Among Towns/Along Paths: How Native Americans Imagined the Colonial South

FAIN: FT-270604-20

Scott Max Edelson
University of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA 22903-4833)

Digital analysis of maps of the American Southeast created by Native American communities during the colonial era.

My research examines how Native Americans envisioned the American South and how this vision shaped war, trade, and diplomacy in the volatile eighteenth century. It privileges Native representations of the contested North American interior, focusing on the meanings of two indigenous maps created in the 1720s and analyzing Native diplomatic speeches transcribed by colonial officials. Through analyzing original images and texts for evidence of geographic thought and experience, visualizing research findings with geospatial digital tools, and applying insights from the cognitive sciences to understanding spatial behavior, this new study will describe how Native Americans proposed the first coherent vision of “the South” and demonstrate the significance of this vision to the formation of the United States.