University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for Winter 1981 The John Evans 1796-97 Map Of The Missouri River W. Raymond Wood University of Missouri-Columbia, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons Wood, W. Raymond, "The John Evans 1796-97 Map Of The Missouri River" (1981). Great Plains Quarterly. 1920. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/1920 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. THE JOHN EVANS 1796--97 MAP OF THE MISSOURI RIVER W. RAYMOND WOOD One of the curious twists of Great Plains his­ northeastern Nebraska near modern Sioux City, tory is that the first accurate eyewitness map of Iowa, to the Mandan and Hidatsa villages at the Missouri River in what is now North and the mouth of the Knife River in present-day South Dakota-the historic home of the Man­ North Dakota. The map illustrates in detail dan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Indians and of their the major features of the Missouri River chan­ nomadic neighbors-was produced by a Welsh­ nel and shows all of its principal tributaries. man who had come to the United States to It is a landmark of Missouri River cartography. seek evidence for something that never existed: Later mappers relied heavily upon it, as no less the illusory "welsh Indians." The inquisitive than ten secondary English, French, and Span­ ish maps of the period from 1797 to 1811 bear welsh explorer, John Thomas Evans (1770-99), unmistakable evidence of their dependence did not find what he came to discover, but he on Evans's work.1 produced what was to be one of the most im­ The Evans map was especially important to portant maps available to Meriwether Lewis and the Lewis and Clark expedition. Clark repeated­ William Clark in planning and executing their ly referred to it and verified Evans's earlier famous expedition up the Missouri River in 1804. observations. Indeed, Evans (whose name Clark Evans's map shows his route up the Missouri variously spelled Evins, Evens, and Ivens) River from Fort Charles, located in what is now named all of the major tributaries of the Mis­ souri River in the area his map covered. In fact, it -remained for Lewis and Clark to name only W. Raymond Wood is a professor of anthropol­ a few minor streams below the Mandan and ogy at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Hidatsa villages. Until they reached those His most recent publications include the edited villages they made only "secondary and supple­ volumes, Anthropology on the Great Plains mentary" maps of the Missouri River, so pre­ (1980) and The Explorations of the La Veren­ cise and detailed was Evans's work. It was a dryes in the Northern Plains, 1738-43 (1980), major "road map" of the expedition for no less by G. Hubert Smith. than seven hundred miles.2 39 -- .--.- . ~ --¥--------:lH~---__:::V_---,_...., ~ - -- . ---- - - - ...-r--- --:.---Hhlf----1--:~-~'7_I " . ' I' . Y'2 ----- --;---------~-------r-------~--------~r_-- FIG. 1. Sheet 2 of the Evans map, showing the Missouri River in southcentral South Dakota. Compare with figure 3. THE JOHN EVANS 1796-97 MAP OF THE MISSOURI RIVER 41 THE MACKAY -EVANS EXPEDITION the map.6 OF 1795-97 The Mackay and Evans expedition up the Missouri River was the most important one Evans, together with James Mackay, led an preceding that of Lewis and clark. The geo­ expedition up the Missouri River between 1795 graphical information they gathered was the and 1797.3 Sponsored by Spain, the party best available for the region until 1805, when left Saint Louis in August, 1795, accompanied Clark sent a map of what was to become by thirty-three men-a party not much smaller western United States to Washington from Fort than that of Lewis and Clark nine years later. In Mandan? November they reached the Omaha Indians and The map produced by the expedition was built Fort Charles near their village in what is based almost entirely on Evans's 1796-97 ex­ now Dakota County, located in northeastern perience. Evans had not been on the Missouri Nebraska. Mackay subsequently sent Evans up before; Mackay had visited the Mandans in the Missouri to obtain information on inter­ 1787 from Canada while in the service of the tribal relations. Evans went as far as the mouth British Northwest Company, but he had no of the White River, which is located in south previous experience in the. region below their central South Dakota. Here he was forced to villages. Mackay subsequently moved to Saint retreat by hostile Dakotas, and he returned to Louis, then in Spanish hands, where in 1794 Fort Charles. he is believed to have supplied information for In early 1796 Mackay again dispatched the Soulard map of 1795.8 The extent of his Evans upriver, this time with instructions to influence on this map was slight, however, "discover a passage from the sources of the because the Mandan and Hidatsa territory is Missouri to the Pacific Ocean.,,4 With these shown in only the most rudimentary detail.9 impossible orders in hand, Evans ascended the Nevertheless, he did have ftrsthand knowledge Missouri River with a party of unknown size . of the area near the mouth of the Knife River and succeeded in reaching the Mandan and that he later passed along to Lewis and Clark. Hidatsa villages at the mouth of the Knife River, in present North Dakota, on September THE EVANS MAP 23, 1796. He remained near these villages through the following winter. The original map that Evans produced of his A few days after his arrival he took "Posses­ exploration from Fort Charles to the Mandan­ sion of the fort built at the Mandaine Village" Hidatsa villages has been lost, but a copy of it by British Northwest Company employees. is now in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manu­ This installation, which he occupied and re­ script Library at Yale University. This copy named "Fort Makay," is probably the post first appeared in 1903, when it was discovered described by Juan Fotman (or Tremont) as by Reuben Gold Thwaites in New York in the having been built on the right (or south) bank Clark-Voorhis Collection of Lewis and Clark of the Missouri River between the Mandan and documents. Thwaites published it in his edi­ Hidatsa villages by Rene Jussaume's trading tion of the original journals of Lewis and party a year earlier, in late October, 1795.5 Clark, believing that the map was a Clark Evans apparently left the area on May 9, original of the Missouri River beginning at Saint 1797. He returned to Saint Louis by July 15, Charles, Missouri, since the map commenced at judging from a notation dated four days later Fort Charles.10 This blunder, precipitated in that appears on the back of one of the sheets part because Clark's own route maps from of his map: "July 19th 1 797 at St. Louis / Suns Camp Dubois to the Mandan-Hidatsa villages meridian attitude 72.. 24." The note is in the have been lost, had the effect of concealing the same hand as that of the person who drafted identity of the Evans map for forty years. Its 42 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, WINTER 1981 correct identification was made by Aubrey Cape Girardeau, Missouri, for a time after his Diller, who first recognized its significance in return from the expedition.14 So, although it is his classic 1946 paper, "Maps of the Missouri unlikely that anyone other than Evans drew the River before Lewis and Clark."ll original map, the surviving portion of his Diller reported that this copy of the Evans journal sheds no light on this question. IS map had been "sent to Lewis by Jefferson on Regardless of authorship, the Evans map 13 January 1804, and [is 1 cited by Evans' name provides the earliest place names for this part in Lewis and Clark's journals.,,12 President of the Missouri basin. Most of these names Jefferson obtained this copy from William have continued in use to the present time, Henry Harrison, governor of Indiana Terri­ although some of them have been translated tory.!3 The extant map is clearly not the into English. original: in addition to the fact that Harrison Many of both the English and French in­ said it was a copy, the sheets are clean and scriptions are difficult to read. This occasional­ show none of the wear one would expect of a ly led to errors by Clark, not to mention map produced in the field. persons not familiar with the map and the his­ The map is in seven parts. Six of the sheets tory of the area it depicts. For example, lack of show the Missouri River from Fort Charles to clarity in the appearance of the word "Ponca" to the mouth of the Knife River. Sheet 4 has been led to a misreading of it as "Pania" (that is, torn in half, and was published by Thwaites in as Pawnee) by Clark and later students of two parts. These six sheets may be overlaid, western history, thereby producing what Diller using the i-inch grid subdividing each sheet, has described as a "paper invasion by the Paw­ to form one continuous, 42-inch-Iong map of nee, and a raper colony of the Pawnee on the the river.