Map of Missouri showing Aboriginal Trails and Warpaths (Louis Houck, A History of Missouri, 1908)
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
| Map | A history of Missouri from the earliest explorations and settlements until the admission of the state into the union |
|---|---|
| Author | Louis Houck, 1908 |
| Archive | Internet Archive |
| Rights | Public domain. Published 1908 — before 1931, so public domain in the United States. Evidence |
| Accuracy | About 22 km (RMS 6.4 km at 20 control points). Placed by hand in a map-queue session and approved by a person. If something sits in the wrong place, members can fix it with Fix placement on the map. |
| Method | Placed by hand: a first-order polynomial fit to 20 places read from the scan and matched to their positions today. See the methodology. |
| Version | 1.0.0, updated 2026-09-30 |
| Covers | Missouri |
Downloads
- Google Earth overlay (KMZ) — free (0.7 MB)
- GeoTIFF, tinted trails, EPSG:4326 (2831 × 1789; QGIS, ArcGIS) — free (0.7 MB)
- Print sheet over today’s map (3600 × 2200 PNG) — free (2.3 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
- 1.0.0 (2026-09-30): First release: placed by hand at 20 places. From the Native Routes sources register; the plate in Houck’s A History of Missouri (1908), vol. 1, Internet Archive.
Credits
- From the Native Routes sources register; the plate in Houck’s A History of Missouri (1908), vol. 1, Internet Archive
- Georeferencing: Native Routes
- Scan: Internet Archive
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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