Interpreting Native Trans-Appalachia, 1670-1770

In 1723 a Lower Chickasaw man called Fanni Mingo (translated as “Squirrel King”) delivered a deerskin map to British South Carolina. It designates trade paths and riparian systems (principally but not exclusively the interconnected Mississippi, Ohio, Tennessee, and Wabash Rivers), but it also lays o...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in17 - 18 Vol. 78
Main Author Ray, Kristofer
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Société d'études anglo-américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles 22.12.2021
Société d'Etudes Anglo-Américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles
Subjects
indigenous mobility
native cartography
native South
Pays des Illinois
Trans-Appalachia
sud autochtone
indigenous mobility
native South
frontière appalachienne
native cartography
Trans-Appalachia
pays des Illinois
cartographie autochtone
mobilité indigène
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Summary:In 1723 a Lower Chickasaw man called Fanni Mingo (translated as “Squirrel King”) delivered a deerskin map to British South Carolina. It designates trade paths and riparian systems (principally but not exclusively the interconnected Mississippi, Ohio, Tennessee, and Wabash Rivers), but it also lays out the approximate locations of myriad settlements across trans-Appalachia. To a careful observer the map provides a snapshot of the complex and mobile realities defining the 18th century trans-Appalachian experience. This essay uses Fanni Mingo’s map as a launching point to consider a Native narrative of 18th Century North America. So far from living in permanent locations awaiting an inexorable non-Native invasion from the East, Squirrel King sheds light upon an evolving Indigenous-centered world wherein Europeans struggled to overcome a dissonance between their assertions of power and the reality of Native control.
ISSN:0291-3798
2117-590X
DOI:10.4000/1718.8090