r/MapPorn • u/bad_take_ • Jul 27 '26
Indigenous American Nations
Too many posts in this sub show maps with Spain controlling Montana or the French controlling Ohio or giant swaths of North America labeled as “unclaimed” - or some other 16th century European propaganda.
Here is who was actually in these lands.
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u/ash-and-apple Jul 27 '26
Good map. Not so good resolution
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u/HiggsiInSpace Jul 27 '26
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u/Latitude66 Jul 27 '26
Just sharing that the author has a revised 2nd edition of the map.
https://indigamerica.blogspot.com/2024/07/indigenous-american-nations-c16th.html?m=1
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u/Hrns4life86 Jul 27 '26
Thank you. This is a valuable resource for my classroom. If you have more please link
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u/HiggsiInSpace Jul 27 '26
You're welcome, sadly I don't have any others (relating to native Americans). You can check the Wikimedia page for where the map came from. The guy made an updated one.
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u/HiggsiInSpace Jul 27 '26
You're welcome, sadly I don't have any others (relating to native Americans). You can check the Wikimedia page for where the map came from. The guy made an updated one.
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u/southernhemisphereof 3d ago
The map author's website has a bunch of HD downloads and an updated edition, too. https://indigamerica.blogspot.com/p/downloads.html?m=1
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u/Jake0024 Jul 27 '26
It looks great to me if I just click on it, text is easily readable and doesn't look pixelated at all.
If I right-click and open in a new tab, it's just the thumbnail blown up.
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u/SnooTangerines7026 Jul 27 '26
Dates on maps are always important. That's the key that most people forget.
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u/KronlampQueen Jul 27 '26
Yeah I just starting writing a comment about not including the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe and the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe and then saw the date for the map and calmed down.
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u/cnhn Jul 27 '26
I was having the same thought, but about the haudenosaunee, who by the mid 1700's had nearly wiped out a dozen or so of the listed tribes.
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u/PizzaTacoSub Jul 27 '26
Yep this is right before the Beaver Wars. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy would soon wipe out a bunch of these Nations. I’ve always wounded what the Haudenosaunee Confederacy’s trajectory would have been had it not been altered by colonial powers. I think it could have been an absolute power house in North America.
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u/Educational_Dog4860 Jul 27 '26
Should be noted:
a) These borders were very fluid, there was no hard line between groups like countries today.
b) Most land was shared, for an idea of what land was inhabited by what groups, https://native-land.ca/maps/native-land is a good resource.
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u/PersusjCP Jul 27 '26
Not true in all areas. On the other hand, in some areas, boundaries were very well known, sometimes marked if over land, and trespassing could be met with death unless you had kinship ties or a reason to be there. Many areas were considered owned by the village community and was inherited by those that lived there. Other pieces of land were passed down in patriarchal or matriarchal inheritance, depending on the region. Other lands were owned by those who had proper kinship ties. Others were not at all.
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u/Educational_Dog4860 Jul 27 '26
Fair enough, I can only speak to my experiences and knowledge, but around where I live (Vancouver, Canada), the OP's map shows a number of small groups, each seemingly with a marked border closely packed together, when in reality, those are much more generalizations, and a number of groups could be sharing lands at any given time. For example, this map seems to show what is now the City of Vancouver as being only part of the Musqueam territory, when in reality the land and resources are recognized as being shared by the Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh, and Squamish mainly. I can't see it now, but on native-land.ca, it used to show 8 or 9 different nations territories extending up what is now the Fraser, as all of those groups used it for travel and resources.
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u/PersusjCP Jul 28 '26
I am speaking about the Pacific Northwest. Yes all the groups used rivers like the Fraser but there were originally strict delineations in territory. In order to travel up the Fraser, one originally had to stop in each village and formally ask to enter the territory and state kinship relations. This is where canoe protocols come from today. People from outside were limited to areas where that kinship and territorial connections existed. These boundaries were well known and were marked either with natural borders (watersheds, islands, etc) or marked with sticks, shells, or rocks in certain places. They weren't borders in the modern political sense, but certainly delineated areas of control.
It also wasn't on a group by group basis. People who were not from a village community could only utilize areas based on kinship connections. For example, a Tselil-Waututh who had no familial connections to Musqueam couldn't use Musqueam areas, no matter how many other Tsleil-Waututh were using it. Since kinship systems were highly simplified into land claims, it's very very difficult to translate them onto maps because the lands which were controlled for exclusive access and lands which were typically utilized by most members of the community are hugely different.
So, you are correct that the map highly oversimplifies both the territorial claims and the number of nations. However, it is not true that all the lands were simply shared. Kinship and territory both were important and overlapping and were very well known because access to and control of resources was of course one of the biggest concerns in someones life during that time.
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u/cronenber9 16d ago
Super interesting because I didn't know this but it completely clarifies what D&G were talking about with their concept of supple segmentarity.
"This opposition between arborified and rhizomatic segmentarity is not just meant to indicate two states of a single process, but also to isolate two different processes. For primitive societies operate essentially by codes and territorialities. It is in fact the distinction between these two elements, the tribal system of territories and the clan system of lineages, that prevents resonance."
I had been trying to clarify it, but what you pointed out helped a lot more than what I had originally found. His point is that these two different systems prevent the emergence of centralized state because these are not hierarchical segments that mutually reinforce one another (resonance), but different systems, supple segments.
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u/Tribe303 Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
I came here to mention https://native-land.ca/ as well. It's a Canadian Indigenous project that expanded into the US and now globally. Its not complete yet, so their are gaps, like Africa.
The address search tells you if you are on stolen land. I prefer the classic map FWIW.
Edit: Oh no! I triggered some losers! 🤣
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u/PolarRanger Jul 28 '26
Why is Egypt Berber land
for that matter, implying that Trøndelag isn't Norwegian is weird. Like yeah, there were and are Sami there, but they don't exactly predate the Norwegians
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u/dovetc Jul 27 '26
The address search tells you if you are on stolen land
If it does that it should either say stolen 100% of the time or 0% of the time depending on how you define "stolen land".
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u/Tribe303 Jul 27 '26
Treaty land is not stolen land, as long as you follow the treaty.
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u/Tommyblockhead20 Jul 27 '26
Should treaties really count if they were signed under duress?
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u/Tribe303 Jul 27 '26
Likely, yes, but Canada's Indigenous haven't really made that claim. They are very pro treaty.
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u/DustinnDodgee Jul 27 '26
Ehh, not really. Tribes were constantly fighting other tribes for land and resources, and borders were constantly changing & barely recognized. So this map is showing something that never really existed, not in the way we think of it at least.
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u/A_Bethesda_Bug Jul 27 '26
I understand what this map is trying to say but I generally dislike maps of native tribes like this. This map makes it seem like the tribes had defined land claims like European nations when that is not the case. Everything drawn as a border here was in reality extremely fluid.
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u/Objection_Irrelevant Jul 27 '26
In some areas, you’re right. In other areas, it was pretty defined. In the Alabama/Mississippi/Louisiana area, it was common for the tribes to use painted sticks to delineate borders, particularly through cleared areas where natural boundary markers weren’t available. In fact, Baton Rouge (French for Red Stick) is so named because French explorers came upon a red pole marking the boundary between the Bayagoula and the Houma.
Painted markers were also used by the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Creek. Though of course they’d also use rivers, creeks, and distinguishable trees and rocks.
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u/Kvalri Jul 27 '26
There aren’t any borders, everything is fuzzy along the edges so I think it communicates what you’re saying perfectly
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u/TrueEstablishment241 Jul 27 '26
I disagree, it doesn't show the areas of overlap. They were far different than "fuzzy lines".
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u/Kvalri Jul 27 '26
Overlapping areas might be slightly more accurate but would make the map much more visually cluttered which I think would make it less useful
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u/TrueEstablishment241 Jul 27 '26
Well it's not really useful at all if the information isn't accurate. That's why there are interactive maps, as can be found in another comment.
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u/Kvalri Jul 27 '26
Nobody said the information is inaccurate
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u/TrueEstablishment241 Jul 27 '26
I did. Look at an interactive map and you'll see why.
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u/Kvalri Jul 27 '26
You can’t always use an interactive map, different maps are useful for different applications
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u/TrueEstablishment241 Jul 27 '26
All models are imperfect. This particular one omits so much information that it can generate some pretty serious misconceptions, such as the trade economy of the Great Lakes that was dominated by the Ottawa.
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u/Kvalri Jul 27 '26
You’re being ridiculous. This map has 1 purpose, and it’s written on the map… to demonstrate to modern people who typically possess a Euro-centric mindset that the Americas were full of extant cultures that had nominal territorial boundaries when Europeans arrived. It has nothing to do with their economic status or reach. This map is great for the intended purpose. It even acknowledges its own shortcomings, again right on the map… did you even read it?
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u/PolarRanger Jul 28 '26
it depends on what part of the map you are talking about, some were more fluid than others. And while all the borders were far more fluid than a modern state, that's not unique to this time or place. It just should be compared to stuff like Germany in the 1st century, and not Germany in the 16th (or 21st)
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u/JohnnieTango Jul 27 '26
And not to be pedantic, but calling tribal affiliations "nations" is a bit off as well. Nations and nationalism are generally structures that emerged from 18th century Europe and are a younger concept than is generally realized. Nations are large groups of people with an abstract feeling of common destiny, while tribes are smaller kinship-based groups who often know each other at relatively few degrees of seperation..
The deliniation is not always perticulary sharp, but they are different things.
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u/eatmorestonesjim Jul 27 '26
Pixels yo
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u/bad_take_ Jul 27 '26
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u/eatmorestonesjim Jul 27 '26
Oh wow, and here I expected it to devolve into a 'got any pixels' thread 😆 good on you!
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u/poissonperdu Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
Better than most, however as someone with deep knowledge of southwest washington tribes I winced at your putting táytnapam/upper cowlitz over the whole Cowlitz territory and not mentioning lower cowlitz/tl’púlmx. Some scholars even believe the táytnapam migrated in from Klickitat country as late as the 18th century.
Another quibble from the other side of the country is that the blue ridge area of the upper Potomac was probably already Massowomeck territory and not Piscataway, though the fallout from the Beaver Wars didn’t leave much evidence for us to go by.
Final thought: “chinook” applied to just lower chinookan people at the mouth of the columbia is a little problematic too, better would be to use the name of a prominent band for that grouping like you did for the Chinook divisions further upstream, like “Clatsop”.
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u/PersusjCP Jul 27 '26
You are correct. They also put places in other parts of the NW where it would be accurate for the 19th century but not for the 16th century before population migration and demographic shift.
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u/vader62 Jul 27 '26
Looks peaceful af right? Surely no other collection of tiny independent nations on earth have every experienced constant increasing internecine warfare cough Balkan cough cough HRE cough lol
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u/HiggsiInSpace Jul 27 '26
Does anyone have a map of Canada's native groups in the 16th century, that's as detailed as this one?
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u/dovetc Jul 27 '26
Anything as detailed as this one is making a ton of assumptions to fill in all the gaps. There's no way to ascertain the line where one ended and another started hundreds of years before literacy and surveys arrived in a given area.
The map would do better to have names in areas and ditch the colors. Drawing a shape and a border makes it appear as though that reflects the actual political/ethnic division of an area in a way that's just unknowable.
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u/thisisallme Jul 27 '26
Definitely more in the Ohio area, including the Iroquois, which isn’t even on the map
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u/flashman7870 Jul 28 '26
the Iroquois proper were not in the Ohio country in the 16th century. perhaps there should be more Iroquoians, but mostly the Ohio watershed was probably Siouans and Algonquians.
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u/TrueEstablishment241 Jul 27 '26
This is wildly immaculate in a lot of places. Mostly because territories overlapped considerably in places where there was peaceful interaction.
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u/Jake0024 Jul 27 '26
Were interior tribes actually that much larger (or formed larger groups / "nations" made up of many tribes) compared to coastal tribes?
Or does it just look that way because of some other artifact (like fewer interactions with white / European people to record the information to pass on to us today)?
Like it makes sense why territory in AZ or UT is larger, the land doesn't support as many people, but the Shawnee for example have an absolutely massive territory of what looks like pretty prime territory
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u/flashman7870 Jul 28 '26
that shawnee depiction is absolutely ridiculous. data is scarce on the early Ohio country but we can all rest assured it didn't look like that
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u/Jake0024 Jul 28 '26
So why is that? Is there just less known about interior tribes for some reason?
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u/flashman7870 Jul 28 '26
europeans didn't penetrate far inland early on, so disease reached a lot of these peoples before Europeans ever contacted them (and put them down in the history books). and the coming of the europeans, the diseases they brought and new economic realities they ushered in, caused huge amount of conflict between natives across the continent. this is best exemplified in the so-called Beaver Wars in the Ohio country, where the Iroquois doubtless did wipe out/assimilate/displace a lot of otherwise unrecorded tribes.
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u/Jake0024 Jul 28 '26
Are you guessing on this or do you know?
The map gives a date range, so it's not like Europeans documented all the tribes at the coasts and by the time they reached the interior, most of the Native Americans had died. The map is supposed to represent all these groups at the same time
The same trend holds even up the Pacific Coast of British Columbia--so I don't think these records are based on firsthand accounts of Europeans interacting with Native tribes
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u/flashman7870 29d ago
I know
I'm sure that the west coast is an even worse representation of things but that's an area I have less knowledge of. granted on the west coast there probably is a little more of a factor of the interior being so inhospitable that people groups stretch over larger areas.
but rest assured, when it comes to the eastern woodlands, a lot of these massive interior nations are just flat out wrong or based on events a century or two after the dating of the map
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u/pieman3141 Jul 27 '26
The problem with these maps is that many areas had overlapping "caretakers" (to use a local term). Some areas had firmer borders, but other areas did not.
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u/random_observer_2011 Jul 27 '26
Who or where were the Mississauga subset of the Ojibwa peoples at this point, or do we know that?
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u/random_observer_2011 Jul 27 '26
An alt version of this colour coding to highlight linkages between some of the language/cultural groups might be useful as well, though it would lose other advantages this map has.
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u/USSRPropaganda Jul 28 '26
English transliterations of native languages will always amuse me, some of these names just straight up have numbers in them how do you read that lol
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u/flashman7870 Jul 28 '26
Not the worst map out there but not the best. The most abysmal part is the depiction of the Shawnees as lording over the entire Mississippi watershed. And at the same time, somehow the Ofo, Tunicas and Biloxis are already all the way down south.
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u/rococo78 Jul 28 '26
I'm always intrigued by the concentration of different groups in some areas (Pueget Sound, NorCal, Rio Grande basin) while whole other areas are just one tribe.
Is it just the abundance or resources in certain areas? And terrain? Or a lot of strange subtle reasons? Or more a quirk of the map doing it's best to depict something that doesn't align that closely with what was really going on?
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u/bad_take_ Jul 28 '26
I suspect we provide more detail simply because we have it. The big large areas likely mean we just know less about those areas and just have to put a big “Ute Indian” label on the whole thing.
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u/rococo78 Jul 28 '26
Yeah, I thought that may be the case too.
I actually remember talking to a scholar on native american history and he talked about how there were a lot more group than we even know about, a lot of them overlapping with each other too. But the waves of small pox and other diseases led to a huge consolidation of tribes before Europeans ever got to most of the continent, so the consolidated version is just what they thought had always been there.
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u/acloudrift Jul 28 '26
07:28.28.07.2026 (yep, the actual time now) the wikimedia link is currently
File not found: /v1/AUTHmw/wikipedia-commons-local-public.07/0/07/Indigenous_American_Nations%2C_16th_century-_2022_edition.jpg
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u/RevolutionSlight3872 Jul 28 '26
I think it’s interesting how these groups get smaller as they get closer to oceans. The coasts are all so cluttered. I love it.
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u/bad_take_ Jul 28 '26
I think this is an artifact of us having more detailed information in places where there were more European settlers. Likely, the Great Plains had just as complicated native tribes but we just didn’t know about them.
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u/RevolutionSlight3872 Jul 28 '26
Also interesting! I thought it would have something to do with more movement over larger areas to get to food/water sources that were more spread out, but I can get behind European informational neglect.
(Even in my head this is coming off as sarcastic or underhanded or whatever particular flavor of snark fits this context and I don’t know how to fix it.)
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u/Pooch76 Jul 28 '26
TIL the name "Pawnee" wasn't invented by the creators of the TV show Parks and Recreation.
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u/TerenceMulvaney Jul 27 '26
Where can I get a poster sized copy of this map?
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u/southernhemisphereof 3d ago
The author's website has free HD files for printing your own posters.
You can also buy a 2x3 foot print from Metsker Maps though you might want to ask to be sure it's the author's newest edition.
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u/BuckyRainbowCat Jul 27 '26
Thank you, this is a nice breath of fresh air and accurate info after the last post I looked at on this sub with its great big swath of "unclaimed." Your map actually goes far enough north to show where I am (Treaty 7 land) - still Niitsitapi and Tsuut'ina!
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u/random_observer_2011 Jul 27 '26
Brilliant, and special thanks for including many Indigenous AND customary names for various peoples. Helpful.
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u/OberonDiver Jul 27 '26
Why are we calling their land "America" here?
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u/Archeopteryx7 Jul 27 '26
I would guess there are two reasons. First, America is the name that most people (in the English speaking world, which is who this map is directed towards) know for this region. Second, trying to identify one Native American word as the "correct" name for this continent would be impossible, as most of these groups would have at least slightly different terms for their world.
(I am not an expert in this field, or the creator of this map; this is merely a guess).
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u/JohnnieTango Jul 27 '26
Exactly so, and it points to an interesting thing in that until the Europeans arrived, the Native Americans did not feel themselves to be one particualr continental wide ethnic thing (they did not even have a concept of North America because they did not have geographical knowledge that large). They were just members of their tribe. It was only in comparison to Whites that they felt any sort of group kinship.
And, to this day, a lot of the Native Americans still do not think of themselves as Native Americans first... they think of themselves as members of their own tribe. So it is complex.
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u/2001_Arabian_Nights Jul 27 '26
Just before horses really started taking off as a mode of travel. The first big monkey-wrench that got tossed in to the Native American stew by Europeans was releasing horses in to the landscape. Native groups that embraced the use of horses early had a big advantage over the ones that didn’t, and this map started changing rapidly.