Catawba Cartographies: Remapping the Indigenous Southeast, ca. 1670-1733

S. Max Edelson, professor of history at the University of Virginia, makes a case that the Catawba Deerskin Map sought to correct errors observed on English cartography and suggest a new political geography for the region.
English colonizers arrived in Kiawah -- the Cusabo Indian region on the southeastern coast of North America -- in 1670. To promote their new colony, the Lords Proprietors of Carolina commissioned maps to proclaim English sovereignty, attract colonists and reveal Indigenous people and places beyond the Atlantic coast. The view of the Native world presented on these maps was deeply distorted. Did Native Carolinians see these maps? If so, how did they react to them? In the 1720s, the Catawbas presented South Carolina's governor with a painted deerskin showing Indigenous and European settlements in the region.
This lecture is part of the Philip Lee Phillips Society 2024 Spring Presentation on Indigenous Cartography, co-sponsored by the Washington Map Society.
For transcript and more information, visit www.loc.gov/item/webcast-11330