How the West Was Drawn

In How the West Was Drawn, David Bernstein provides a detailed cartographic and ethnological study of this region during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Through the lens of mapping and with a focus on the Pawnee story, Bernstein argues that the area was shaped by layers of narratives, not a single declensionist story of white conquest over the indigenous. Maps of the region reveal the story of conquest but also of negotiation and of synthesis. Both native and nonnative groups imposed their own stories on the land. Drawing lines and boundaries were ways that both cultures claimed space and contributed to the shape and geographical knowledge of what was often labeled “the Great American Desert” or “Indian Territory.” The author breaks his study into three sections. In the first, he examines the land transfers and contests over spaces as the Pawnee negotiated with neighboring native and nonnative groups for survival. By the end of this first section, Bernstein makes clear that the Pawnee were more than a dwindling tribe or simply pawns of the American state. All of the actors upon the western stage contributed to and negotiated for place. In the second section, Bernstein reaches beyond simple boundary lines to an examination of the rhetorical strategies used in mapping the West. He argues convincingly that the stories of western mapping reveal the efforts by “white” Americans to hang on to an “authentic past” and, at the same time, delineate that past from the enlightened and scientific American present. In the third section, Bernstein wraps up his study by examining the synthetic nature of place names. He argues that the story of these place names reflects much more than a simple overwriting of an indigenous geography

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · CONQUEST · Ethnology · Genealogy · Geography · Indigenous · Literature · Narrative · Native american · Negotiation · Projectile point · Section (typography · Social science · Sociology · State (computer science · Tribe · White (mutation · American Environmental and Regional History · Anthropology · Archaeology and Natural History · History · Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights