SHSND 917.8 L585 v4 map 1 Samuel Lewis drew this map of the trail followed by the Corps of Discovery in 1804, 1805, and 1806. Lewis (no relation to Meriweather Lewis) was a cartographer active in the late 18th and early 19th century. This map, published in 1814, made the Lewis and Clark trail available to a wide audience for the first time. It was one of his most significant endeavors. Clark’s measurements on the course of the expedition were somewhat inaccurate, but he brought back a great deal more knowledge about the geography of the northern plains than had been previously available in the United States. Note the multiple chains of mountains that form the Rocky Mountains, the longer and more complex course of the Missouri River and the location of the Red River. |
| Source B |
Source: SHSND 917.8 L585 v4 map 1 Samuel Lewis drew this map of the trail followed by the Corps of Discovery in 1804, 1805, and 1806. Lewis (no relation to Meriweather Lewis) was a cartographer active in the late 18th and early 19th century. This map, published in 1814, made the Lewis and Clark trail available to a wide audience for the first time. It was one of his most significant endeavors. Clark’s measurements on the course of the expedition were somewhat inaccurate, but he brought back a great deal more knowledge about the geography of the northern plains than had been previously available in the United States. Note the multiple chains of mountains that form the Rocky Mountains, the longer and more complex course of the Missouri River and the location of the Red River. |
| Source C |
Melish's Map of the U.S. (1820)
Source: SHSND 973.5 M523u 1821 John Melish hired Benjamin Tanner to engrave this map which he then published in 1820. The map measures 17 1/2 by 21 ¼ inches. Melish immigrated to the US in 1811 from Scotland. Although he had been in the textile business in Scotland, in the US he became a publisher of maps and was very influential in that field. His maps were hand colored which allowed the reader to immediately see the shapes of states and territories. The nomenclature (naming of locations) is not modern. What we usually identify as the Louisiana Purchase is called Missouri Territory on this map. The state of Missouri had been removed from the Louisiana Purchase by the Missouri Compromise (1820). The map reverts to the earlier, inaccurate, representation of the Red River of the North, showing it flowing from the east with the Swan River as a major tributary. The Moose River is today called the Mouse, or Souris, River. Note the road from Mandan villages to the Hudson Bay factories (or trading posts) near Brandon, Manitoba. |
| Source D |
Die Vereinigten Staaten von Nord-America (1831)
Source: SHSND 973.5 W4224 1831 This map, printed in Weimar Germany in 1831 was drawn by C. F. Weiland. It measures 21 1/8 by 27 inches. Weiland’s map was published in both German and English. It depends heavily on data gathered from the Corps of Discovery led by Lewis and Clark. This map was used by Prince Maximilian zu Wied and his artist Karl Bodmer on their journey to Fort Clark and Fort Union in 1833. This map appears to present more accurately the locations of rivers, lakes, and other features of the region that is today North Dakota which was Maximilian’s destination. The Red, the Missouri, and the James (Jacques) rivers appear in the proper locations. The Sheyenne (Shienne) and several other tributaries of the Red River appear for the first time among the maps in this collection. Teufels See, or Devils See, is modern Devils Lake. See is the German word for lake. |
| Source E |
Political Map of the U.S. (1845)
Source: SHSND 973.6 A8873 1850 This map was created by William C. Woodbridge of New York and engraved by M. Atwood. The map is copyrighted in1845, but it reflects the political changes and military conquest that took place between 1848 and 1850. The map measures 12 by 18 ½ inches. As a political map, it shows the state boundaries, capitals and major cities, and territorial boundaries. Because its purpose is to show political boundaries, it contains fewer topographical details such as rivers, lakes, and mountain ranges. However, the map does fill in portion of the unorganized territories of the west with some information about a few Indian tribes and some military forts. Note that the southern boundary of the United States does not have its current location. Dakota Territory has not yet been organized; what we know today as North Dakota is part of Missouri Territory on this map. |
| Source F |
Johnson's Map of Dakota Territory (1861, 1862)
Source: SHSND 978.02 J66j 1862 This map was published by Johnson and Browning 1862 shortly after Dakota Territory was organized. It measures 14 by 18 inches. Alvin Johnson’s map shows the boundaries of the newly organized Dakota Territory which included at that time portions of the present states of Montana and Wyoming. Though the map shows numerous Indian tribes and their homelands, the new territorial capital at Yankton is not located on the map. Johnson’s eastern boundary of Dakota Territory is in the general area, but not quite tied to the Red River of the North. |
| Source G |
Map of Indian Reservations in U.S. (1885)
Source: SHSND 973.00497 U5813m 1885 This map was drawn by Paul Brodie in 1885 for the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, John D. C. Atkins. Brodie’s map shows the size and shape of reservations of that time, most of which had been established by treaty between the United States Government (usually under the supervision of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs) and a particular tribe. The year 1885 might be described as the peak of the reservation era. By 1890, most Indian tribes had been relocated to reservations, typically against their will, and often in an area new to them rather than their traditional homelands. Though reservations were usually established by treaty which required the approval of the U. S. Senate, they could be closed or reduced in size by executive order of the President of the United States. Many reservations were also reduced under the provisions of the Dawes Act (General Allotment Act) which became law in 1887 and allowed the federal government to assign, or allot, parcels of land to individual Indian families and to open the remaining unallotted lands to settlers. |
| Source H |
http://www.digitalhorizonsonline.org/digital/collection/uw-ndshs/id/3786/ This map was drawn on canvas in 1905 by a Mandan man, Sitting Rabbit. It measures 23 feet 4 inches by 17 ½ inches. Sitting Rabbit drew on the oral traditions of the Mandan and Hidatsa to draw the course of the Missouri River and its tributaries in relation to villages of the past and present. This map layers history with the geography of 1906. To the left as you look at this digitized image is south where the map begins on the South Dakota/North Dakota border. The upper side of the map is the west bank of the Missouri River. The map is drawn in sections, so that Sitting Rabbit could stretch the curves of the river in a relatively straight line. He used both English and Mandan languages to identify specific locations. This map includes villages that by 1905 were known only in the long memory of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara people. Many of these villages were abandoned as other tribes moved through or settled in the region. The Three Affiliated Tribes tended to move northward, settling into large villages which offered more protection against enemies. Near the mouth of the Heart River the Mandan built seven villages which around the year 1700 may have housed as many as 7,000 people. Sitting Rabbit included the modern cities of Mandan and Bismarck which can be identified by city street grids and railroad lines. Other landmarks overlap new and old features, such as ancient Mandan Town in the middle of contemporary Standing Rock Agency. Near Fort Clark are the five Knife River villages where Lewis and Clark visited the Mandan and Hidatsa during their winter at Fort Mandan across the river. These were also the villages where the tragic smallpox epidemic of 1837 began, killing thousands of northern plains Indians and nearly destroying the Mandan and their culture. Following the epidemic, the Mandan and Hidatsa again moved upriver and built a new village called Like-a-Fishhook (identified as Fish-hook house on the map). This village was the home of the Mandan and Hidatsa in the later 19th century. Nearby Fort Berthold lent its name to their present-day reservation. Key to Site Identification: |
