Making Maps Speak

Together, we examined thirty-nine maps dating from the late 17th and 18th centuries, now preserved at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Archives nationales, and the Service historique de la Défense (fig. 1). Produced by French cartographers under the Ancien Régime, these maps depict colonial Louisiana and provide insight into the original territories of several Native American Nations before their forced Removal to “Indian Territory” (present-day Oklahoma) beginning in the 1830s.

One example is a manuscript map from 1732 attributed to Régis du Roullet, a French officer (fig. 2). It depicts a route linking the French military post of La Mobile, founded in 1702 on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, to the margins of Choctaw country.

At the time, the Choctaw (referred to by the French as “Chactas”) formed a powerful confederacy spread across 44 villages between the Pearl and Tombigbee Rivers. By closely examining this map, we identified numerous place names in the Choctaw language: “Boukchancoulou,” “Bouhkoutak oujahené,” “Bok yvnnvh foni asha,” and others. Accompanied by local guides, Régis du Roullet transcribed these names as they were spoken to him. His map therefore allows us, indirectly, to hear the voices of Choctaw speakers through the toponymy of the landscape.

These place names provide insight into the Choctaw relationship with the land. To interpret them, we combined expertise in both French and Choctaw. By pronouncing the names according to French phonetics—as closely as possible to what Du Roullet himself may have heard—the Choctaw speakers on our team were able to recover their meanings. Nearly all 73 recorded toponyms were translated, and some were even linked to present-day locations.

The names also make it possible to reconstruct vanished environments: animal and plant species, as well as human transformations of the landscape. One place name, “Kashak issuba ailli” (“cane thicket where a horse died”), refers to the drowning of a horse at a time when paths were being widened to facilitate horseback travel. Horses had only recently been introduced into Choctaw territory at the end of the 17th century.

Other toponyms evoke a sensory experience of the landscape. The expression “Boukoutak oujahené” (“the bayou where the earth trembles”) refers to an area dotted with bayous where, in certain places, the soil is saturated with water yet held together with dense roots. Anyone crossing this terrain on foot or horseback would have experienced a sensation of instability because it bounces up and down—as though the earth itself were trembling.

Unlike Du Roullet’s map, many maps of Louisiana were produced in Paris without direct knowledge of the terrain. To assess their reliability, we sought to trace the cartographers’ sources in archival records. We consulted the Delisle family archives to analyze a 1718 map by Guillaume Delisle, “First Geographer to the King,” and to study the organization and location of Quapaw villages (fig. 3).

This map shows three villages, including Kappa, on the right bank of the Mississippi River, and two others simply labeled “les Akansas,” situated on an island in the Arkansas River at its confluence with the Mississippi. Since this location appears only rarely in other sources, we questioned its accuracy. Faced with these uncertainties, we chose to shift the scale of analysis and conduct fieldwork in Arkansas, the historical homeland of the Quapaw Nation.

What does this territory look like today? Despite the profound changes that have taken place since the 18th century, many environmental features recorded on colonial maps remain visible, including waterways and wetlands (fig. 4). To better understand these transformations, we met with local specialists working in archaeology and environmental management. Their field-based knowledge—sometimes little circulated outside specialist circles due to concerns about site protection and looting —helped us better understand changes in the course of the Arkansas River and the preservation of certain wetlands since the 18th century.

Beyond their contribution to the history of Native American societies, this research on maps also modestly contributes to contemporary processes of “cultural revitalization.” The Choctaw, Quapaw, Miami, and Peoria members of the project are actively working to revive aspects of traditional lifeways that were profoundly weakened by colonization. A major focus of their work is strengthening their communities’ connections with their ancestral territories, which they were forced to leave nearly two centuries ago. Our work forms part of this broader effort.

The Choctaw Nation, for example, is developing a large-scale project to reconstruct the landscapes of Choctaw territory across the centuries. The translated and geolocated place names now enrich its ecological and historical knowledge. They are integrated into a database designed by Ryan Spring, which documents several hundred Choctaw place names and contributes to the preservation of Choctaw historical sites. Using geographic information systems (GIS), the Choctaw Nation reviews more than 3,000 federal projects each year in order to assess their potential impact on these sites.

Ultimately, colonial maps still have much to reveal. Beyond their value for the history of Native American societies, they now contribute to contemporary efforts to preserve territories and reconnect communities with their ancestral homelands.