Indiana: The Influence of the Indian upon its History (E. Y. Guernsey, Indiana Department of Conservation, 1933)
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
| Map | Indiana: The Influence of the Indian upon its History |
|---|---|
| Author | E. Y. Guernsey; Indiana Department of Conservation, Publication 122, 1933 |
| Archive | Indiana State Library, Indiana Memory · about 1:380,000 |
| Rights | Public domain. Copyrighted 1933 by the Indiana Department of Conservation; no renewal appears in the Catalog of Copyright Entries renewal volumes for 1960–61 (books and maps parts), so the copyright expired after its first 28-year term. Renewal search completed 2026-09-25. Evidence |
| Accuracy | About 8 km (RMS 2.7 km at 39 control points). Guernsey compiled from surveys, county histories and the GLO plats; trails are corridors, and some village symbols are placed by tradition rather than excavation. |
| Method | Second-order polynomial fit to thirty-nine towns, each read on its map symbol. See the methodology. |
| Version | 1.0.2, updated 2026-10-09 |
| Covers | Indiana |
Downloads
- Google Earth overlay (KMZ) — free (12.8 MB)
- GeoTIFF, tinted trails, EPSG:4326 (3889 × 4556; QGIS, ArcGIS) — free (10.2 MB)
- Print sheet over today’s map (3600 × 2200 PNG) — free (3.4 MB)
Project Homeland
This map’s trails are traced into Project Homeland, one map of the trail network melded from every traced source, where they are compared with the other maps’ lines. Members can trace more of them: Trace a trail on the map.
Changelog
- 1.0.2 (2026-10-09): Place names restored to where they were before 1.0.1: on this map each name is placed at the place itself today, not where the old map draws it, so re-placing the map must not move them (1.0.1 moved them with the new fit by mistake). Tiles unchanged from 1.0.1.
- 1.0.1 (2026-10-08): Re-placed: the control points were re-read on each town’s symbol (many first sat on the town’s label, up to 12 km away), five towns added; leave-one-out error 3.6 km (stated accuracy now 8 km). Checked against towns not used in the fit: Paoli 0.1 km, La Porte 2.2 km (were 4.9 and 11.1). Place names moved with it (median 4.8 km).
- 1.0.0 (2026-09-25): First release: 34 control points, tinted and scan layers, z5–z12.
Credits
- Georeferencing: Native Routes
- Scan: Indiana State Library (Indiana Memory)
Control points
The full list of control points with residuals is in control-points.geojson. Historic names indexed for search: names.geojson.
Something on this map sits in the wrong place? Members can show where with Fix placement on the map — confirmed fixes are tested against the map’s other control points each night and credited here. For anything else, report a problem.
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