Map of the Indian Nations and Tribes of the Territory of Washington and of Nebraska west of the mouth of the Yellowstone (Stevens, 1857)
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
| Map | Map of the Indian Nations and Tribes of the Territory of Washington |
|---|---|
| Author | Isaac I. Stevens and W. H. Carlton, 1857 |
| Archive | Wikimedia Commons |
| Rights | Public domain. An unpublished manuscript made for the Commissioner of Indian Affairs by the Territory’s governor and superintendent of Indian affairs — a U.S. federal government work, so public domain in the United States. Evidence |
| Accuracy | About 41 km (RMS 11.6 km at 45 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 smoothing thin-plate spline through 45 places read from the scan — forts, missions, river mouths, lakes and peaks — and matched to their positions today. Puget Sound and the lower Columbia are drawn closely (half the places there within 8 km); the interior is sketched — it draws the Snake from the Clearwater to the Salmon nearly twice its length and Mount Rainier some 20 km east of where it stands. The Yellowstone country is masked: the map puts the mouths of the Big Horn and the Powder some 50 km apart (they are about 160 km apart) and the upper Yellowstone some 85 km east of its course. See the methodology. |
| Version | 1.0.0, updated 2026-10-14 |
| Covers | Washington, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, North Dakota |
Downloads
- Google Earth overlay (KMZ) — free (2.1 MB)
- GeoTIFF, tinted trails, EPSG:4326 (8000 × 3529; QGIS, ArcGIS) — free (7.2 MB)
- Print sheet over today’s map (3600 × 2200 PNG) — free (2.1 MB)
Changelog
- 1.0.0 (2026-10-14): First release: placed by hand at 45 places. From the National Archives (NAID 76028709) via Wikimedia Commons; added for Project Homeland.
Credits
- From the National Archives (NAID 76028709) via Wikimedia Commons; added for Project Homeland
- Georeferencing: Native Routes
- Scan: Wikimedia Commons
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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