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How the West Was Drawn
Early American Places is a collaborative project of the
University of Georgia Press, New York University Press,
Northern Illinois University Press, and the University of
Nebraska Press. The series is supported by the Andrew
W. Mellon Foundation. For more information, please visit
www.earlyamericanplaces.org.

Advisory Board
Vincent Brown, Duke University
Andrew Cayton, Miami University
Cornelia Hughes Dayton, University of Connecticut
Nicole Eustace, New York University
Amy S. Greenberg, Pennsylvania State University
Ramón A. Gutiérrez, University of Chicago
Peter Charles Hoffer, University of Georgia
Karen Ordahl Kupperman, New York University
Joshua Piker, College of William & Mary
Mark M. Smith, University of South Carolina
Rosemarie Zagarri, George Mason University
Borderlands and Transcultural Studies

Series Editors Pekka Hämäläinen, Paul Spickard

How the West Was Drawn
Mapping, Indians, and the Construction
of the Trans-Mississippi West

david bernstein

University of Nebraska Press

Lincoln and London
© 2018 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Names: Bernstein, David, 1973–, author.
Title: How the West was drawn: mapping, Indians, and the
construction of the Trans-Mississippi West / David Bernstein.
Description: Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, [2018] |
Series: Borderlands and transcultural studies | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: lccn 2017052576
isbn 9780803249301 (cloth: alk. paper)
isbn 9781496207999 (epub)
isbn 9781496208002 (mobi)
isbn 9781496208019 (web)
Subjects: lcsh: Indians of North America—Great Plains—Maps.
| Cartography—Great Plains—History—19th century. | Great
Plains—Maps. | Names, Indian—Great Plains.
Classification: lcc E98.c17 b47 2018 | ddc 978.004/97—dc23
For Inna
(who really wants to want to read it)
Contents

List of Illustrations xi
Acknowledgments xv

Introduction 1

part 1. living in indian country

1 Constructing Indian Country 17

2 Sharitarish and the Possibility of Treaties 43
3 Nonparticipatory Mapping 76

part 2. the rise and fall of “indian country”

4 The Cultural Construction of “Indian Country” 119

5 Science and the Destruction of “Indian Country” 161

part 3. reclaiming indian country

6 The Metaphysics of Indian Naming 197

Conclusion 227

Notes 233
Select Bibliography 277
Index 297
Illustrations

Figures
1. Indian Record of a Battle between the Pawnees and the
Konzas, Being a Facsimile of a Delineation upon a
Bison Robe 64
2. Portrait of Sharitarish, painted by Charles Bird King
during the Chaui’s 1822 visit 128
3. Charles Bird King’s portrait of Petalesharo, and the
frontispiece to Morse’s Report 134
4. Samuel Finley Breese Morse, The House of
Representatives (1822) 135
5. Planting the American Flag upon the Summit
of the Rocky Mountains (1856) 162
6. Col. Fremont Planting the American Standard
on the Rocky Mountains (1856) 163
7. Fremont’s Dangerous Passage through a Cañon
in the Platte River (1856) 179
8. Lakota logo-map, created by the Black Hills
Alliance of South Dakota 229

Maps
1. Major rivers of study area overlaid on contemporary
boundaries of Great Plains states 12
xii / illustr ations

2. Detail of Map Showing the Lands Assigned to Emigrant

Indians West of Arkansas and Missouri 20
3. Boundaries of the Pawnees’ nineteenth-century territory, as
described by John Dunbar in the late nineteenth century 22
4. Chouteau’s Map of Indian Territories (1816) 23
5. Kansas and Osage cessions of 1825 26
6. Detail of A Map of the Indian Territory, Northern Texas,
and New Mexico 28
7. Detail of Guillaume Delisle’s Carte de La Louisiane
et du Cours du Mississippi (1702) 31
8. The 1837 Iowa cession and part of the contested
Sac and Fox cession 37
9. Notchininga’s Map (1837) 38
10. Interpretation of hydrography of Notchininga’s Map 40
11. Original and revised Pawnee territorial claims
of the nineteenth century 45
12. Detail of Pike’s First Part of Captn. Pike’s Chart of the
Internal Part of Louisiana (1810) 55
13. Threats to Pawnee territorial control in the early
nineteenth century 60
14. Detail of McCoy’s manuscript map 66
15. Detail of Fr. Pierre-Jean De Smet’s map from the
Fort Laramie Treaty sessions (1851) 78
16. Land ceded by the Pawnees in 1857 (Royce cession 408) 105
17. 1857 Pawnee cession area, overlaid on portion of 1851
treaty map 106
18. Detail of 1851 map 108
19. Detail of Warren’s Reconnoissances in the Dacota Country 112
20. Detail of Map of Lewis and Clark’s Track, Across the
Western Portion of North America 120
21. Map in Democratic Review defining the trans-Missouri
West as “Indian Territory” (1844) 120
22. Map from William C. Woodbridge, Modern School
Geography 121
23. William C. Woodbridge’s Moral and Political Chart
of the World (1828) 123
24. Detail of Woodbridge’s Moral and Political Chart
of the World (1828) 124
25. Map accompanying Jedidiah Morse’s Report
to the Secretary of War (1822) 136
 illustr ations / xiii

26. Stephen Long’s Country Drained by the Mississippi (1823) 142

27. Detail of Long’s Country Drained by the Mississippi (1823) 143
28. Long’s depiction of “roving bands of Indians” 144
29. Detail of Country Drained by the Mississippi (1823) 147
30. Matthew Carey’s Missouri Territory Formerly
Louisiana (1814) 148
31. Map of Arkansas and Other Territories of the
United States (1822) 150
32. “Indian Territory,” as labeled in Thomas Bradford’s
1838 atlas 152
33. Josiah Gregg’s Map of the Indian Territory,
Northern Texas, and New Mexico 154
34. Augustus Mitchell’s New Map of Texas Oregon
and California (1846) 156
35. Augustus Mitchell’s wall map 158
36. Topographical Map of the Road from Missouri to Oregon 167
37. Detail of Hydrographical Basin of the Upper Mississippi
River (1843) 190
38. Warren’s Map of the Territory of the United States
from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean (1857) 200
39. Detail of Warren’s General Map 202
40. James Bordeaux’s map 205
41. Map of locales included in current study 212
42. Details of Nicollet’s map (1843), Warren’s Reconnoissances
in the Dakota Country (1857), and Indian map (1857) 214
43. Details of Nicollet’s Hydrographical Basin of the
Upper Mississippi River (1843) and Warren’s General
Map (1857) 217
44. Detail of Map of Lewis and Clark’s Track (1814) 218
45. Warren’s map of the Ash Creek Massacre 220
46. Detail of Sketch Map of Country of Omahas
and Poncas (1882) 222
Acknowledgments

Writing history depends on those who came before. This work is no dif-
ferent. My greatest intellectual debt is to those whose names appear in
the notes to this book. From George Bird Grinnell to James Riding In,
and from Carl Wheat to Margaret Wickens Pearce, the foundation of
this work was built by men and women who knew little of its creation. If
any of these people should come across this book, I hope they take some
satisfaction in its creation. For while its conclusions are mine, they have
only been made possible because of their work. Thank you.
I began my graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
under the tutelage of Ned Blackhawk. Ned was not only my first intel-
lectual advisor, but he encouraged me to study Native American history
at a time when many thought writing about Indians was too politically
fraught for a non-Native. His support for my work was echoed by those
in the American Indian Studies Program, where I worked for three years
under the leadership of Ada Deer and Denise Wiyaka.
As with many who pass through Madison, I have been deeply affected
by the earnest guidance of Bill Cronon. There are few people who can
claim so vast an intellectual legacy as Bill, and I am honored to count
myself among his students. Even more than his direct mentorship, it is
the community Bill has built that has had the greatest impact on my
development as a scholar. At one of his weekly Monday-morning ses-
sions, early in my stay in Madison, Bill asked us to look around the table.
It was these people, he promised, not the professors, who would become
the most important intellectual and social connections we would make
in graduate school. He was right. One of those sitting around the table
xvi / acknowledgments

that morning was James Feldman. Jim became not only an intellectual
advisor and professional mentor but also a great friend. Thank you, Jim. I
could not have done this without you. Others from Madison who shaped
my intellectual path are Susan Johnson, and Thongchai Winichakul.
Michelle Hogue and Adam Laats have remained good friends despite
reading various forms of this manuscript multiple times.
I have received funding and inspiration from a number of institutions
and workshops. The Newberry Library not only gave me a short-term
fellowship, but James Ackerman and Diane Dillon also invited me to
participate in a five-week National Endowment for the Humanities sum-
mer workshop, “Cartography and Art in the Americas,” exposing me
to the gem that is the Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of
Cartography. Participants in a Summer Institute on Contested Global
Landscapes at Cornell University also offered valuable feedback on por-
tions of the manuscript. Gregory Ferguson-Cradler, Bikrum Gill, and
Sara Pritchard gave particularly insightful comments.
Countless additional people have contributed to this book in various
ways. While I cannot name them all, a few deserve particular mention.
Raymond Craib, Susan Schulten, Matthew Edney, Herman Viola, Rich-
ard White, and Roger Echo-Hawk have all generously responded to my
unsolicited communications. John Bowes has lived with this manuscript
as long as I have, and after nearly fifteen years, he became a manuscript
reader. David Rumsey’s public map collection (davidrumsey.com) is
one of the most generous resources on the Internet, and my debt to him
is incalculable. Matthew Bokovoy at the University of Nebraska Press
has had unwavering faith in this project, even when its author was not
sure. Roxanne Willis smoothed out all the rough edges. Piers Turner has
been an invaluable cheerleader and sounding board, offering patient and
thoughtful advice during my many moments of existential angst.
Finally, I would like to thank my family. My parents, Elizabeth
and Richard Bernstein, have supported me in every endeavor I have
attempted, and writing history has been no different. Words cannot
express my love and affection. Therefore, I have had a special edition of
the book created for you with a lanyard inserted in the cover. Now we are
even. My other parents, Igor and Elizabeth Simakovsky, have done more
child-rearing of my offspring than they have with their own. This book
(to say nothing of the marriage) would have not been possible without
you. Thank you. And lastly, Inna. It is only because of your strength that
I have been able to indulge myself in this project. You have given Simon,
Isaac, Avi, and me a wonderful life. You are my best friend, my better
half, and this book would mean nothing without you.
How the West Was Drawn
Introduction

In 2012, Aaron Carapella finished a map of North America titled Map of

our Tribal Nations: Our Own Names and Original Locations. Since boy-
hood, Carapella had been dismayed by his inability to find a proper map
of Indian homelands. “You can get maps of what our reservations look
like now,” he later explained to a reporter, “and you can get maps that
have, like, the 50 main tribes. But I was interested in what our land really
looked like circa 1490, before Columbus got here.”1 Unable to locate the
map he wanted, the nineteen-year-old activist for Native rights made
his own. “It’s time to make a real map of Native America, as we see
it,” he decided.2 A self-taught mapmaker, Carapella spent fourteen years
traveling around the country, scouring libraries, visiting reservations,
and communicating with tribal elders—all to determine where the 584
groups he inscribed on his map were located before Columbus and what
they would have called themselves in their own language. On Carapella’s
map, “Comanche” and “Navajo,” for example, have been replaced by
“Numinu” and “Diné.”
By 2014, Carapella’s map depicted more than six hundred tribal
nations and sold nearly four thousand copies. Indian Country Today, the
Navajo Times, and National Public Radio all did stories on his carto-
graphic creation. A textbook company bought the rights to use two of his
maps, and a documentary film company began work on a movie about
Carapella’s projects, which had expanded to include Mexico, Alaska,
Canada, and South America.3
2 / introduction

Controversy accompanied the notoriety. Commenters on Native social

media networks began questioning the map’s validity. Some argued that
names were incorrect or misspelled. For example, a Southern Cheyenne
commented that Carapella used Tsitsistas instead of the more accurate
Tsétsėhést hese to denote the Cheyenne, while another commenter wrote
that Carapella had confused the Howunakut village site with the name
of a people. Deeper critiques also appeared. One reader highlighted the
problematic nature of condensing thousands of years before Columbus
into a single chronological snapshot, and another pointed out the anach-
ronistic use of “nations” as a central organizing principle.4
This criticism moved beyond the comments sections. A University of
Illinois scholar created a sheet of Carapella’s errors regarding the Pueblo
Nations. This scholar questioned Carapella’s assertion that he gave tribes
ownership of their own names. How does he have the “power to give any
nation ownership of its own name?” she asked. “Doesn’t that sound a
bit silly?”5 A Washington State graduate student’s Tumblr feed system-
atically rebuked Carapella’s project on a page titled “Aaron Carapella’s
‘Tribal Nations’ Maps Do Not Do Justice to Indigenous Nations and
Here’s Why.” The author found fault not only in Carapella’s execution but
in deeper issues as well. “How is a map constrained by colonial borders
a map of who we truly are as nations?” she asked. “This is not consistent
with ideas of nationhood grounded in specific Native cultures.” Draw-
ing maps that included “Western ideas of nationhood or territory,” the
post claimed, is “wrong and counterproductive to decolonization.”6 Or,
as another commenter argued, since mapmaking is “deeply connected
to a non-Indigenous set of values,” the sheer existence of Carapella’s map
reinforced colonial power.7
Some of the most heated comments arose from the tension between
indigenous concepts of territoriality and the American nation-state. “We
make our own maps that identify our traditional homeland and territory.
We don’t really need to fit into a national one,” one commenter wrote.8
When another poster suggested that ignoring the boundaries created
by four hundred years of colonial boundaries could reinforce tropes
of timeless Indianness, another responded by questioning the author’s
identity: “Fuck the colonialism! Being native is understanding what your
identity is. Are you native?”9 Intending to make a map to “instill pride
in Native people,” Carapella’s creation had instead thrust him into the
morass of Indian identity politics.
The controversy over Carapella’s map is—at its heart—a disagreement
over how Native people should narrate their past. The conflict centers
 introduction / 3

on how much to privilege culturally specific ways of understanding the

world in the Indians’ stories about themselves and their relationship to
the nation-state.10 Although this question permeates most investigations
into American Indian history—and indigenous history more broadly—
maps can distill the debate in ways that narrative histories cannot. Their
sheen of objectivity and the immediacy with which they can be con-
sumed give maps a unique semiotic power, pushing questions of history
and identity well beyond the academy. As the late geographer Bernard
Nietschmann famously declared: “Maps are power. Either you map or
you will be mapped.”11
The relationship between Indians and maps of the American state is
the central topic of this book. I argue that Indians were central to the
cartographic creation of the trans-Mississippi United States. On its
face, there is nothing novel about this interpretation. More than a half
century ago, Carl Wheat, the father of American cartographic studies,
wrote, “Great is the debt owed to Indians who, with sticks and stones and
in the sand, made clear the way ahead.”12 As the conflict over Carapel-
la’s map demonstrates, however, the academic and political landscapes
in which Wheat wrote those words were very different from the ones
I inhabit. Our understanding of both the mapping process and Native
history has changed enough that his positivist “way ahead” has become
unrecognizable to me: Ahead of what? For whom? Unpacking Indians’
role in mapping the western United States involves reassessing both the
cartographic process itself and the motivations of the participants.13
The Pawnees, Iowas, and Lakotas of the Great Plains are the cen-
tral Native characters in my story. They had multiple—and often
competing—agendas in the nineteenth century; none of which cen-
tered on creating cartographic representations of the United States. Yet
mapping is a “recursive process which shapes real-world circumstances
which in turn shapes its maps.”14 The actions they took left lasting car-
tographic legacies that shaped the futures of Natives and non-Natives
alike. From providing information to signing treaties, Indians’ centrality
to the mapping process took many forms. Highlighting this centrality is
one of my primary goals in this book. By situating the mapping process
in particular historical moments and within specific geopolitical land-
scapes, I explore various ways in which the Siouan and Caddoan Indians
living in the trans-Mississippi West shaped both their rapidly changing
world and its graphic depiction. Uncovering the central role Indians had
in the cartographic creation of the American state, I argue, allows more
people to take part in its collective history.15
4 / introduction

In the first section of this book, “Living in Indian Country,” I highlight

ethnohistorical factors in the land transfers and boundary-making pro-
cesses that were central to mapping the trans-Mississippi West. Chap-
ter 1, “Constructing Indian Country,” explores the way Caddoan and
Siouan peoples of the eastern Plains and Prairies spatially understood
the world around them. Focusing on two maps—one by a Pawnee head-
man and the other by an Iowa Indian—I dispel the notion that Indian
concepts, both in cartographic form and on the ground, were incompat-
ible with Euro-American constructs. In so doing, I put the responsibility
of colonialism back on the historical actors rather than blaming it on
epistemological difference.
Some of those actors are explored in more detail in the following
chapter. Chapter 2 is a reconsideration of an 1833 treaty made between
the United States and the Pawnees, in which the latter ceded millions
of acres of territory below the Platte River. This land became central—
both figuratively and literally—to the cartographic creation of the trans-
Mississippi West. The chapter reformulates this episode as part of an
appropriate geopolitical strategy by the Pawnees that included trading
certain rights for the promise of protection and sociopolitical power.
While there is no disputing the resultant dispossession of nineteenth-
century treaties on the Plains, I contend in this chapter that, at least for
the Pawnees, the treaty processes and the maps that were created from
them offered a viable geopolitical option in a drastically changing world.
In chapter 3, I argue that the United States’ failure to live up to the
promises of protection it made to the Pawnees in 1833 forced the Indi-
ans to initiate a new aggressive strategy that had dramatic geopolitical
effects. The Pawnees’ new tactics gave the architects of the 1851 Treaty of
Fort Laramie reason to exclude the Pawnees from what they called the
“largest Indian meeting ever held,” despite the obvious necessity of their
inclusion. The resultant 1851 treaty and accompanying map not only
decreased the Pawnees’ territorial claims compared to those of the Brulé
and Oglala Sioux, but it also initiated a binary conflict between a now-
unified Sioux Nation and the United States that would reverberate into
the twenty-first century. This chapter ties the seemingly localized actions
of a few thousand Pawnees to the creation of the trans-Mississippi West,
integrating ethnohistorical factors into a contested geopolitical land-
scape and reminding scholars that discrepancies in cartographic power
resulted from more than American colonialism.
My argument that Indians were critical to the cartographic creation
of the trans-Mississippi West reflects the use of a historical framework
 introduction / 5

similar to that of the commenter above who claimed that ignoring the
historical reality of the American nation-state creates unwanted tropes
of its own. However, I also appreciate the anger and alienation her critic
displayed toward the U.S. colonial project. Readers of this book hardly
need convincing of the failure of the United States to meet its 1787
promise—made as part of the Northwest Ordinance, whose primary
purpose was to establish the procedure for politically and geographically
incorporating territory into the new nation—that the “utmost good faith
shall always be observed towards the Indians.”16 Many Native people
understandably view maps of the country—even maps organized around
political entities—as continuing the violence and inequality embedded
in colonialism.
This belief is built on more than anger or contemporary Native pride;
it grew out of the colonial process. Throughout the nineteenth century,
Euro-Americans drew rhetorical distinctions between their cartographic
systems and those of the Indians on which they relied. Embodied in my
story by the explorer John Charles Frémont, Americans measured the
success of the scientific topographic surveys in the trans-Mississippi
West against the savagery of Indians rather than any universal truths.
American expansion into the trans-Mississippi West did not follow a
linear trajectory whereby a uniform U.S. state methodically imposed its
functions on a resistant Indian populace. Instead, it was a negotiated
process, and the agents were often more concerned with mapping the
rhetorical distinctions between “savage natives” and “Enlightened scien-
tists” than they were with mapping actual territory.17
The second section of this book, “The Rise and Fall of ‘Indian Coun-
try,’” uncovers these rhetorical strategies and explains how Native and
“Western” ways of understanding and depicting space have become—both
inside and outside the academy—mutually exclusive. Whereas the Indian
Country I explore in the first section was defined by the on-the-ground
actions of Native and Euro-American actors, the “Indian Country” that
is the topic of the second section was a cultural and political rhetorical
device used almost entirely by Euro-Americans. In chapter 4, I explore
how a political movement to create a separate Indian state intersected with
the cultural desires of an American populace eager to create an authentic
past and, in so doing, tied Native Americans to the landscape in unprec-
edented ways. By inscribing Indians in territory claimed by the United
States—but not yet threatened by Euro-American settlement—“Indian
Country” became part of the trope of the “vanishing Indian.” Americans
could safely lament Indians’ passing while also appropriating their past.
6 / introduction

By 1845, however, it was clear that Indians could not be so easily

wished away. In response, John C. Frémont—the most famous American
explorer of the nineteenth century—and his supporters turned to scien-
tific instrumentation and the specific forms of knowledge it produced
to prepare the American West for Euro-American expansion. Science
became part of a nationalist project that both unified the country and
sterilized expansion, turning what appeared violent and unseemly into a
triumph of Enlightenment thought. In chapter 5, I explain how Frémont
deployed the rhetorical devices of scientific Enlightenment and Indian
savagery in contradistinction to one another, both to diminish Native
participation in the cartographic construction of the trans-Mississippi
West and to distinguish his process of acquiring knowledge from that
of Indians. In so doing, Frémont turned what was a negotiated process
into a clash of cultures, a legacy that—as the debate over Carapella’s map
demonstrates—reverberates even today.
The third and final section of the book, “Reclaiming Indian Country,”
offers a way to think about the process of mapping the American West
that allows for a more inclusive cartographic history. After examining
mapping as an important rhetorical tool in the process of state build-
ing, this chapter delineates how the northern and central Great Plains,
as inscribed by the most important map of its time, were truly a fusion
of American Indian and Euro-American naming traditions. Examining
both naming practices and names themselves, this chapter demonstrates
that Gouverneur Kemble Warren’s 1857 Map of the Territory of the United
States from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean ordered by the Hon. Jeff’n
Davis neither ripped this indigenous knowledge from its epistemological
moorings nor covered over “authentic” Indian geographies with spuri-
ous American places. Instead, Gouverneur Warren’s map exemplified
the syncretic nature of how the West was drawn.
The story of Gouverneur Warren’s map epitomizes the problem of
how to narrate the territorial expansion of the United States. How do
we include meaningful stories of colonized or otherwise marginalized
peoples’ participation in the creation of the American state without min-
imizing the violence its creation perpetuated? Or, put another way, “How
can we combine ideas of empire and nation, tribe and people to capture
the fullness of the indigenous past in North America?”18 For an answer,
this project looks to the words of anthropologist David Scott. Instead of
an attitude of “anti-colonial longing,” Scott writes, scholars must “think
of different historical conjunctions as constituting different conceptual-
ideological problem spaces, and to think of the[m] less as generators of
 introduction / 7

new propositions than as generators of new questions.”19 The mapping

of America offers such a problem space. Rather than accepting the pro-
cess of top-down colonialism, we can unpack this seemingly monolithic
enterprise to reveal a complex web of negotiations and contestations,
broadening our understanding of mapping’s Native and Euro-American
participants.

Since the 1970s, historians of cartography have utilized the ideas of

Michel Foucault, Michel de Certeau, Edward Said, and Anthony Giddens
to resituate the map as a form of discourse that contains power, rhetoric,
and value, rather than as an objective representation of reality. Tying
map creation into other imperial processes—such as military expansion
and exacting taxation—geographer Brian Harley famously declared that
cartography was a “teleological discourse, reifying power, reinforcing
the status quo, and freezing social interactions within charted lines.”
And unlike music, art, or other expressions of resistance employed by
those without formal power, maps have been used almost exclusively as
tools of oppression. Thus, Harley argued, mappings’ “ideological arrows”
flew in only one direction.20
Although some scholars criticized Harley’s approach for designating
maps as texts (disregarding the process of map creation), scholars began
to follow Harley’s lead by exploring maps’ hegemonic functions—the
ways in which colonizing powers gain and maintain control—in specific
historical circumstances.21 In 1992, Gregory Nobles published an arti-
cle on mapping as spatial control in colonial America. Examining the
political order of the “Anglo-American Frontier,” Nobles proposed that
Euro-Americans established political and social boundaries before set-
tlement patterns. By creating what appeared to be a priori plans of what
the North American interior looked like, Anglo-American mapmakers
envisioned future dominance. “By drawing lines across the continent
and imposing themselves in print,” Nobles states, “they literally mapped
out a New World order.” Nobles’s article was accompanied by explora-
tions into maps’ hegemonic functions in a variety of colonial settings.22
These investigations not only unveiled the destructive power inherent
in the seemingly neutral activity of mapping and depicting geopolitical
borders, but they also defined mapmaking as essential to the process of
state building. In the most practical sense, maps were necessary tools
of the state. In his exploration of Thai nation building, Thongchai Win-
ichakul explains: “A map was now necessary for the new administrative
mechanisms and for the troops to back up their claims. . . . The discourse
8 / introduction

of mapping was the paradigm which both administrative and military

operations worked within and served.”23
While scholars were beginning to examine maps as tools for colonial
and imperial powers, there was also a resurgence in the study of maps
made by Native North Americans. Led by G. Malcolm Lewis and fol-
lowed by scholars like Richard Ruggles, Barbara Belyea, and Margaret
Pearce, this group used poststructuralist models to investigate indig-
enous maps on their own terms. Rather than treating Native maps as
immature versions of the mathematical representations of European
scientific cartography, these scholars have shaped both the popular and
scholarly understanding of Native maps as sophisticated cultural docu-
ments. According to these scholars, Natives have a different understand-
ing of the world than contemporary Euro-Americans.24 Belyea goes so
far as to say that not only are Indian and Euro-American constructions
of space and place different, but “we must acknowledge a gap between
these conventions is essentially unbridgeable.” While there has been
considerable—and sometimes heated—debate about how to characterize
Indian mapping, this divisive rhetoric has masked the common assump-
tion that Native constructions and representations of space are inher-
ently different from Euro-American constructs.
This argument certainly has some validity. Many of the famous
examples of Native cartography are best understood through religious
or cultural research that highlights the differences between Indian and
Euro-American worldviews. For example, the Pawnee Skidi Star Chart
is not a scientific representation of the night sky at a particular moment,
according to scholar Douglas Parks, but rather a conduit through which
the tribe interacted with “heavenly forces.” For Parks, the chart is “best
appreciated as a complex mnemonic device that is referenced as much to
Pawnee mythology as to their astronomy.”25 Such interpretations have
added much to our understanding of Indian cultures. Yet they have also
had the unintended effect of essentializing Indian spatial understanding
to either a knowable or unknowable “other” that lies outside of history.26
Combined with the growing understanding of maps only as documents
used to administer the nation-state, scholars have all but removed Indian
spatial and cartographic constructions from the history of how the West
was drawn.
“The story of the mapping of America,” scholar Joanne van der
Woude writes, “plots the history of colonization, westward expansion,
and hemispheric hegemony.”27 Similarly, in the prescriptively titled
resource Why You Can’t Teach United States History without American
 introduction / 9

Indians, Adam Jortner argues that “maps have played a particularly

insidious role in Native American history.” Including another scholar’s
version of the standard narrative of the relationship between Indians and
maps of North America, Jortner writes, “Postcontact Europeans ‘dispos-
sessed the Indians by engulfing them with blank space,’ suggesting an
empty continent that could therefore be (unproblematically) occupied
by Europeans.”28
It has become a scholarly truism that Indian understandings and
depictions of place were incompatible with maps of the expanding U.S.
state.29 Unlike Native geographies based on lived experiences, where
“mythical beings, ancestral spirits, daily life, and geopolitical concerns
interplayed,” Euro-American maps of the eighteenth and early nine-
teenth centuries were simply “statements of territorial appropriation.”30
These imperial maps “sought to legitimize territorial claims (and dele-
gitimize those of Indians) by superimposing their lines across the North
American landscape.”31 By the mid-nineteenth century, those territo-
rial claims came not from competing empires but from an increasingly
divided one, and this quickened the pace by which Americans “erased
Native Americans from both mental and actual maps.”32 Indians’ lived
experiences were thus drawn out of the growing American state. In this
interpretation, the creation and circulation of maps of the United States
meant the erasure of indigenous ways of understanding their place—
literally—in the geographic creation of the republic. As one historian
of the U.S. West has written, “Inescapably, the making of the National
Map brought about the unmaking of indigenous geographies.”33 The car-
tographic elimination of Native peoples’ geographies was concomitant
with their dispossession.
Like all peoples, Indians have had multiple ways of spatially under-
standing their world, some of which have been culturally specific.34
Unfortunately, these historical constructions have frequently been
reduced to one phenomenological category of “indigenous geographies,”
which were inescapably at odds with Euro-American constructions.35
Yet, evidence abounds of Native mapmaking outside of any indigenous
cultural construct. Throughout the 1840s, for example, the most widely
circulated map of the central and southern Great Plains was in Josiah
Gregg’s Commerce of the Prairies, an account of the trader’s time on the
Santa Fe Trail. Because his caravan traveled through a country that Gregg
described as “wholly untrod by civilized man, and of which we, at least,
knew nothing,” Gregg was “extremely anxious to acquire any informa-
tion” from those who did know something. This information came in the
10 / introduction

form of Comanche chief Tabba-quenna (Big Eagle). After unsuccessfully

trying to communicate in Spanish and then in signs, Gregg found a com-
patible language in cartography: “Finally we handed him a sheet of paper
and a pencil, signifying at the same time a desire that he would draw
us a map of the Prairies. This he very promptly executed; and although
the draft was somewhat rough, it bore, much to our astonishment, quite
a map-like appearance, with a far more accurate delineation of all the
principal rivers of the plains—the road from Missouri to Santa Fe, and
the different Mexican settlements, than is to be found in many of the
engraved maps of those regions.”36
In the first half of the nineteenth century, Indians were fundamental
to drawing the trans-Mississippi West. Although Native motivation was
different from that of the Euro-Americans, we should not assume that
Indians were duped into participating in a process they could not under-
stand. As with any historical actors, Indians had complicated political,
social, economic, and personal reasons for their actions. We cannot dis-
count Native participation in the cartographic construction of the region
because of the eventual displacement it brought about.
Juliana Barr astutely argues that historians “cannot seek to recognize
and read Native borders by simply redrawing a North American map
with a different set of lines; we must still seek the ideas, attitudes, and
practices that gave meaning to diverse territorial claims.”37 At the same
time, we should not assume that these ideas, attitudes, and practices
were inherently incompatible with the creation of the United States. If so,
mapping the United States would become a zero-sum process, in which
only the failure of the nation-state could change Indians’ relationship to
it. This model not only excludes Native people from one of the funda-
mental aspects of nation building, but it also removes culpability from
colonial actors.
Not all scholars agree that we can only understand Indian cartography
as a representation of indigenous culture. A number of works have astutely
examined the political context of Indian mapping. Yet, these pieces have
reified a dichotomy between Native and white concepts of space by explor-
ing how Indians—consciously or not—used their constructs to maintain
“Indianness” in the face of colonial hegemony. When Indian concepts
were used, they were too often removed from their epistemological moor-
ings and added to a European spatial construction, creating a space that
was either foreign to Indians or illegible to all parties.38 This book, on the
other hand, explores the mapping of America as processes of geopolitical
negotiation rather than simply as clashes of cultures.39
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 schools. … The only important amendment to this Act was passed
in 1875, and provided that the legislative grant, instead of
being divided between the Protestant and Catholic schools as
heretofore, should in future be distributed in proportion to
the number of children of school age in the Catholic and
Protestant districts. Already immigration had begun to upset
the balance of numbers and power, and as the years went on it
became evident that the Catholics were destined to be in a
permanent minority in Manitoba. This trend of immigration,
which in 1875 made legislation necessary, has continued ever
since; and to-day the Catholics of the province number only
20,000 out of a total population of 204,000. No further change
was made in the educational system of Manitoba until the
memorable year of 1890. In that year the provincial
legislature boldly broke all moorings with the past, and,
abolishing the separate denominational schools, introduced a
system of free compulsory and unsectarian schools, for the
support of which the whole community was to be taxed. … To
test the legality of the change, what is known as Barrett's
case was begun in Winnipeg. It was carried to the Supreme
Court of Canada, and the Canadian judges by a unanimous
decision declared that the Act of 1890 was ultra vires and
void.
{60}
The city of Winnipeg appealed to the Privy Council, and that
tribunal in July 1892 reversed the decision of the Canadian
Court and affirmed that the Act was valid and binding. … The
second subsection of the 22nd section of the Manitoba Act
already quoted says: 'An appeal shall lie to the
Governor-General in Council from any Act or decision of the
legislature of the province, or of any provincial authority,
affecting any right or privilege of the Protestant or Roman
Catholic minority of the Queen's subjects in relation to
education.' But if the legislation of 1890 was intra vires,
and expressly declared to be so on the ground that it had not
prejudicially affected the position which the minority held at
the time of the Union, how could there be an appeal from it? …
The Governor-General, however, consented to refer the question
as to his jurisdiction to the courts of justice. What is known
as Brophy's case was begun, and in due course was carried to
the Supreme Court of Canada. The decision of that tribunal,
though not unanimous, was in accord with public expectation.
The majority of the judges felt that the previous judgment of
the Privy Council had settled the matter beforehand. The Act
of 1890 had been declared intra vires on the ground that it
had not interfered with the rights which the minority
possessed before the Union, and therefore there could be no
appeal from it. …

"Still the undaunted Archbishop of St. Boniface went on, and

for a last time appealed to that Judicial Committee of the
Privy Council which two years and a half before had so spoiled
and disappointed the Catholic hopes. In January 1894 the final
decision in Brophy's case was read by the Lord Chancellor. For
a second time the Lords of the Council upset the ruling of the
Supreme Court of Canada, and treated their reasoning as
irrelevant. It will be remembered that both the appellant
prelates and the Canadian judges had assumed that the clause
in the Manitoba Act, which conferred the right of appeal to
the Governor-General, was limited to one contingency, and
could be invoked only if the minority were robbed at any time
of the poor and elementary rights which they had enjoyed
before the Act of Union. But was the clause necessarily so
limited? Could it not be used to justify an appeal from
legislation which affected rights acquired after the Union? …
In the words of the judgment: 'The question arose: Did the
sub-section extend to the rights and privileges acquired by
legislation subsequent to the Union? It extended in terms to
"any" right or privilege of the minority affected by any Act
passed by the legislature, and would therefore seem to embrace
all the rights and privileges existing at the time when such
Act was passed. Their lordships saw no justification for
putting a limitation on language thus unlimited. There was
nothing in the surrounding circumstances or in the apparent
intention of the legislature to warrant any such limitation.'
… In other words, the dispute was referred to a new tribunal,
and one which was free to consider and give effect to the true
equities of the case. The Governor-General and his responsible
advisers, after considering all the facts, found in favour of
the Catholic minority, and at once issued a remedial Order to
the Government of Manitoba, which went far beyond anything
suggested in the judgment in Brophy's case. The province was
called upon to repeal the legislation of 1890, so far as it
interfered with the right of the Catholic minority to build
and maintain their own schools, to share proportionately in
any public grant for the purposes of education, and with the
right of such Catholics as contributed to Catholic schools to
be held exempt from all payments towards the support of any
other schools. In a word, the Governor-General and Sir
Mackenzie Bowell's Administration, exercising, as it were,
appellate jurisdiction, decided that the minority were
entitled to all they claimed. The Government of Manitoba,
however, had hardened their hearts against the minority in the
province, and refused to obey the remedial Order. …

"The refusal of the provincial Government 'to accept the

responsibility of carrying into effect the terms of the
remedial Order' for the first time brought the Parliament of
Canada into the field, and empowered them to pass coercive
legislation. A remedial Bill was accordingly, after an
inexplicable delay, brought into the Federal Parliament to
enforce the remedial Order. … The Cabinet recognised that the
Federal Parliament had no power to spend the money of the
province, and so all they could do was to exempt the minority
from the obligation to contribute to the support of schools
other than their own. The Bill bristled with legal and
constitutional difficulties; it concerned the coercion of a
province; it contained no less than 116 clauses; it was
introduced on the 2nd of March 1896, when all Canada knew that
the life of the Federal Parliament must necessarily expire on
the 24th of April. Some fifteen clauses had been considered
 when the Government admitted, what all men saw, the
impossibility of the task, and abandoned the Bill. … While the
fate of the remedial Bill was still undecided, Sir Donald
Smith and two others were commissioned by the Federal
Government to go to Winnipeg and see if by direct negotiations
some sort of tolerable terms could be arranged. … Sir Donald
Smith proposed that the principle of the separate school
should be admitted wherever there were a reasonable number of
Catholic children—thus, wherever in towns and villages there
are twenty-five Catholic children of school age, and in
cities where there are fifty such children, they should have
'a school-house or school-room for their own use,' with a
Catholic teacher. … In the event the negotiations failed; the
baffled Commissioners returned to Ottawa, and on the 24th of
April 1896 Parliament was dissolved. The Government went to
the country upon the policy of the abandoned Bill. On the
other hand, many of the followers of Mr. Laurier in the
province of Quebec pledged themselves to see justice done to
the Catholics of Manitoba, and let it be understood that they
objected to the remedial Bill only because it was not likely
to prove effective in the face of the combined hostility of
the legislature and the municipalities of the province. …
Catholic Quebec gave Mr. Laurier his majority at Ottawa. …

{61}

"When the Liberal party for the first time for eighteen years
found itself in power at Ottawa, Mr. Laurier at once opened
negotiations with Manitoba. The result was a settlement which,
although it might work well in particular districts, could not be
accepted as satisfactory by the Catholic authorities. It arranged
that where in towns and cities the average attendance of
Catholic children was forty or upwards, and in villages and
rural districts the average attendance of such children was
twenty-five or upwards, one Catholic teacher should be
employed. There were various other provisions, but that was
the central concession. … Leo the Thirteenth, recognising the
 difficulties which beset Mr. Laurier's path, mindful, perhaps,
also that it is not always easy immediately to resume friendly
conference with those who have just done their best to defeat
you, has sent to Canada an Apostolic Commissioner."

J. G. Snead Cox,
Mr. Laurier and Manitoba
(Nineteenth Century, April, 1897).

CANADA: A. D. 1895.
Northern territories formed into provisional districts.

"The unorganized and unnamed portion of the Dominion this year

was set apart into provisional districts. The territory east of
Hudson's Bay, having the province of Quebec on the south and
the Atlantic on the east, was to be hereafter known as Ungava.
The territory embraced in the islands of the Arctic Sea was to
be known as Franklin, the Mackenzie River region as Mackenzie,
and the Pacific coast territory lying north of British
Columbia and west of Mackenzie as Yukon. The extent of Ungava
and Franklin was undefined. Mackenzie would cover 538,600
square miles, and Yukon 225,000 square miles, in addition to
143,500 square miles added to Athabasca and 470,000 to
Keewatin. The total area of the Dominion was estimated at
3,456,383 square miles."

The Annual Register, 1895,

page 391.

CANADA: A. D. 1895.
Negotiations with Newfoundland.

Negotiations for the entrance of Newfoundland into the

federation of the Dominion of Canada proved ineffectual and
were abandoned in May. The island province refused the terms
proposed.
CANADA: A. D. 1896 (June-July).
Liberal triumph in Parliamentary elections.
Formation of Ministry by Sir Wilfred Laurier.

General elections held in Canada on the 23d of June, 1896,

gave the Liberal Party 113 seats out of 213 in the Dominion
House of Commons; the Conservatives securing 88, and the
Patrons of Industry and other Independents 12. Much to the
general surprise, the scale was turned in favor of the
Liberals by the vote of the province of Quebec,
notwithstanding the Manitoba school question, on which
clerical influence in the Roman church was ranged against that
party. The effect of the election was to call the Liberal
leader, Sir Wilfred Laurier, of Quebec, to the head of the
government, the Conservative Ministry, under Sir Charles
Tupper, retiring on the 8th of July.

CANADA: A. D. 1896-1897.
Policy of the Liberal Government.
Revision of the tariff, with discriminating duties
in favor of Great Britain, and provisions for reciprocity.

"The position of the Canadian Liberals, when they came into

power after the General Election of 1896, was not unlike that
of the English Liberals after the General Election of 1892.
Both Liberal parties had lists of reforms to which they were
committed. The English measures were in the Newcastle
Programme. Those of the Canadian Liberals were embodied in the
Ottawa Programme, which was formulated at a convention held at
the Dominion Capital in 1893. … A large part of the Ottawa
Programme was set out in the speech which the Governor-General
read in the Senate when the session of 1897 commenced. There was
then promised a measure for the revision of the tariff; a bill
providing for the extension of the Intercolonial railway from
Levis to Montreal; a bill repealing the Dominion Franchise Act
and abolishing the costly system of registration which goes
with it; and a measure providing for the plebiscite on the
Prohibition question. Neither of these last two measures was
carried through Parliament. Both had to be postponed to
another session; and the session of 1897 was devoted, so far
as legislation went, chiefly to the tariff, and to bills, none
of which were promised in the Speech from the Throne, in
retaliation for the United States Contract Labor Laws, and the
new United States tariff. …

"The new tariff was a departure from the tariffs of the

Conservative regime in only one important direction.
Protective duties heretofore had been levied on imports from
England, in the same way as on imports from the United States
or any other country. The 'National Policy' had allowed of no
preferences for England; and during the long period of
Conservative rule, when the Conservatives were supported by
the Canadian manufacturers in much the same way as the
Republican party in the United States is supported by the
manufacturing interests, the Canadian manufacturers had been
as insistent for adequate protection against English-made
goods, as against manufactured articles from the United States
or Germany. The Conservative party had continuously claimed a
monopoly of loyalty to England; but in its tariffs had never
dared to make any concession in favour of English goods. In
the new tariff, preferences for England were established; and
with these openings in favour of imports from Great Britain,
there came a specific warning from the Minister of Finance
that Canadian manufacturers must not regard themselves as
possessing a vested interest in the continuance of the
protective system. …

"When the Minister of Finance laid the tariff before the House
of Commons, he declared that the 'National Policy,' as it had
been tried for eighteen years, was a failure; and … claimed
that lowering the tariff wall against England was a step in
the direction of a tariff 'based not upon the protective
system but upon the requirements of the public service.'
During the first fifteen months of the new tariff, the
 concession to England consists of a reduction by one-eighth of
the duties chargeable under the general list. At the end of
that time, that is on the last of July, 1898, the reduction
will be one-fourth. The reductions do not apply to wines, malt
liquors, spirits and tobacco, the taxes on which are
essentially for revenue. While England was admitted at once to
the advantages of the reduced tariff, this tariff is not to be
applicable to England alone. In July, it was extended to the
products of New South Wales, the free-trade colony of the
British Australasian group; and any country can come within
its provisions whose government can satisfy the Comptroller of
Customs at Ottawa, that it is offering favourable treatment to
Canadian exports, and is affording them as easy an entrance
through its customs houses as the Canadians give by means of
the reciprocal tariff. It is also possible, under a later
amendment to the Tariff Act, for the Governor in Council to
extend the benefits of the reciprocal tariff to any country
entitled thereto by virtue of a treaty with Great Britain.
{62}
Numerous alterations were made in the general list of import
duties. Some of these involved higher rates; others lowered
the duties. But if the changes in the fiscal system had been
confined to these variations, the new tariff would not have
been noteworthy, and it would have fulfilled few of the
pledges made by the Liberals when they were in Opposition. It
owes its chief importance to the establishment of an inner
tariff in the interests of countries which deal favourably
with Canada."

E. Porritt,
The New Administration in Canada
(Yale Review, August, 1897).

CANADA: A. D. 1897 (June-July).

Conference of colonial premiers with
the British Colonial Secretary.
 See (in this volume)
ENGLAND: A. D. 1897 (JUNE-JULY).

CANADA: A. D. 1897 (October).

Self-government for the Northwestern Territories.

By an Act passed in October, a system of self-government,

going far towards the full powers of a provincial government,
but having some limitations, was provided for the Northwest
Territories.

CANADA: A. D. 1898 (January).

Encyclical Letter of the Pope on the Manitoba School Question.

On the report made by his delegate, Monsignor Merry del Val,

Pope Leo XIII. addressed an encyclical letter to the Roman
Church in Canada, concerning the duty of Catholics in the
matter of the Manitoba schools (see above: A. D. 1890-1896),
which was made public at Quebec on the 9th of January, 1898.
The letter has great general importance, as defining with
precision the attitude of the Church towards all secular
school systems. With a few unessential passages it is given in
what follows:

"It was with extreme solicitude," wrote the Pope, "that we

turned our mind to the unhappy events which in these later
years have marked the history of Catholic education in
Manitoba. … And since many expected that we should make a
pronouncement on the question, and asked that we should trace
a line of conduct and a way to be followed, we did not wish to
decide anything on this subject before our Apostolic delegate
had been on the spot, charged to proceed to a serious
examination of the situation, and to give an account to us of
the state of affairs. He has faithfully and diligently
fulfilled the command which we had given him. The question
agitated is one of great and exceptional importance. We speak
of the decision taken seven years ago by the parliament of
Manitoba on the subject of education. The act of Confederation
had secured to Catholic children the right of education in public
schools in keeping with their conscientious convictions. The
parliament of Manitoba abolished this right by contrary law.
By this latter law a grave injury was inflicted, for it was
not lawful for our children to seek the benefits of education
in schools in which the Catholic religion is ignored or
actively combated, in schools where its doctrine is despised
and its fundamental principles repudiated. If the Church has
anywhere permitted this, it was only with great reluctance and
in self-defense, and after having taken many precautions,
which, however, have too often been found unequal to parrying
the danger. In like manner one must at all cost avoid, as most
pernicious, those schools wherein every form of belief is
indifferently admitted and placed on an equal footing—as if in
what regards God and Divine things, it was of no importance
whether one believed rightly or wrongly, whether one followed
truth or falsehood. You well know, venerable brothers, that
all schools of this kind have been condemned by the Church,
because there can be nothing more pernicious nor more fitted
to injure the integrity of faith and to turn away the tender
minds of youth from the truth. … For the Catholic there is but
one true religion, the Catholic religion; hence in all that
concerns doctrine, or morality, or religion, he cannot accept
or recognize anything which is not drawn from the very sources
of Catholic teaching. Justice and reason demand, then, that
our children have in their schools not only scientific
instruction but also moral teachings in harmony, as we have
already said, with the principles of their religion, teachings
without which all education will be not only fruitless but
absolutely pernicious. Hence the necessity of having Catholic
teachers, reading books, and textbooks approved of by the
bishops, and liberty to organize the schools, that the
teaching therein shall be in full accord with Catholic faith
as well as with all the duties that flow therefrom. For the
rest, to decide in what institutions their children shall be
instructed, who shall be their teachers of morality, is a
right inherent to parental authority. When, then, Catholics
demand, and it is their duty to demand, and to strive to
obtain, that the teaching of the masters shall be in
conformity with the religion of their children, they are only
making use of their right; and there can be nothing more
unjust than to force on them the alternative of allowing their
children to grow up in ignorance, or to expose them to
manifest danger in what concerns the supreme interests of
their souls. It is not right to call in doubt or to abandon in
any way these principles of judging and acting which are
founded on truth and justice, and which are the safe-guards
both of public and private interests. Therefore, when the new
law in Manitoba struck a blow at Catholic education, it was
your duty, venerable brothers, to freely protest against the
injury and disaster inflicted; and the way in which you all
fulfilled that duty is a proof of your common vigilance, and
of a spirit truly worthy of bishops; and, although each one of
you will find on this point a sufficient approbation in the
testimony of his own conscience, learn, nevertheless, that you
have also our conscience and our approbation, for the things
which you sought and still seek to protect and defend are most
sacred. The difficulties created by the law of which we speak by
their very nature showed that an alleviation was to be sought
for in a united effort. For so worthy was the Catholic cause
that all good and upright citizens, without distinction of
party, should have banded themselves together in a close union
to uphold it. Unfortunately for the success of this cause, the
contrary took place. What is more deplorable still, is that
Catholic Canadians themselves failed to unite as they should
in defending those interests which are of such importance to
all—the importance and gravity of which should have stilled
the voice of party politics, which are of much less
importance. We are not unaware that something has been done to
amend that law. The men who are at the head of the federal
government and of the Province of Manitoba have already taken
certain measures with a view to decreasing the difficulties of
which the Catholics of Manitoba complain, and against which
 they rightly continue to protest.
{63}
We have no reason to doubt that these measures were taken from
love of justice and from a laudable motive. We cannot, however,
dissimulate the truth; the law which they have passed to
repair the injury is defective, unsuitable, insufficient. The
Catholics ask—and no one can deny that they justly ask—for
much more. Moreover, in the remedial measures that have been
proposed there is this defect, that in changes of local
circumstances they may easily become valueless. In a word, the
rights of Catholics and the education of their children have
not been sufficiently provided for in Manitoba. Everything in
this question demands, and is conformable to justice, that
they should be thoroughly provided for, that is, by placing in
security and surrounding with due safe-guards those
unchangeable and sacred principles of which we have spoken
above. This should be the aim, this the end to be zealously
and prudently sought for. Nothing can be more injurious to the
attainment of this end than discord; unity of spirit and
harmony of action are most necessary. Nevertheless since, as
frequently happens in things of this nature, there is not only
one fixed and determined but various ways of arriving at the
end which is proposed and which should be obtained, it follows
that there may be various opinions equally good and
advantageous. Wherefore let each and all be mindful of the
rules of moderation, and gentleness, and mutual charity; let
no one fail in the respect that is due to another; but let all
resolve in fraternal unanimity, and not without your advice,
to do that which the circumstances require and which appears
best to be done. As regards especially the Catholics of
Manitoba, we have every confidence that with God's help they
will succeed in obtaining full satisfaction. This hope is
founded, in the first place, in the righteousness of the
cause, next in the sense of justice and prudence of the men at
the head of the government, and finally in the good-will of all
upright men in Canada. In the meantime, until they are able to
obtain their full rights, let them not refuse partial
 satisfaction. If, therefore, anything is granted by law to
custom, or the good-will of men, which will render the evil
more tolerable and the dangers more remote, it is expedient
and useful to make use of such concessions, and to derive
therefrom as much benefit and advantage as possible. Where,
however, no remedy can be found for the evil, we must exhort
and beseech that it be provided against by the liberality and
munificence of their contributions, for no one can do anything
more salutary for himself or more conducive to the prosperity
of his country, than to contribute, according to his means, to
the maintenance of these schools. There is another point which
appeals to your common solicitude, namely, that by your
authority, and with the assistance of those who direct
educational institutions, an accurate and suitable curriculum
of studies be established, and that it be especially provided
that no one shall be permitted to teach who is not amply
endowed with all the necessary qualities, natural and
acquired, for it is only right that Catholic schools should be
able to compete in bearing, culture, and scholarship with the
best in the country. As concerns intellectual culture and the
progress of civilization, one can only recognize as
praiseworthy and noble the desire of the provinces of Canada
to develop public instruction, and to raise its standard more
and more, in order that it may daily become higher and more
perfect. Now there is no kind of knowledge, no perfection of
learning, which cannot be fully harmonized with Catholic
doctrine."

CANADA: A. D. 1898 (September).

Popular vote on the question of Prohibition.

Pursuant to a law passed by the Dominion Parliament the

previous June, a vote of the people in all the Provinces of
the Dominion was taken, on the 29th of September, 1898, upon
the following question: "Are you in favor of the passing of an
act prohibiting the importation, manufacture or sale of
spirits, wine, ale, beer, cider, and all other alcoholic
 liquors for use as beverages?" The submitting of this question
to a direct vote of the people was a proceeding not quite
analogous to the Swiss Referendum, since it decided the fate
of no pending law; nor did it imitate the popular Initiative
of Swiss legislation, since the result carried no mandate to
the government. It was more in the nature of a French
Plébiscite, and many called it by that name; but no Plebiscite
in France ever drew so real an expression of popular opinion
on a question so fully discussed. The result of the voting was
a majority for prohibition in every Province except Quebec,
Ontario pronouncing for it by more than 39,000, Nova Scotia by
more than 29,000, New Brunswick by more than 17,000, Manitoba
by more than 9,000, Prince Edward's Island by more than 8,000,
and the Northwest Territories by more than 3,000, while
British Columbia gave a small majority of less than 600 on the
same side. Quebec, on the other hand, shouted a loud "No" to
the question, by 93,000 majority. The net majority in favor of
Prohibition was 107,000. The total of votes polled on the
question was 540,000. This was less than 44 per cent of the
total registration of voters; hence the vote for Prohibition
represented only about 23 per cent of the electorate, which
the government considered to offer too small a support for the
measure asked for.

CANADA: A. D. 1898-1899.
The Joint High Commission for settlement of all unsettled
questions between Canada and the United States.

As the outcome of negotiations opened at Washington in the

previous autumn by the Canadian Premier, relative to the
seal-killing controversy, an agreement between Great Britain,
Canada and the United States was concluded on the 30th of May,
1898, for the creation of a Joint High Commission to negotiate
a treaty, if possible, by which all existing subjects of
controversy between the United States and Canada should be
settled with finality. Appointments to the Commission by the
three governments were made soon afterwards, Great Britain
 being represented by the Lord High Chancellor, Baron
Herschell; Canada by Sir Wilfred Laurier, Premier, Sir Richard
Cartwright, Minister of Trade and Commerce, and Sir Louis
Henry Davies, Minister of Marine and Fisheries; the United
States by Honorable John W. Foster, ex-Secretary of State,
Senator Charles W. Fairbanks, Senator George Gray,
Representative Nelson Dingley, and the Honorable John A.
Kasson, Reciprocity Commissioner. Senator Gray having been
subsequently appointed on the Commission to negotiate peace
with Spain, his place on the Anglo-American Commission was
taken by Senator Faulkner.
{64}
The Joint Commission sat first in Quebec and later in
Washington. Among the questions referred to it were those
relating to the establishment of the boundary between Alaska
and British Columbia; the issues over Bering Sea and the catch
of fur seals; the unmarked boundary between Canada and the
United States near Passamaqnoddy Bay in Maine and at points
between Wisconsin and Minnesota and Canada; the northeast
fisheries question, involving the rights of fishing in the
North Atlantic off Newfoundland and other points; the
regulation of the fishing rights on the Great Lakes;
alien-labor immigration across the Canadian-American border;
commercial reciprocity between the two countries; the
regulation of the bonding system by which goods are carried in
bond across the frontier and also the regulation of traffic by
international railways and canals of the two countries;
reciprocal mining privileges in the Klondyke, British North
America and other points; wrecking and salvage on the ocean
and Great Lakes coasting waters; the modification of the
treaty arrangement under which only one war vessel can be
maintained on the Great Lakes, with a view to allowing
warships to be built on the lakes and then floated out to the
ocean. The sessions of the Joint Commission were continued at
intervals until February, 1899, when it adjourned to meet at
Quebec in the following August, unless further adjournment
should be agreed upon by the several chairmen. Such further
 adjournment was made, and the labors of the Joint Commission
were indefinitely suspended, for reasons which the President
of the United States explained in his Message to Congress,
December, 1899, as follows: "Much progress had been made by
the Commission toward the adjustment of many of these
questions, when it became apparent that an irreconcilable
difference of views was entertained respecting the
delimitation of the Alaskan boundary. In the failure of an
agreement as to the meaning of articles 3 and 4 of the treaty
of 1825 between Russia and Great Britain, which defined the
boundary between Alaska and Canada, the American Commissioners
proposed that the subject of the boundary be laid aside and
that the remaining questions of difference be proceeded with,
some of which were so far advanced as to assure the
probability of a settlement. This being declined by the
British Commissioners, an adjournment was taken until the
boundary should be adjusted by the two Governments. The
subject has been receiving the careful attention which its
importance demands, with the result that a modus vivendi for
provisional demarcations in the region about the head of Lynn
Canal has been agreed upon [see (in this volume) ALASKA
BOUNDARY QUESTION] and it is hoped that the negotiations now
in progress between the two Governments will end in an
agreement for the establishment and delimitation of a
permanent boundary."

CANADA: A. D. 1899 (October).

Modus Vivendi, fixing provisional boundary line of Alaska.

See (in this volume)

ALASKA BOUNDARY QUESTION.

CANADA: A. D. 1899-1900.
Troops to reinforce the British army in South Africa.

A proposal from the Canadian government to assist that of the

Empire in its South African War was gratefully accepted in the
 early stages of the war, and a regiment of infantry called the
Royal Canadian, numbering a little more than 1,000 men, sailed
from Quebec, October 30. In the following January a second
contingent of more than 1,000 men was sent to the field. This
latter comprised squadrons of mounted rilles and rough-riders,
and three batteries of field artillery. In the same month the
Canadian government accepted an offer from Lord Strathcona to
raise, equip and transport at his own expense a body of 500
mounted men from the Northwest.

CANADA: A. D. 1900 (November).

General election.

The general election of members of the Dominion House of

Commons was held November 7, resulting as follows:

Provinces. Liberal. Conservative.

Independent. Total.

Nova Scotia. 15 5
0 20
New-Brunswick. 9 5
0 14
Prince Edward Island. 3 2
0 5
Quebec. 57 8
0 65
Ontario. 33 54
5 92
Manitoba. 2 3
2 7
Northwest Territories. 2 0
2 4
British Columbia. 3 2
1 6

Totals. 124 79
10 213

As in the election of 1896, the Liberal Ministry of Sir

Wilfred Laurier found its strong support in the province of
Quebec. Its party suffered unexpected losses in Ontario. The
slight meaning of the election was summed up by Professor
Goldwin Smith as follows: "The net result of the elections
seems to be a Government resting on French Quebec and an
Opposition resting on British Ontario. The minor provinces
have been carried, as usual, by local interests rather than on
general questions. Apart from the distinction of race between
the two great provinces and the antagonism, before dormant but
somewhat awakened by the war, there was no question of importance
at issue between the parties. Both concurred in sending
contingents to South Africa. The Liberals, though they went in
at first on the platform of free trade—at least, of a tariff
for revenue only—have practically embraced protection under
the name of stability of the tariff, and are believed to have
received from the protected manufacturers contributions to
their large election fund. The other special principles, such
as the reduction of expenditure and discontinuance of the
bonus to railways, proclaimed by Liberals before the last
election, have been dropped. So has reform of the Senate. It
is not likely that the Liberal victory will be followed by any
change either in legislation or government, or by any special
reform. Mr. Bourassa and Monet, of the French-Canadian members
who protested against the contingent, have been re-elected.
Great as may be the extent and warmth of British feeling, the
statement that Canadians were unanimously in favour of
participation in the war must not be taken without
qualification. For myself, I felt that so little principle was
at stake that I voted for two Conservatives on their personal
merits."
{65}

CANAL, The new Bruges.

See (in this volume)

BRUGES: A. D. 1900.

CANAL, The Chicago Drainage.

See (in this volume)

CHICAGO: A. D. 1900.

CANAL, City of Mexico Drainage.

See (in this volume)

MEXICO: A. D. 1898.

CANAL, The Elbe and Trave.

See (in this volume)

GERMANY: A. D. 1900 (JUNE).

CANAL, Interoceanic, The Project of the: A. D. 1581-1892.

The early inception of the project.
Movements towards its realization.

"The thought of uniting the two great oceans by means of a

canal across the American isthmus sprang up, as is known, from
the moment the conviction was reached that the passage which,
from the days of Columbus, was thought to exist towards the
Southern Sea, was not a reality. … Nevertheless the first
survey of the land was not carried out until the year 1581,
when, in obedience to superior instructions, Captain Antonio
Pereira, Governor of Costa Rica, organized an expedition and
explored the route by way of the San Juan river, the lake, and
the rivers emptying into Gulf Nicoya, Costa Rica. Thirty-nine
years later Diego de Mercado submitted to King Philip III his
famous report of January 23, 1620, suggesting the route by the
river and lake, and thence through Costa Rican territory along
the Quebrada or Barranca Honda to Salinas Bay, then called
Puerto del Papagayo. Either because the magnitude of the
undertaking was at that time superior to the necessities of
trade, or, as was said, because Spain considered the canal
antagonistic to her interests, the era of independence arrived
without the execution of the project ever having been entered
upon. After independence the Congress of Central America, in
which Costa Rica and Nicaragua were represented as States of
the Federation which succeeded the Colonial Government,
enacted on June 16, 1825, a decree providing for the
construction of the canal, and in that same year Don Antonio
José Cañas, Diplomatic Representative of Central America in
Washington, addressed the Secretary of State, Mr. Henry Clay,
informing him of this resolution and stating that: 'A company
formed of American citizens of respectability was ready to
undertake the work as soon as a treaty with the United States
insuring the coöperation of the latter was signed; that he was
ready to enter into negotiations for the treaty, and that
nothing would be more pleasant for Central America than to see
the generous people of the United States joining her in the
opening of the canal, sharing the glory of the enterprise, and
enjoying the great advantages to be derived from it.' The
Government of Central America could not carry the undertaking
into effect, notwithstanding that among the means employed to
reach the desired result there figures the arrangement
concluded with the King of Holland in October, 1830. But,
though the hopes centered in the undertaking were frustrated,
to the honor of Central America the declarations of that
Congress, which constitute, like the concession for the canal
itself, one of the loftiest public documents ever issued by
any nation of the earth, have become a matter of record. The
Central American Federation dissolved, this important matter
attached to Nicaragua and Costa Rica directly, and the
boundary line between the two republics having been determined