University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for Summer 1997 Mapping The Marias The Interface Of Native And Scientific Cartographies Barbara Belyea University of Calgary Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons Belyea, Barbara, "Mapping The Marias The Interface Of Native And Scientific Cartographies" (1997). Great Plains Quarterly. 1946. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/1946 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. MAPPING THE MARIAS THE INTERFACE OF NATIVE AND SCIENTIFIC CARTOGRAPHIES BARBARA BELYEA In early June 1805, as they traveled up the the most direct & practicable water commu· Missouri toward the continental divide, nication across this continent."! Punctilious Meriwether Lewis and William Clark came to to a fault, the captains interpreted this man­ a fork where two rivers of apparently compa­ date narrowly: for them this order meant fol­ rable width and force flowed together. The lowing the Missouri itself to its source, where captains paused at this junction, unable to a portage across the continental divide would decide which river was the "main stream" of lead to the Columbia watershed, a pattern that the Missouri and which was the tributary. They would mirror the upper Missouri and flow west were determined to fulfill Thomas Jefferson's to the sea. After nine days of reconnaissance, instructions as exactly as possible: "to explore they decided that the river approaching them the Missouri river, & such principal stream of from the southwest should be declared the it, as, by it's course and communication with Missouri. Lewis named the other river Marias, the waters of the Pacific ocean ... may offer and called it one of the Missouri's "most inter­ esting branc[h]es."2 The days of observation and definition at the Missouri/Marias confluence exemplify the survey work to which Lewis, Clark, and contemporary European explorers were com­ mitted. All were field agents in a larger pro­ cess of scientific classification by which Barbara Belyea is professor of English at the University of Calgary. She is the editor of David Thompson's "unknown" regions of the earth were mapped Columbia Journals (1994) and is preparing a text and described. But as Lewis and Clark moved and hypertext edition of Anthony Henday's voyage west across the North American continent, west from Hudson Bay. their contact with Native informants re­ vealed spatial and topographical concepts at variance with their own. Native geographical [GPQ 17 (Summer/Fall 1997): 165.84] knowledge was not simply sketchy, provisional 165 166 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER/FALL 1997 information that scientific survey could con­ Without exception, the captains' reasoning at firm, correct, or supersede. the Missouri/Marias junction has been admired as characteristic of the expedition's scientific HISTORIES OF THE LEWIS AND CLARK achievement. EXPEDITION The expedition's mapping procedures are of particular interest in understanding the Historians of the Lewis and Clark expedi­ problem facing Lewis and Clark at the Mis­ tion have been accepting and uncritical of souri/Marias junction. These procedures are the captains' mandate and what they achieved. described and judged within a geographical In 1952 Bernard DeYoto praised expedition context clearly outlined in Passage Through members as heroes because "they had filled the Garden. Allen suggests a progressive shift out the map" and had pursued "scientific ob­ from the hearsay of Natives and traders, to jectives" during two years of hardships, dan­ speculative mapping, and finally to scientific gers, and adventures. Specifically, De Yo to geography: called the Missouri/Marias decision "a remark­ able act of the mind [that] must be conceded a There are really three ways of knowing distinguished place in the history of thought. about areas geographically: a system of co­ It is the basic method of science."3 More than herent knowledge based on accurate data twenty years later, John Logan Allen con­ and long acquaintance, a system of more or trasted Clark's field surveys with earlier geo­ less coherent knowledge based on simple graphical "lore" gleaned from speculative logical and theoretical constructions, or a cartography and "sketchy native data." In Pas­ system which is largely incoherent and sage Through the Garden, published in 1975, based on desires, ambitions, long-standing Allen considers the expedition leaders to have myths and traditions, or pure rumor and been "a pair of trained and intelligent observ­ fantasy .... The captains [Lewis and Clark] ers [who] gathered and analyzed geographical would replace conjecture and speculation, information in what can only be described as wild reasonings of theoretical and logical a scientific method." Allen echoes De Yo to in frameworks, with scientific observation. calling the decision at the Marias "a brilliant They would fill in many blank spaces on piece of deduction from a fuzzy set of facts the maps of the Northwest with facts re­ [that] illustrates ... the competence and in­ corded and verified rather than guessed at telligence of its commanders."4 In a comple­ or hoped for. 8 mentary work published within a few years of Passage Through the Garden, Paul Russell Allen's progression, rather confusingly pre­ Cutright established Lewis and Clark as "pio­ sented in reverse order, is to be understood as neering naturalists" who charted flora and three levels of geographical knowledge rang­ fauna according to Linnaean categories.s Al­ ing from the least reliable ("desires, ambitions though James P. Ronda's studies of the ... myths and traditions, ... rumor and fan­ expedition's contact with Native groups have tasy") to logical deduction ("more or less co­ tempered earlier interpretations of the cap­ herent ... theoretical constructions") to field tains' success, Ronda continues to see the ex­ survey ("accurate data and long acquaintance pedition as a scientific breakthrough and ... scientific observation"). The captains' job Clark as mastering not only European carto­ was to replace the first two levels, inherited graphic skills but those of Native mapping.6 from Native "lore" and earlier maps, with the Gary E. Moulton's recent re-edition of the third. This process of discovery separated Lewis expedition's journals and maps praises the and Clark from "lesser men and less capable captains' science and specifically endorses explorers." As the captains ventured beyond Allen's account of the decision at the Marias.7 the lower Missouri, "from an area ... actually MAPPING THE MARIAS 167 well known into one ... less known (in a real pilations consulted by Lewis and Clark, but, or empirical sense)," they found themselves in he too defines the captains' achievement at the frontier region of speculative cartography, the Missouri/Marias junction as a triumph of faced with inadequate "data" and obliged to science: "these critical few days in the expe­ replace this reported knowledge with their dition can stand as the mark where the con­ own observations. 9 The three-step progres­ jectures of Fidler and Arrowsmith were swept sion can be reduced to "two kinds of geographi­ aside and replaced by accurate factual de­ cal knowledge": tail."12 Thus, although the expedition's en­ during achievement was political, historians The first is "real knowledge," or actual in­ have followed Jefferson's lead; to fellow Ameri­ formation obtained through active commer­ cans and foreign diplomats alike, the US presi­ cial, diplomatic, military, or scholarly dent promoted the venture as a scientific enterprises or from the accounts of travel­ investigation. Paraphrasing his instructions to ers and observers, evaluated in the light of Lewis three years before, he announced to what is presently accepted as geographical Congress in 1806 that Lewis and Clark had reality. The second and more important "traced the Missouri nearly to it's source, de­ kind of knowledge is "perceived knowl­ scended the Columbia to the Pacific ocean, edge," or lore which is evaluated on the ascertained with accuracy the geography of basis of accuracy as it is understood by the that interesting communication across our explorers themselves.1o continent, [and] learnt the character of the country ..." 13 "Real knowledge" was gathered from official European and American sources; "perceived LEWIS AND CLARK As SCIENTIFIC knowledge" was based on fur-trade and Na­ OBSERVERS tive reports. "Real knowledge" was confirmed by Lewis and Clark during their expedition; As scientific observers, Lewis and Clark "perceived knowledge," though "more impor­ were provided with instruments, manuals, tant" to the explorers themselves, was replaced blank tables, base maps, and questionnaires by the captains' "field operations." Thus the that determined objects worthy of note, the process of discovery is that by which "invented categories of their inscription, and the stan­ geography is perceived as real until proven dards by which they would be evaluated. The unreal by exploration and observation."ll In captains' instruments were far from "crude and defining the achievement of Lewis and Clark, unreliable,"