Georeferenced historic maps of Native trails, villages and place names, laid over a modern map you can slide between. Start with a state below.
The gold lines are 25 documented Native routes: approximate corridors through the places each is recorded as passing, not surveyed paths. Alaska and Hawaiʻi are shown in the boxes below, not to scale. Request a map for your state.
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Lt. Joseph S. Herron, U.S. Army, 1899 · about 16 km accuracy
Lieutenant Joseph S. Herron’s 1899 map of his route from Tyonek on Cook Inlet over the Alaska Range and down the Kuskokwim to the Yukon, guided by Dena’ina and Upper Kuskokwim people: the Indian winter trails and summer trails he followed, the villages, and the Dena’ina and other names of the rivers and mountains.
Source: Alaska’s Digital Archives · Rights: public domain
U.S. Geological Survey (W. J. Peters), 1900 · about 31 km accuracy
The Geological Survey’s map of its 1899 route from Pyramid Harbor on Lynn Canal by the Dalton Trail — the old Chilkat trading trail into the interior — past Kluane Lake and over to the headwaters of the White and Tanana rivers, with the Chilkoot and White Pass trails, Native villages and the camps day by day.
Source: Alaska’s Digital Archives · Rights: public domain
W. Howard, U.S. Civil Engineers, 1835 · about 5 km accuracy
The Army engineers’ survey for the Military Road across the Mississippi swamps from opposite Memphis to the St. Francis River in 1833: the Indian Track and the Indian Trail that ran along the higher ground north of the new road, the bayous, lakes and cane brakes, and the landings and settlements of the time.
Source: Library of Congress · Rights: public domain
Herbert E. Gregory, USGS, 1916 · about 7 km accuracy
Herbert E. Gregory’s survey map of the Diné and Hopi country between the Colorado, the San Juan and the Puerco: the trails between springs, trading posts and missions, the reservation lines, and the routes of the explorers before 1909.
Source: Internet Archive · Rights: public domain
Lieut. Joseph C. Ives; drawn by F. W. von Egloffstein, 1858 · about 12 km accuracy
Lieutenant Joseph C. Ives’s map of his 1857–58 expedition up the Colorado River and east across the plateau to the Hopi mesas, Fort Defiance and Zuni, drawn by F. W. von Egloffstein. It names the Hopi villages one by one — Orayba (Oraibi), Shung-o-pah-wee (Shungopavi), Sha-pau-lah-wee (Shipaulovi), Moo-sha-neh (Mishongnovi), Hual-pee (Walpi), See-cho-mah-wee (Sichomovi) and the Tegua town (Hano) — with Zuni and the country of the Navajo, Hualapai, Havasupai (“Cosninas”), Southern Paiute (“Pah Utahs”) and Tonto, and marks two “Ind. trail” lines crossing its route east of the mesas, between Peach Orchard Spring and Pueblo Colorado Wash.
Source: Library of Congress · Rights: public domain
G. Thompson (Wheeler survey), 1874 · about 15 km accuracy
G. Thompson’s manuscript sketch for the Wheeler survey (the U.S. Geographical Surveys West of the 100th Meridian), compiled in 1874 “from surveys and sketches of the Office” at four miles to the inch: the Grand Cañon in hachures from the mouth of the Paria through Marble Cañon, past the mouth of the Little Colorado, around the “Island Plateau” (Powell Plateau) and the mouths of Kanab Cañon and Cataract Creek (Havasu Creek), to the To-ro-weap Valley and its cones, with the Kaibab Plateau and its East and West Terraces, Jacob’s Pool and Pipe Spring to the north, and red triangulation rays from Thompson’s 1872 stations to San Francisco Mountain, Red Butte and Navajo Mountain, and on his 1873 line to the Hopi town of Oraibi. Lieutenant Ives’s survey of 1858 is copied in blue (“evidently correct”): his camps 67–77 from the mouth of Diamond Creek by Hualpais Spring, the Cedar Forest, Snow Spring, the Pine Forest and the Forest Lagoons to the pools below Mount Floyd, with the “Indian trail” he drew up Diamond Creek in Hualapai country. Thompson adds in black an “Indian foot trail” carrying Ives’s route from his camp 72 down a side canyon of the south rim to the river, across from the Toroweap cone (Vulcan’s Throne), in Havasupai and Hualapai country. The title block and notes are not shown.
Source: Wikimedia Commons · Rights: public domain
George M. Wheeler (Weyss, Herman and Lang, del.), 1873 · about 11 km accuracy
Atlas Sheet No. 67 of Lieutenant George M. Wheeler’s U.S. Geographical Surveys West of the 100th Meridian, from his expeditions of 1871–73, with J. W. Powell’s Colorado River survey worked in and the country south of the river between 112° and 113° taken from Ives’s 1858 map: the Colorado’s canyons from the Paria to below Diamond Creek, the Kanab, Paria and Kaibab plateaus, the Mormon towns of the Virgin valley and Kanab, and the Mormon wagon road from Lee’s Ferry to Moen Ava. It draws three trails named for Native peoples: the “Sheavwitz Trail” from Ives’s route north along the plateau west of Cataract Creek (Havasu Creek, in Havasupai country) to “Sheavwitz Crossing” of the Colorado, named for the Shivwits band of Southern Paiute; the “Trail to Moquis Pueblos” from Moen Ava (Moenave) east toward the Hopi towns; and “Navajo’s Trail” from Navajo Spring south-east below White Mesa toward the Navajo country. The plateau around Red Butte, south of the canyon, is not shown.
Source: Library of Congress · Rights: public domain
Charles F. Hoffmann and James T. Gardner (Geological Survey of California), 1868 · about 6 km accuracy
The Geological Survey of California’s map of the Sierra Nevada around Yosemite Valley, from Charles F. Hoffmann’s and James T. Gardner’s surveys of 1863–67: the “Trail to Mono” — the old Miwok and Mono Paiute trade route — from Yosemite Creek past Porcupine Flat, Lake Tenaya and Tuolumne Meadows over Mono Pass and down Bloody Cañon toward Mono Lake, with the trails and roads of the Merced and Tuolumne country.
Source: Wikimedia Commons · Rights: public domain
U.S. Army (unsigned), 1865 · about 15 km accuracy
An Army manuscript “Map of the Trail from Mona Lake to Black’s — distance about 70 miles” (National Archives), drawn in the 1860s: the trail in red from the camp at Walker Lake below Bloody Cañon, over Mono Pass, down the Tuolumne past Tuolumne Meadows and Lake Tenaya, by Porcupine Flat and Tamarack and Crane flats — where the Yosemite and the Sonora and Big Oak Flat trails branch off — and down past the farms to Black’s on Bull Creek: the Mono Trail, the Miwok and Mono Paiute route across the Sierra.
Source: Wikimedia Commons · Rights: public domain
F. V. Hayden (G. R. Bechler, S. B. Ladd and H. Gannett, topographers), 1877 · about 3 km accuracy
Sheet VI of F. V. Hayden’s Geological and Geographical Atlas of Colorado (U.S. Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, 1877), surveyed 1873–76: North Park, Middle Park and the Front Range from Longs Peak to the South Park, Denver, Boulder and the plains, with the Indian Trail up the North Platte in North Park toward Willow Creek Pass and contours every 200 feet.
Source: Wikimedia Commons · Rights: public domain
F. V. Hayden (Henry Gannett and A. D. Wilson, topographers), 1877 · about 3 km accuracy
Sheet VII of F. V. Hayden’s Geological and Geographical Atlas of Colorado (U.S. Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, 1877), surveyed 1874–76 by Henry Gannett and A. D. Wilson: the Ute Reservation from the Grand River and Grand Mesa to the Uncompahgre valley and the San Juan Mountains, with the Navajo Trail across the Uncompahgre Plateau, the Ute farms, the trails and roads of the Gunnison and Uncompahgre country and contours every 200 feet.
Source: Wikimedia Commons · Rights: public domain
Mathias Spiess, 1930 · about 7 km accuracy
Mathias Spiess’s map of Connecticut about 1625 for the Colonial Dames: the main and secondary trails — the Old Connecticut Path, the Shore Path, the Nipmuck, Mohegan and Berkshire paths — the villages and the sachemdoms of each nation.
Source: Leventhal Map & Education Center · Rights: public domain
Department of Dakota (Gen. A. H. Terry), 1878 · about 25 km accuracy
The Army’s 1878 map of Dakota Territory: the Indian trails and military roads between the Missouri River forts, the Great Sioux Reservation of the 1868 treaty, the Black Hills, and the lands of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara, the Sisseton and Wahpeton, and the Yankton.
Source: Library of Congress · Rights: public domain
John Mackay and J. E. Blake, 1839 · about 37 km accuracy
The Army’s map of Florida during the Second Seminole War: the trails and roads the troops followed — many of them older Seminole and Miccosukee paths — the forts and battlefields, the Seminole towns, and the district assigned to the Seminoles by General Macomb in May 1839.
Source: Library of Congress · Rights: public domain
The Universal Magazine, 1779 · about 71 km accuracy
An unsigned engraving from the Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure (London, April 1779), published four months after the British took Savannah: the province from the Cherokee Lower Towns to the St. Marys and from the Savannah to the Flint, with the edges of South Carolina and the Floridas. Double lines mark the trading paths that tied Augusta to the Muscogee (Creek) and Cherokee towns — the Upper Path to Tugaloo, the Path from Oakfuskee, the Lower Trading Path toward the Lower Creek towns, and the Old Trading Path from the Apalachicola past the forks of the Altamaha to the Savannah — and shorter paths run from Keowee, Estatoe and Tugaloo toward the Carolina settlements. The map names the Cherokee country and the hunting grounds of the Cherokees and Muskogees, sets “the Country of the Creek Indians inhabited by the Muskohge Nation” along its western edge, and puts the Lower Creek towns of Okmulgee and Hitchiti on the river it calls the Great Flint. Dotted lines mark the province’s bounds. The Great Swamp (the Okefenokee) and its legendary island, drawn from report far west of its place, are not shown; nor is the title.
Source: Library of Congress · Rights: public domain
Hawaii Territory Survey (Donn and Wall), 1903 · about 3 km accuracy
The Hawaii Territory Survey’s 1903 map of Kauaʻi: the island’s ahupuaʻa and moku, the trails over the mountains and along the Nā Pali, the old Hawaiian place names of the valleys and headlands, and the plantations, landings and roads of the time.
Source: Library of Congress · Rights: public domain
U.S. Geological Survey, 1929 · about 3 km accuracy
The Geological Survey’s 1929 topographic map of Kahoʻolawe: the trails across the island between its landings and ranch sites, the Hawaiian place names of its bays and headlands, and the island as it was before its use as a bombing range.
Source: U.S. Geological Survey, Historical Topographic Map Collection · Rights: public domain
U.S. Geological Survey, 1924 · about 3 km accuracy
The Geological Survey’s first topographic maps of Kaʻū and Puna, joined into one sheet: the trails — many of them the old ala hele and the coastal ala loa — between the villages, landings, water holes and shelters, across the lava fields and through the Kaʻū Desert, with the land divisions and Hawaiian place names of the 1920s.
Source: U.S. Geological Survey, Historical Topographic Map Collection · Rights: public domain
U.S. Geological Survey, 1928 · about 3 km accuracy
The Geological Survey’s first topographic maps of the Kona coast, the saddle and the slopes of Mauna Loa, Hualālai and Mauna Kea, joined into one sheet: the coastal ala loa and the mauka trails between Kona, the saddle, Humuʻula and the summit of Mauna Loa, with the ahupuaʻa and Hawaiian place names of the 1920s.
Source: U.S. Geological Survey, Historical Topographic Map Collection · Rights: public domain
U.S. Geological Survey, 1923 · about 3 km accuracy
The Geological Survey’s 1923 topographic map of Lānaʻi at two inches to the mile: the trails between the island’s old villages and landings — Kaunolū, Maunalei, Keōmuku and the windward coast — over the uplands of Pālāwai, with the ahupuaʻa and Hawaiian place names of the island.
Source: U.S. Geological Survey, Historical Topographic Map Collection · Rights: public domain
U.S. Geological Survey, 1917 · about 3 km accuracy
The Geological Survey’s first topographic maps of the windward and northern coasts of Hawaiʻi Island, joined into one sheet: the trails into the valleys of Waipiʻo, Waimanu and Pololū and along the Kohala and Hāmākua coasts, with the land divisions and Hawaiian place names of the 1910s.
Source: U.S. Geological Survey, Historical Topographic Map Collection · Rights: public domain
W. A. Wall, Hawaiian Government Survey, 1886 · about 4 km accuracy
The Hawaiian Government Survey’s 1886 map of Hawaiʻi Island: the moku and ahupuaʻa, the island-wide trails — the coastal ala loa and the mountain trails between Kona, Kaʻū, Hilo and Waimea — the old Hawaiian place names along every coast, and the lava flows of 1801–1881.
Source: University of Hawaiʻi eVols · Rights: public domain
John H. Hauberg, 1921 · about 6 km accuracy
John H. Hauberg’s map of the Sauk and Meskwaki trails radiating from Saukenuk, Black Hawk’s village at the mouth of the Rock River, in red over the township grid: up the Mississippi and the Rock, south to Oquawka, and east across Henry and Bureau counties toward the Illinois.
Source: Internet Archive · Rights: public domain
Albert F. Scharf, 1901 · about 4 km accuracy
Albert F. Scharf’s map of the trails and villages of the Chicago region as they were about 1804: the lettered and numbered trails, portages, villages and camps, drawn over the township grid of Cook, DuPage and Will counties.
Source: Wikimedia Commons · Rights: public domain
E. Y. Guernsey; Indiana Department of Conservation, Publication 122, 1933 · about 8 km accuracy
E. Y. Guernsey's monumental sheet for the Indiana Department of Conservation: every trail, village, treaty ground, portage and native name he could document — Kekionga, Ouiatenon, Prophetstown, Chippecoke, the Sauk Trail, the Wea plains — drawn over the county grid at about 1:380,000.
Source: Indiana State Library, Indiana Memory · Rights: public domain
George R. Wilson, 1919 · about 6 km accuracy
George R. Wilson’s plate of the Buffalo Trace (the Vincennes Trace) across Pike and Dubois counties: the bison and Indian road from the Falls of the Ohio to Vincennes, the Delaware Indian camp of 1778 on the White River, the Yellow Banks trail, and the rangers’ camps and cabins along it.
Source: Internet Archive · Rights: public domain
George R. Wilson, 1919 · about 5 km accuracy
George R. Wilson’s plate of the Buffalo Trace east of the Pike–Dubois country: the trace past the French Lick and the rangers’ camp on the Blue River toward the Falls of the Ohio, the trace to Cincinnati, and the survey lines of the 1804–05 Freeman and treaty lines.
Source: Internet Archive · Rights: public domain
Gunnison, Beckwith and Egloffstein, 1855 · about 16 km accuracy
Map No. 2 of Captain J. W. Gunnison’s survey for a Pacific railroad near the 38th and 39th parallels, drawn in 1855 under Captain E. G. Beckwith by F. W. von Egloffstein from the 1853 field work (R. H. Kern, topographer) and engraved by Selmar Siebert for the published Reports (1859). It covers the plains of Kansas and Nebraska territories from the Missouri at Council Bluff, Omaha City and Nebraska City west to about 101°: Gunnison’s route with its numbered camps up the Kansas past Uniontown and Fort Riley, along the Smoky Hill Fork, across to Walnut Creek and up the Arkansas past Pawnee Fork and Fort Atkinson to the Santa Fé Crossing; the Santa Fe Trail, the emigrant road from Fort Leavenworth to the Platte, the road from Fort Kearny down the Little Blue, and the proposed railroad lines. “Pawnee Indians” is lettered across the country between the Platte and the Republican, and the lettered “Pawnee Trail” — the road of the Pawnee (Chaticks si Chaticks) south from their villages on the Platte and the Loup to the buffalo country of the Arkansas — runs from the south bank of the Platte below Fort Kearny across the Little Blue, the Pawnee or Republican Fork and the heads of Solomon’s and the Grand Saline forks to the Smoky Hill Fork, where the sheet stops drawing it. South of the Arkansas the sheet is blank.
Source: Library of Congress · Rights: public domain
John Filson, 1784 · about 33 km accuracy
John Filson’s first map of Kentucky: the Warrior’s Path from the Cumberland to the Ohio, Bird’s War Road up the Licking, the War Road from Big Bone Lick, the Wilderness Road, and the stations and licks of the settlement years.
Source: Library of Congress · Rights: public domain
Levi B. Chase, 1901 · about 3 km accuracy
Levi Badger Chase’s map for his 1901 article on Woodward and Saffery’s 1642 survey of the Massachusetts Bay patent’s south line, drawn on a USGS base: the paths of Nipmuc country as he traced them — the Bay Path from South Framingham through Oxford and Sturbridge to Quabaug Old Fort and Springfield, branches to the Great Falls at Holyoke, the Ware River falls and Wickabaug, the path south to Woodstock (Wabaquasset), the Path to Nipmug Great Pond through Mendon — and the path from the Bay to Providence. In red, the 1642 map’s route and notes.
Source: Internet Archive · Rights: public domain
Harry Andrew Wright, 1911 · about 3 km accuracy
Harry Andrew Wright’s map of the Indian trails about Springfield, sheet 1 of his Early Maps of the Connecticut Valley in Massachusetts (1911): the paths of the Agawam people at Springfield and the Woronoco at Westfield, where the Chicopee and the Agawam (Westfield) meet the Connecticut (Quonne-tuk), traced from early deeds and records — the Bay Path from the east to the Palisaded Fort and over the river toward Woronoko, the path south to Windsor, Pynchon’s “Pequit path that goes to Moheag” — with the Native names of meadows, falls and brooks.
Source: Internet Archive · Rights: public domain
John Farmer, 1836 · about 4 km accuracy
John Farmer’s map of the surveyed part of Michigan Territory, engraved and published by J. H. Colton in New York in 1836: the lower peninsula from Lake Michigan to the Detroit and St. Clair rivers and north to Saginaw, laid out in its counties, townships and sections, with the strip of northern Ohio and Indiana below the disputed state lines (Harris’s line of 1817 and the line of 1818 both drawn). It shows the towns, mills and post offices of the land rush and its roads — the Chicago Road, the Territorial and Saginaw roads, the U.S. Turnpike to the Maumee and the Erie and Kalamazoo Rail Road — and the Anishinaabe (Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi) and Wyandot country they crossed: Indian villages on the St. Joseph, the Coldwater, the Thornapple, the Flint and the Grand, the reserves kept in the treaties of 1807–1821 (the Wyandot reserve at Brownstown, the reserves on the Cass and Flint above Saginaw, the Indian reserve on the Coldwater, the Ottawa reserve on the Maumee), the “Indian Boundary Line” and the “Indian Country” north of the Grand River, and, in fine dots, the trails — the “Chicago Trail” beside the Chicago Road, “St. Joseph’s Trail” across Jackson and Washtenaw, the “Washtenaw Trail”, the “Hog R. Trail” and an “Indn Trail” among others. The unsurveyed country north of the Grand River, sketched too freely to place, is not shown; nor are the title and the insets of Mackinac, Green Bay and the lead mine district.
Source: Michigan State University Libraries · Rights: public domain
Orange Risdon, 1825 · about 3 km accuracy
Orange Risdon’s map of the surveyed part of Michigan Territory, engraved by Rawdon, Clark & Co. at Albany in 1825: the country of the first land sales, from the Detroit and St. Clair rivers west to the Principal Meridian and north to Saginaw, laid out in its counties, townships and sections, with the strip south to the line it marks as the northern boundary of Ohio (Port Lawrence, now Toledo, north of it) and the Upper Canada shore from Sandwich to Amherstburg. It shows the young towns — Detroit, Monroe, Pontiac, Mt. Clemens, Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, Dexter, Tecumseh, Palmer (St. Clair) and Saginaw — with their mills, inns and roads, among them the new “United States Road” toward Chicago, and the Anishinaabe (Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi) and Wyandot country they were laid over: Indian villages on the Saginaw, the Cass, the Flint and the Raisin, at Brownstown and on Lake St. Clair, and the reserves kept in the treaties of 1807–1819 with their acreages — the Wyandot reserve at Brownstown, the Macon reserve on the Raisin, Tonquish’s and the “Sequinsackin Res.” on the Rouge, Maconce’s on Lake St. Clair, and the Saginaw reserves on the Saginaw, Tittabawassee, Cass, Flint and Shiawassee. In fine dots, keyed “Indian Trails”, it draws a web of trails, none of them named: from Saginaw up the Flint and the Shiawassee, across Livingston and Oakland to the lakes and on to Detroit, west from Ann Arbor toward the St. Joseph country, and from Saline by Tecumseh west — the Detroit–Chicago trail. The unsurveyed Thumb and Saginaw Bay, sketched too freely to place, are not shown; nor are the title, the key, and Lake Erie with its islands.
Source: Michigan State University Libraries · Rights: public domain
Lt. James Allen, U.S. Infantry, 1832 · about 40 km accuracy
Lieutenant James Allen’s manuscript map of the 1832 expedition that Henry R. Schoolcraft led from Lake Superior to the source of the Mississippi, drawn for the War Department: the route up the St. Louis River and over the Savanna portage to Sandy Lake, up the Mississippi past Pokegama Falls, Lake Winnibigoshish and Cass Lake to Lac Traverse (Lake Bemidji), up its east branch and over the portage to Lake Itasca — “Lac La Biche, Source of the Mississippi” — then by Leech Lake and down the Crow Wing and the Mississippi past the Falls of St. Anthony to Fort Snelling, and up the St. Croix and down the Bois Brule to Lake Superior, with each day’s encampment, portage and rapid noted. It marks Ojibwe (Chippewa) villages at Fond du Lac, Leech Lake, the mouth of the Bois Brule, the Upper St. Croix lake, the Yellow and Kettle rivers and Rice and Muddy lakes in Wisconsin, Dakota (Sioux) villages at Big Stone Lake and below Fort Snelling, and the Sioux–Chippewa line of the 1825 treaty of Prairie du Chien. Three Native routes are drawn and named — an “Indian Route” through a chain of small lakes, with a portage between each, from the expedition’s camp east of Itasca to Leech Lake; an “Indian Route from Leech” south-east through Boy Lake, Turtle Lake and Lac du Canard; and an “Indian Trail” from Muddy Lake to Ottawa Lake (Lac Courte Oreilles) in Wisconsin — Ojibwe routes through their lake country. The Red River valley, which the expedition did not see, is sketched from report; Red Lake, drawn too freely to place, is not shown, nor are the title, north arrow and scale, two labels marking mounds, and the paper lost along the folds.
Source: Wikimedia Commons · Rights: public domain
Charles L. Emerson, Surveyor General, 1858 · about 3 km accuracy
The General Land Office survey of the Grand Portage reservation, certified at the Surveyor General’s Office in St. Paul by Charles L. Emerson on 9 October 1858: the land the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa (Ojibwe) kept under the treaty of La Pointe in 1854. It is bounded by the Pigeon River on the north and Lake Superior on the south; on the east by a line run N 29° W from Hat Point to the Pigeon, and on the west by the Reservation River and a line run N 29° W from the lakes at its head, both lines with their mile posts, chainages and compass variations; the contents are given as 41,046.39 acres. Two routes run inland from the head of Grand Portage Bay: the Grand Portage, the Ojibwe carrying place around the falls and rapids of the lower Pigeon long before the fur trade made it famous, to the river above the falls; and a double-line “Indian Trail” west to the inland lakes, with an “Indian Sugar Camp” beside its western end. The Pigeon is drawn with its rapids, a 45-foot fall (Partridge Falls) with its own short portage, and the mouth of the Arrow River; hills are hachured along the river and on Hat Point. This is the file’s second sheet, an uncoloured drawing of the same plat without the title, the certificate and the names of the village, the bay and the lake that the signed first sheet carries.
Source: Wikimedia Commons · Rights: public domain
Louis Houck, 1908 · about 22 km accuracy
Louis Houck’s statewide map of the Indian trails and warpaths of Missouri over the 1908 counties: the Osage Trail, the Great Trail to the Des Moines, Du Tisne’s Trail, the Virginia Warriors’ Path and the Shawnee trails of the southeast.
Source: Internet Archive · Rights: public domain
Unknown, 1913 · about 17 km accuracy
A 1913 map of El Camino Real, the King’s Highway from New Madrid to St. Louis, which the Spanish laid out in the late 1700s along the old Indian trail through the Ste. Genevieve, Perryville, Cape Girardeau and New Madrid country, with the county seats along it.
Source: State Historical Society of Missouri · Rights: public domain
Broutin, de Vergés and Saucier, 1743 · about 29 km accuracy
A French manuscript map signed at New Orleans on 10 November 1743 by Demarigny, drawn from the surveys of the engineers Ignace-François Broutin and de Vergés and the draughtsman Saucier: the Mississippi from the Balize to Fort de l’Assomption (Memphis), with the Red River, the Yazoo, the Pascagoula, the Mobile and the Tombigbee up to the Chickasaw country, and the overland routes they measured by pace in the years of the French Chickasaw campaigns of 1736–40, drawn as red dotted lines. A key, “Renvoye des routtes par terre”, names each route by its lettered points: from Fort St. Martin (A) on the Mississippi over the heights (B) to the Yazoo; from Fort de l’Assomption to the first branch of the Yazoo (E) and on to the Chickasaw; up the Margot (F–K); from the Petit portage on the Tombigbee (M) to the Chickasaw; and Saucier’s routes from the Chickasaw to the Choctaw, from the Yazoo (L) to the Choctaw towns and Fort Tombecbé, and from that post to the Chickasaw. A Nota describes the ground of each — open oak ridges and prairie, canebrakes, ravines and drowned bottoms. It draws the Villages Tchkachas (Chickasaw), the Choctaw towns inside a dotted “circuit des villages Tchactas au nombre de 44 villages”, the “passage des anglois” — the English traders’ way — from the Choctaw towns to Tombecbé, the Alabama towns at Fort Toulouse, and the villages and old village sites of the Arkansas, Tunica, Avoyel, Chakchiuma, Ibitoupa, Biloxi, Mobile and Tawasa. The title, key and Nota are not shown.
Source: Library of Congress · Rights: public domain
Hon. Albert Gallatin; published by the American Antiquarian Society, Pendleton's Lithography, 1836 · about 100 km accuracy
Albert Gallatin's founding map of American ethnology, published by the American Antiquarian Society with his Synopsis of the Indian Tribes: the homelands of the continent's nations tinted by language family — Algonkin-Lenape, Iroquois, Cherokee, Muskogee, Choctaw-Chickasaw, Sioux, Blackfeet, Pawnee, Athapasca, Eskimaux — as of about 1600 along the Atlantic and about 1800 westward. A continental baseline: every state shows its nations here.
Source: Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division · Rights: public domain
John Collet, 1770 · about 25 km accuracy
Captain John Collet’s survey map of the colony: the Trading Path west from the Haw, the Path to the Cherokee Nation, the Catawba lands and the Tuscarora town, with the roads, fords and mills between them.
Source: Library of Congress · Rights: public domain
L. C. Easton, 1849 · about 34 km accuracy
Captain L. C. Easton’s manuscript map, made for the Army’s Quartermaster’s Department, of the route he took with wagons in August and September 1849 from Fort Laramie to Fort Leavenworth: south-east from the fort past Scott’s Bluff, Chimney Rock and Pole Creek to the South Fork of the Platte, across to the forks of the Republican, and down the Republican Fork to the Kansas, Union Town and Fort Leavenworth, drawn in red with the road to Fort Kearny, the road to Santa Fe by Westport and Council Grove, and the routes proposed to shorten them. Everything else, the map’s note says, is taken from Colonel Frémont’s maps — the Platte and its forks from the Missouri to Fort Laramie and St. Vrain’s Fort, the Laramie Plains and the Medicine Bow Mountains, and the Kansas, Republican, Solomon’s and Smoky Hill forks. “Pawnee Village” stands on the south bank of the Platte below Fort Kearny, and three dotted trails of the Pawnee (Chaticks si Chaticks) run south from the Platte toward their hunting grounds on the Republican: the two lettered “Pawnee Trails” from the village, which Frémont’s 1845 map does not have, and a “Pawnee Trail” from the Platte about 95 km below Fort Kearny across the Little Blue and the Republican Fork toward Solomon’s Fork — Frémont’s single 1845 trail, redrawn some 50 km east of his line.
Source: Wikimedia Commons · Rights: public domain
Joseph Blanchard and Samuel Langdon, 1761 · about 20 km accuracy
Joseph Blanchard and Samuel Langdon’s map of New Hampshire, dedicated at Portsmouth in October 1761 and engraved in London by Thomas Jefferys: the province and the country around it in the last French war, from Albany and Lake Champlain to Penobscot Bay and north to Quebec and the St. Lawrence. Its notes record the Wabanaki (Abenaki) ways north to Canada as the colonists of the wars knew them: the “Indian carrying Place from Kennebeck into the River Chaudiere”, drawn as a double-pricked line through three ponds; the Chaudière, “drawn agreable to the Accounts which the Indians give of their Travelling to Canada this way”; the river and lakes by which “Lieut. Starks was led Captive by the Indians from Connecticut River to Canada 1752”; and the ways captives were taken up the Black River, and up Wells River and down the French River toward Lake Champlain. It marks St. Francis (Odanak) by Lake St. Peter, notes Norridgewock on the Kennebec as the seat of a Wabanaki people, and records what “is said by the Indians” of a short carrying place between the heads of the Connecticut and the Androscoggin. This copy carries contemporary ink additions — the New Hampshire Grants townships west of the Connecticut and some northern rivers — left as they are; the upper Chaudière, drawn from report too freely to place, is not shown.
Source: Library of Congress · Rights: public domain
Bill in Chancery of New-Jersey, 1747 · about 30 km accuracy
The second map of the 1747 Bill in Chancery of New-Jersey: the Indian Path from the Raritan to the Minisink country on the upper Delaware, the Minisink and Navesink paths, the roads and the old partition lines of East and West Jersey.
Source: New York Public Library · Rights: public domain
John G. Parke and Richard H. Kern, 1851 · about 45 km accuracy
The first survey map of the new Territory of New Mexico: the pueblos, the Navajo, Apache, Ute and Comanche country, the trails between the springs and the Rio Grande towns, and the routes of the 1846–51 expeditions.
Source: Wikimedia Commons · Rights: public domain
U.S. Topographical Engineers, 1867 · about 23 km accuracy
The War Department’s map of the old Territory of New Mexico (today’s New Mexico and Arizona): the Indian trails, springs and water holes, the pueblos, the Navajo, Apache and Ute country, and the routes of the survey and military expeditions of the 1840s and 1850s.
Source: Library of Congress · Rights: public domain
Office of the Chief of Engineers, U.S.A., 1864 · about 17 km accuracy
An undated manuscript map from the War Department’s Office of the Chief of Engineers, catalogued long ago as “Map of country around Carson Co., Utah Ty.” but drawn about 1864: it shows Ione and La Plata, county seats from 1864, and the trails of Breyfogle and Buel, who went out from Austin in 1864, but not Belmont, founded late in 1865; the sheet itself names no territory or state. On an unlabelled one-degree graticule it covers Nevada from Lake Tahoe (“Lake Bigler or Tahoe”) and the Sierra east to the 114th meridian and from the Oregon line south to the Amargosa: the Comstock and Carson Valley towns, Austin and the Reese River, Humboldt and Esmeralda mining camps, the Overland Mail stations, the emigrant and Hastings roads, and the prospectors’ trails of De Groot, Breyfogle and Buel. A fine dotted line marked “Old Indian Trail” runs north-east from a road at the edge of an alkali flat and drifting sand east of Walker Lake, past an “Indian Camp”, to the road into Ione — across the borderland between Northern Paiute (Numu) country around Walker Lake and Western Shoshone (Newe) country in Ione Valley; the map does not say whose trail it was. The sheet also names Shoshone Well, Shoshone Cañon, Indian Valley and Indian Spring, and keeps Western Shoshone and Goshute names that Simpson’s 1859 survey recorded in the east — the Un-go-we-ah Mountains, Ui-ya-bi Pass and Mo-ko-ga-ri Butte. One label in the south, marking graves, is masked and not shown.
Source: Wikimedia Commons · Rights: public domain
Reginald Pelham Bolton, 1912 · about 3 km accuracy
Reginald Pelham Bolton's map of Greater New York and the country around it, with the Indian paths he traced in red over the 1912 streets, from Paterson and Newark to Long Island and Westchester.
Source: New York Public Library · Rights: public domain
William Gray, 1778 · about 16 km accuracy
Captain William Gray’s draught of Colonel William Butler’s 1778 march from Schoharie to the Haudenosaunee and Delaware towns of Unadilla, Conihunto and Onaquaga on the upper Susquehanna, which the expedition burned: the waggon roads double-dotted and the Indian paths single-dotted.
Source: Internet Archive · Rights: public domain
Guy Johnson, 1851 · about 30 km accuracy
Guy Johnson's 1771 map of the country of the Six Nations for Governor Tryon, engraved in 1851: Indian villages and chief towns, the Indian paths between them, and the 1768 Fort Stanwix boundary line, from Niagara to Albany and south to the Susquehanna and the Allegheny.
Source: New York Public Library · Rights: public domain
Lewis H. Morgan and Ely S. Parker, 1851 · redrawn 1962 · about 9 km accuracy
Lewis Henry Morgan and Ely S. Parker's 1851 map of the Haudenosaunee homeland, showing the principal trails, villages, lakes and rivers with their Iroquois names, in Eber L. Russell's 1962 redraw with villages, trails and springs added from fifty years of research. Rubber-sheeted to modern lakes and river junctions.
Source: Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center, Boston Public Library · Rights: public domain
Unknown, 1768 · about 16 km accuracy
An anonymous manuscript map of the Mohawk valley and the country of the Five Nations to the Genesee, drawn between 1750 and 1768: Indian paths in dotted lines with the miles between towns and the number of houses in each.
Source: Library of Congress · Rights: public domain
Claude Joseph Sauthier, 1779 · about 29 km accuracy
Claude Joseph Sauthier’s great survey map of New York on the eve of the Revolution: the patents and townships, the Oneida, Onondaga and Mohawk country with its castles and carrying places, and the paths from the Mohawk to Oswego and the St. Lawrence.
Source: Leventhal Map & Education Center · Rights: public domain
John Heckewelder, 1796 · about 42 km accuracy
The Moravian missionary John Heckewelder’s manuscript map of northeastern Ohio, made for the Connecticut Land Company in 1796: the Indian paths between the Cuyahoga, the Tuscarawas, the Beaver and Pittsburgh, the Moravian Indian towns, and the lands of the purchases.
Source: Wikimedia Commons · Rights: public domain
Archer Butler Hulbert, 1902 · about 27 km accuracy
Archer Butler Hulbert’s map of the Indian trails between Lake Erie and the Ohio, after Hutchins: the Great Trail, the Mahoning, Scioto–Beaver, Muskingum and Monongahela trails, the Lake Shore trail, and the towns of the Wyandots, Delawares, Shawnees and Mingoes.
Source: Internet Archive · Rights: public domain
William C. Mills, Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society, 1914 · about 7 km accuracy
The statewide trails plate of William C. Mills' Archaeological Atlas of Ohio: the numbered trail network in red — the Great Trail, the Scioto Trail, the Warriors' Path — with the Native towns named in place: Pickawillany, Wapakoneta, Lower Shawnee Town, Coshocton, the Wyandot towns on the Sandusky, the Moravian Delaware towns on the Tuscarawas.
Source: Internet Archive · Rights: public domain
Seth Pease, 1798 · about 3 km accuracy
Seth Pease’s map of the Connecticut Western Reserve “from actual Survey”, engraved and printed for the author by Amos Doolittle at New Haven in 1798: northeastern Ohio from the Pennsylvania line west to Sandusky Bay. East of the Cuyahoga it lays out the five-mile townships the Connecticut Land Company’s surveyors ran in 1796–97, numbered by range from the Pennsylvania line and by town from the south line, many of them already named (Cleveland, Euclid, Mentor, Aurora, Warren, Youngstown, Palmyra), the Lake Erie shore and its river mouths, and the Salt Spring on the Big Beaver (Mahoning). West of the Cuyahoga, the Portage Path and the Tuscarawas — the boundary of the treaties of Fort McIntosh (1785) and Greenville (1795) — the country is lettered “Unsurveyed Land and Subject to Indian Claims”, with the Fire Lands at its western end: in the 1790s the country of Wyandot, Lenape (Delaware), Seneca and Odawa towns and hunting camps. A double-dashed “Indian Path” runs from the Cuyahoga at the head of the portage east through Palmyra to the Salt Spring and the Mahoning at the mouth of Mosquito Creek, and the “Portage Path” crosses from the Cuyahoga to the Tuscarawas. Not shown: the title, the notes on the Fire Lands and the survey, the scale of miles and the margins.
Source: Library of Congress · Rights: public domain
Rand McNally & Co., from General Land Office records, 1894 · about 10 km accuracy
The 1894 Rand McNally map of the Indian and Oklahoma Territories, compiled from the official records of the General Land Office: the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Muscogee (Creek), Seminole and Osage Nations with their districts and capitals, the agencies and military reservations of the western tribes, treaty citations, trails, wagon roads and mail routes on the eve of allotment.
Source: Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division · Rights: public domain
E. H. Ruffner, U.S. Engineers, 1875 · about 10 km accuracy
The northwest sheet of Lieutenant E. H. Ruffner’s 1875 military map of the Indian Territory, from Fort Dodge to the Antelope Hills: the Indian trails and wagon roads across the Cherokee Outlet, the Cheyenne and Arapaho country and the Panhandle, the springs and the dry beds of streams.
Source: New York Public Library · Rights: public domain
E. H. Ruffner, U.S. Engineers, 1875 · about 3 km accuracy
The northeast sheet of Lieutenant E. H. Ruffner’s 1875 military map of the Indian Territory: the Cherokee, Creek, Osage and the small nations of the Quapaw agency, with the Indian trails, wagon roads and settlements from the Kansas line to the Arkansas.
Source: New York Public Library · Rights: public domain
E. H. Ruffner, U.S. Engineers, 1875 · about 5 km accuracy
The southeast sheet of Lieutenant E. H. Ruffner’s 1875 military map of the Indian Territory: the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations from the Canadian to the Red River, with the Indian trails, wagon roads, settlements and missions.
Source: New York Public Library · Rights: public domain
E. H. Ruffner, U.S. Engineers, 1875 · about 5 km accuracy
The southwest sheet of Lieutenant E. H. Ruffner’s 1875 military map of the Indian Territory: the Kiowa, Comanche and Wichita country around Fort Sill and the Wichita Mountains, with the Indian trails and roads from the Washita to the Red River.
Source: New York Public Library · Rights: public domain
1st Oregon Cavalry, 1862 · about 23 km accuracy
A manuscript field map of south-western Oregon from the 1st Oregon Cavalry’s scout of the Klamath country in 1862: the Rogue valley, the Cascades and the Klamath Lakes east to Goose, Summer and Abert lakes, with Capt. Kelly’s and Lt. White’s camps of September–November 1862, the proposed site for a post at the Klamath Lakes, a proposed agency and reservation for the Klamath and Modoc, and the wagon roads and pack trails explored to the Dalles and Lassen’s Meadows. Its legend keys “Indian Trails in present use” in red: trails of the Klamath (Maqlaqs) and Modoc country — between the villages at Klamath Marsh, on the east shore of Upper Klamath Lake and at Link River, and on to Lost River and Tule (Rhett) and Clear (Wright) lakes — with others west over the Cascades toward the Rogue and Umpqua valleys and north up the Deschutes; the Northern Paiute (“Pah Ute”) country lies to the east. Red notes record killings along the emigrant roads from 1847 to the early 1860s. Lake Harney and the Owyhee country, sketched too freely to place, are not shown; nor are the table of distances and the legend.
Source: Wikimedia Commons · Rights: public domain
Lieut. R. S. Williamson and Lieut. H. L. Abbot, U.S. Topographical Engineers; drawn by John Young, 1859 · about 18 km accuracy
Map No. 2 of the Pacific Railroad Surveys: the routes Lieutenants Robert S. Williamson and Henry L. Abbot explored in 1855 from the northern boundary of California to the Columbia, along the Willamette valley and east of the Cascades by the Deschutes. East of Mount Hood it marks an “Indian Trail” across Tygh (“Tysch”) Prairie, on the way south from the Columbia at the Dalles, and it carries Native names along the way — Wil-la-wit Spring, Nu-ah-hum Peak — with the Klamath lakes and the Rogue, Umpqua and Coquille valleys.
Source: Library of Congress · Rights: public domain
Hanna, Charles A. (Charles Augustus), 1863-1950, 1911 · about 11 km accuracy
Charles A. Hanna's map of the trails the Pennsylvania traders followed to the Ohio country, in red with the years they were used, and the Indian villages with the dates they stood, from the Delaware to the Maumee.
Source: Internet Archive · Rights: public domain
Reading Howell, 1792 · about 5 km accuracy
Reading Howell’s map of the state, published at Philadelphia in 1792 and shown here in the facsimile printed for the Pennsylvania Archives in 1896: Pennsylvania from Lake Erie and the Ohio line to the Delaware, with its counties and townships, the Depreciation and Donation lands of the northwest, the district lines of the late surveys, the roads, mills, forges and towns of the new state, and the edges of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Ohio and Virginia. Howell compiled it from the Land Office surveys and the state’s own surveys of its boundaries and rivers. Its Explanation keys “An Indian Path” (a fine dotted line) and “An Indian town” (a small tent): Kuskusky, a Moravian town on the Beaver, Logs Town, Conemaugh, Frankstown and Obeals (Cornplanter’s town) on the Allegheny, and paths of the Lenape (Delaware), Shawnee, Seneca and other Haudenosaunee nations across the north and west — the Snow Shoe path from the West Branch to the Bald Eagle’s Nest, the “Portage 23 Miles” between the Canoe Places of the Allegheny and the Sinnemahoning, the Kittanning path toward Frankstown, the Sheshequin path over Burnet’s Hills, and shorter paths to the Lick on the Elk Lick Branch and to the Salt Spring. Not shown: the copyright notice, the title, the dedication, the Explanation, the mounting strip and cloth seam between the four pieces of the sheet, and the margins.
Source: Library of Congress · Rights: public domain
Nicholas Scull, 1759 · about 15 km accuracy
Nicholas Scull’s map of the settled part of Pennsylvania, engraved by James Turner and printed by John Davis, sold by the author in Philadelphia in 1759: the counties of Philadelphia, Bucks, Chester, Lancaster, York, Cumberland, Berks and Northampton and the north end of New Castle County, laid out in their townships with roads, ferries, mills, iron works, churches and meeting houses and the forts of the late war, from the Delaware and West Jersey to the Allegheny Mountains, and beyond the Kittatinny Mountains the frontier up the Juniata and the West and North-East Branches of the Susquehanna — the two branches from Fort Augusta (Shamokin) up to Wioming laid down, its notes say, from Major Shippen’s draughts. That frontier was still the country of the Lenape (Delaware), Shawnee and Haudenosaunee and of the Susquehannock before them, and the map marks their towns: Wioming, Nescopeck, Lanpaughpeton’s town and Old King Neutimus’s on the North-East Branch, Chillisquaquy, French Margaret’s, Quinishahaquy and Tiquamingy Town on the West Branch, Chingleclamouche, Bald-Eagle’s Nest, Frank’s Town and the Shawane Cabbins. Its key reads “The prick’d Lines are Indian Paths”, and it draws them: the “Warriors Path from the great Island” by the West Branch and across the hills to the North-East Branch below Wyoming; the “Path to Wyoming” up the North-East Branch from Fort Augusta; the “Path from Chingleclamouche to Shamokin” over the plateau to the Great Island, and on down the West Branch to Shamokin; a “Warriors Path” by Licking Creek over the North-East Branch toward the Catawissa; the “Ohio Path” west from Frank’s Town over the Allegheny Mountain; the paths up Bald Eagle Creek, from Bald-Eagle’s Nest and Frank’s Town to the Standing Stone, and on to Fort Shirley; and a “Warriors Path” south from Allequippy’s Gap toward Maryland. Not shown: the title cartouche, the key, the notes and the scale, and the cloth seams between the six sheets.
Source: Library of Congress · Rights: public domain
William Scull, 1770 · about 15 km accuracy
William Scull’s map of the province: roads, forts, Indian towns and the dotted Indian paths through the Allegheny country, from Presque Isle and the forks of the Ohio to the Delaware.
Source: Library of Congress · Rights: public domain
P. W. Sheafer and others, 1875 · about 13 km accuracy
P. W. Sheafer’s map for the Historical Society of Pennsylvania: the Indian names of streams and villages, the paths of travel, old forts and battlefields, and each purchase from the Indians, coloured by treaty.
Source: Leventhal Map & Education Center · Rights: public domain
George Hunter, 1730 · about 42 km accuracy
George Hunter’s 1730 map of the Cherokee Path from Charles Town by the Congarees and Ninety Six to Keowee and the Lower, Middle and Overhill towns, with the traders’ names for each creek and the miles between them.
Source: Internet Archive · Rights: public domain
Henry Mouzon and others, 1775 · about 29 km accuracy
Henry Mouzon’s map of the two Carolinas and their Indian frontier: the roads and Indian paths, the Catawba Nation’s 144,000 acres, the Cherokee Lower Towns, the trading path to the Creeks, and the townships and parishes of the settled country.
Source: Library of Congress · Rights: public domain
William Edward Myer, 1928 · about 10 km accuracy
William E. Myer's preliminary map of the trail network of the colonial-era Southeast, compiled for the Bureau of American Ethnology from early maps, land records and field work: over 125 numbered trails, historic towns and sites from the Ohio River to the Gulf and from the Mississippi to the Atlantic. Georeferenced to thirty modern city locations.
Source: 42nd Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (Smithsonian Institution, GPO); scan via Yale Beinecke Library / Wikimedia Commons · Rights: public domain
J. G. M. Ramsey (engraved by W. Keenan), 1853 · about 16 km accuracy
J. G. M. Ramsey’s map of the Cumberland settlements and the State of Franklin, engraved by W. Keenan of Charleston for The Annals of Tennessee to the End of the Eighteenth Century (1853): Tennessee from the Mississippi to the Unaka and Smoky mountains, with the edges of Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia and Alabama, as it was in the 1780s and 1790s — the counties of the Cumberland district and of the short-lived State of Franklin, the towns and stations, and the routes of the time. Ramsey letters the “Great Indian War Path” — the Great Indian Warpath, the north–south route through the Valley used by the Cherokee, Shawnee, Haudenosaunee and others — from Chickamauga past the Hiwassee and the mouth of the Tellico to Maryville, and over the French Broad and the Holston to the Long Island of the Holston. He marks the Chickamauga Cherokee towns on the Tennessee below Lookout Mountain (Chickamauga, Crow Town, Nickajack, the Island Towns and Running Water) and letters “Chickasaws” across West Tennessee. Robertson’s route to the Cumberland, the route of the 1794 expedition to Nickajack and an “Army Route” south to the Tennessee at Tuscumbia are drawn too. The title, and a dark printing flaw over the Tennessee River at the Mississippi line, are not shown.
Source: Internet Archive · Rights: public domain
Rhea, Matthew, 1796-1870; Tanner, Henry Schenck, 1786-1858; Knight, J. (Jonathan), 1787-1858; Dawson, E. B., 1832 · about 8 km accuracy
A detailed 1832 map of Tennessee showing counties in color, rivers, roads, towns, and a Cherokee Nation boundary in the southeast, with a decorative title cartouche, a view of Nashville, tables, and a geological cross-section of the state.
Source: Library of Congress · Rights: public domain
Engineer Bureau, War Department, 1867 · about 23 km accuracy
The War Department Engineer Bureau’s 1867 map of Kansas, Texas and Indian Territory, compiled from the Army’s surveys: in the Trans-Pecos it marks the Comanche Trail and the Grand Comanche War Trail south from Comanche Spring toward the Big Bend and Mexico, the Large Indian Trail across the Rio Grande below the Pecos, the Indian trail from the Pecos crossing to the White Sand Hills waterholes, and Indian trails by the Hueco and Cornudas mountains to the salt lakes. Only the West Texas part of its southern sheet is shown.
Source: Wikimedia Commons · Rights: public domain
Capt. Randolph B. Marcy, 1854 · about 17 km accuracy
Captain Randolph B. Marcy’s map of his 1854 survey of the upper Brazos and the Big Wichita, made to choose the lands Texas set aside for the Brazos and Comanche reservations: the Indian trails and the Comanche, Kiowa, Wichita and Caddo country between the Red River and the Colorado.
Source: Texas State Library and Archives · Rights: public domain
John Pope, Topographical Engineers, 1859 · about 8 km accuracy
Captain John Pope’s survey map along the 32nd parallel, from the Red River to the Rio Grande: the Comanche and Kiowa trails, springs and water holes across the Staked Plain and the Pecos country, and the routes of the survey parties.
Source: Library of Congress · Rights: public domain
U.S. Topographical Engineers, 1857 · about 21 km accuracy
The Army’s 1857 compilation of the routes across Texas and New Mexico: the Comanche Trail from Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos by Comanche Spring toward Mexico, the Indian trails of the Edwards Plateau, and the military roads between the forts.
Source: Library of Congress · Rights: public domain
J. N. Nicollet, assisted by J. C. Frémont; U.S. War Department, Bureau of the Corps of Topographical Engineers, 1843 · about 25 km accuracy
Joseph Nicollet and John C. Frémont's War Department map of the upper Mississippi country — the most accurate map of its era, made with Dakota and Ojibwe guides. It names each nation's country — Mdewakanton, Wahpekute, Sisseton, Yankton, Yanktonai, Teton, Ojibwe, Ho-Chunk, Sac and Fox, Omaha, Otoe, Ioway, Ponca, Pawnee — with villages and hundreds of Dakota and Ojibwe place names: Mini Wakan, Kichi Gummi, Minsi Sagaigoning.
Source: Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division · Rights: public domain
United States Topographical Bureau, 1836 · about 20 km accuracy
The Topographical Bureau’s 1836 map of the lands assigned to the nations removed west of Arkansas and Missouri — Cherokee, Creek, Seminole, Choctaw, Delaware, Shawnee, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Ottawa, Peoria and Kaskaskia, Piankeshaw and Wea, Seneca and Quapaw — beside the country of the Osage, Kansa, Pawnee, Otoe, Omaha, Ioway and Sac and Fox, with tables of each nation’s numbers east and west of the Mississippi. It shows the Santa Fe Road and the Osage Road across the plains, and Forts Leavenworth, Gibson and Smith.
Source: Library of Congress · Rights: public domain
Lewis Evans, 1755 · about 61 km accuracy
Lewis Evans’s 1755 map of the middle colonies and the Six Nations’ country: the Indian towns of the Ohio and the Susquehanna, the war paths and trading paths with their mileages, the portages, and his notes on the land, from Lake Ontario to the Kentucky country.
Source: Library of Congress · Rights: public domain
Thomas Hutchins, 1778 · about 52 km accuracy
Thomas Hutchins’s map of the Ohio country: the Indian paths and towns between Fort Pitt, Lake Erie and the Scioto, the War Path through the Cumberland Gap to the Cuttawa (Kentucky) country, and the Illinois villages, with his notes on the land.
Source: Library of Congress · Rights: public domain
John Melish, 1814 · about 41 km accuracy
John Melish’s map, from a War Department drawing, of the Cherokee and Creek country at the time of the Creek War: the Upper and Lower Creek towns on the Coosa, Tallapoosa and Chattahoochee, the Cherokee towns, the Federal Road and General Jackson’s route of 1813–14.
Source: Digital Library of Georgia · Rights: public domain
John Mullan, U.S. Army, 1863 · about 9 km accuracy
Captain John Mullan’s map of the military road across the northern Rockies and the country around it: the trails of the Nez Perce, Coeur d’Alene, Flathead, Pend d’Oreille, Blackfeet and other nations, the Hudson’s Bay and mission posts, and the 1858 battlefields.
Source: Leventhal Map & Education Center · Rights: public domain
Robert H. Fletcher (Department of the Columbia), 1877 · about 37 km accuracy
The Department of the Columbia’s map of the 1877 Nez Perce campaign, compiled by Lt. Robert H. Fletcher for Gen. O. O. Howard and printed with the Secretary of War’s report: the Lolo Trail — the Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) road to the buffalo country — from the Weippe and Kamiah country over the Bitterroots by the Lolo Hot Springs and down Lolo Creek to the Bitterroot valley and the Elk City trail. Only the Idaho–Montana part of the sheet is shown.
Source: Wikimedia Commons · Rights: public domain
Joseph Purcell and J. R. Swanton, 1922 · about 63 km accuracy
The trading paths linking the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw and Chickasaw towns, from John Stuart’s Southern Indian District map (Joseph Purcell, c. 1770) as redrawn for John R. Swanton in 1922, with the numbered towns of each nation.
Source: a CONTENTdm library collection · Rights: public domain
W. F. Raynolds and H. E. Maynadier, 1868 · about 6 km accuracy
The map of the Raynolds expedition of 1859–60, guided by Jim Bridger: the Lakota, Crow and other trails of the Yellowstone and upper Missouri country, the routes of the survey parties day by day, and the Lakota names of the rivers.
Source: Library of Congress · Rights: public domain
Bernard Romans (Taitt, Gauld), 1773 · about 62 km accuracy
Bernard Romans’s manuscript map of about 1773, compiled for John Stuart, Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Southern District, for General Gage: West Florida from the Mississippi to the Apalachicola, with Georgia, part of East Florida and the edge of South Carolina, and the Choctaw, Chickasaw and Muscogee (Creek) nations. The Choctaw towns are numbered by party — the Eastern Party, Oypatoocoola, the West Party (Oocolofalaya) and the Six Villages — and keyed in a list beside the Chickasaw villages; the Upper Creek towns are named along the Coosa and the Tallapoosa and the Lower Creek towns along the Chattahoochee. Dotted paths join the Choctaw towns to Fort Tombecbe on the Tombigbee, lead from the Koasati (Coosada) town there toward the Creek Nation, run from Natchez to the Choctaws and link the Upper Creek towns. The road from Pensacola to the Upper Creek Nation and on through the Lower Creek towns to Augusta — the traders’ path, laid down from David Taitt’s courses — is the map’s subject, and its table gives the computed miles along it: Tuckabatchee 243½ from Pensacola, Augusta 541½, Charlestown 715. The coast from the mouths of the Mississippi to Apalache is George Gauld’s. Red lines mark the boundaries laid out between the nations and the provinces. Built from the Hargrett Library’s linen photocopy, with faint lettering read on the Clements Library’s colour original; the table of distances, the remarks, the title cartouche and the lists of villages are not shown.
Source: Hargrett Library, University of Georgia, via the Digital Library of Georgia · Rights: public domain
Charles C. Royce (Bureau of Ethnology), 1884 · about 12 km accuracy
Charles C. Royce’s map of the former territorial limits of the Cherokee Nation, plate VIII of the Bureau of Ethnology’s Fifth Annual Report (dated 1884, published 1887): the country from the Ohio River to central Alabama and Georgia and from the lower Tennessee to the Carolina piedmont, on a base of the towns, rivers and graticule of the 1880s, coloured and numbered to show each tract the Cherokee (Aniyvwiya) ceded to the colonies and to the United States, from the treaty of 1721 with South Carolina to the treaty of New Echota in 1835. Over it Royce letters the old Cherokee and Creek towns and villages, the forts and stations of the frontier, and several old routes: the Great Indian War Path down the valley of East Tennessee, the Old Indian Path between Coosa and Tugeloo across north Georgia, the Old Creek Path west from Rome, the High Tower Path, the Old Cherokee Path to Virginia, the Old Cherokee Trading Path by Ninety Six to the Congarees, the Cherokee Traders’ Path to Yorkville, the Old Path from Tugaloo to Fort Charlotte and the Old Trading Path to the Catawba and Cherokee Nations from Virginia. The title and the numbered table of treaties are not shown. The site’s cessions layer is drawn from Royce’s cession areas; this overlay is the map itself.
Source: Library of Congress · Rights: public domain
Isaac I. Stevens and W. H. Carlton, 1857 · about 41 km accuracy
Isaac I. Stevens’s manuscript map for the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, drawn by William H. Carlton in March 1857: the nations of Washington Territory and of Nebraska Territory west of the mouth of the Yellowstone, each named over its country — from the Makah, S’Klallam, Quinault, Nisqually, Duwamish, Snoqualmie, Skagit and Lummi on Puget Sound to the Yakama, Okanagan, Spokane, Coeur d’Alene, Kalispel, Kootenai, Salish (Flathead), Nez Perce, Cayuse and Walla Walla, and the Blackfeet and Assiniboine on the Missouri. Broad coloured lines bound the lands ceded in the treaties of 1854–55 (Medicine Creek, Point Elliott, Point No Point, Neah Bay, Olympia, Walla Walla and Hellgate), with the reservations kept in them painted brown, and the Blackfeet country and the hunting grounds the 1855 treaty at the mouth of the Judith left common to the Blackfeet and the western nations. The Yellowstone country, sketched too freely to place, is not shown; nor are the tables of each nation’s numbers, treaty and reservation.
Source: Wikimedia Commons · Rights: public domain
Lieut. G. K. Warren, Topographical Engineers, U.S. War Department, 1857 · about 50 km accuracy
Lieutenant G. K. Warren's master map of the West, compiled in the Office of Pacific Railroad Surveys from every reliable exploration to date: the named country of each nation — Dacotas, Sheyennes, Comanches, Shoshonees, Utahs, Navajoes, Apaches, Blackfeet, Crows, Nez Perces, Pawnees and many more — with villages, forts, and the explorers' and emigrant routes that followed Native trails.
Source: Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division · Rights: public domain
G. K. Warren, Topographical Engineers, 1857 · about 6 km accuracy
Gouverneur K. Warren’s military map of the northern plains: the lands of each Lakota, Dakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Pawnee and other nation as he understood them, the Indian trails and war roads, and the routes of the 1855–57 expeditions.
Source: Library of Congress · Rights: public domain
Lieut. A. W. Whipple, Topl. Engrs., assisted by Lieut. J. C. Ives and A. H. Campbell, 1855 · about 25 km accuracy
Lieutenant Amiel W. Whipple’s reconnaissance for a railroad near the 35th parallel, 1853–54, from the Rio Grande at Albuquerque to Los Angeles (Map No. 2 of his report). It marks the Spanish Trail by the Vegas springs, a trail through the country it labels “Yampais (Ya-ba-pais)”, the Hopi (“Moquis”) and Navajo country, Zuni, Old Zuni and the Rio Grande pueblos, and the route down the Mojave River and over Cajon Pass.
Source: Library of Congress · Rights: public domain
Capt. J. H. Simpson, Topl. Engrs., U.S.A.; drawn by J. P. Mechlin, 1859 · about 20 km accuracy
Captain James H. Simpson’s map of the wagon routes he explored and opened across the Great Basin in 1858–59, west from Camp Floyd and Salt Lake City to Genoa in Carson Valley, with the earlier routes of Stansbury, Frémont, Gunnison and Beckwith. Across what is now central Nevada it gives valleys and ranges the Western Shoshone names Simpson’s party recorded — Pah-hun-nupe Valley, Won-a-ho-nupe Valley, the Too-muntz and Pah-re-ah ranges — and it shows Utah Lake, the Jordan valley and the Utah settlements of the time.
Source: Library of Congress · Rights: public domain
Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson, 1755 · about 28 km accuracy
Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson’s map of Virginia, in the 1755 Jefferys edition: the Indian Road by the Treaty of Lancaster down the Great Valley, the Indian road over the Alleghenies to the forks of the Ohio, and the Shawnee and Delaware towns of the upper Ohio.
Source: Library of Congress · Rights: public domain
Charles E. Brown, 1930 · about 9 km accuracy
Charles E. Brown’s statewide map of Wisconsin’s Indian trails for the Wisconsin Archeological Society: the trails in red across every county, from Lake Superior and the St. Croix to the Fox–Wisconsin portage, Lake Winnebago and the Lake Michigan shore, drawn from the Society’s trail surveys.
Source: Wisconsin Historical Society · Rights: public domain
U.S. War Department, 1830 · about 21 km accuracy
A War Department manuscript map of eastern Wisconsin from about 1830, drawn for the lands ceded by the Menominee, Ho-Chunk and the New York Indians in 1821: the dotted routes from Green Bay up the Fox past the Menominee village and the Chutes to Lake Winnebago, around its eastern shore toward Chicago, by Lake Michigan to the Manitowoc, and on to the Butte des Morts, Yellow Thunder’s village and Green Lake, with Indian villages and a table of distances from Green Bay.
Source: Wisconsin Historical Society · Rights: public domain
F. V. Hayden (A. D. Wilson and Henry Gannett), 1878 · about 3 km accuracy
The Hayden Survey’s map of Yellowstone National Park (U.S. Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, F. V. Hayden), surveyed in 1878 — primary triangulation by A. D. Wilson, secondary triangulation and topography by Henry Gannett — at two miles to the inch with 100-foot contours, and published with the Survey’s Twelfth Annual Report (1883); this is the topographic edition, without the geology colours. It covers the park and its margins from the Gallatin Range and the Madison plateau to the Absaroka Range: the geyser basins, Yellowstone Lake with its soundings, Shoshone, Lewis and Heart lakes, the Grand Cañon, the roads and trails of 1878, and the “Bannack Trail” — the Bannock and other nations’ route east across the plateau to the buffalo country — crossing the Gallatin Range north of Mount Holmes and running down Indian Creek to the Norris road toward Gardiner’s River.
Source: National Archives · Rights: public domain
P. W. Norris, Superintendent, 1881 · about 4 km accuracy
P. W. Norris’s map of Yellowstone National Park for his annual report as its superintendent, signed at the Mammoth Hot Springs headquarters in November 1881 and compiled from his own explorations and other sources, chiefly Hayden’s survey of 1878: the park’s roads, bridle trails and hotel sites, the geyser and hot-spring basins tinted red, Norris’s numbered camps and his routes of 1880 and 1881, and the Crow Indian Reservation beyond its northern line. It letters the “Bannack Trail” — the road the Bannock and their Shoshone neighbours took across the Yellowstone country to the buffalo plains east of the mountains — from below Bell’s Peak in the Gallatin Range, past a small lake and down Indian Creek to Gardiner’s River, and marks an “Indian Camp” below Hoodoo (Goblin) Mountain and “Indian Pond and Camp” on Mary Bay of Yellowstone Lake. The Sheepeater Cliffs on Gardiner’s River carry the name of the Tukudeka (Sheep Eaters), the Shoshone people who lived in these mountains year round. Not shown: the title and the table of distances and hotel sites below the map.
Source: Library of Congress · Rights: public domain
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