The 1837 Ioway Indian Map Project: Using Geographic Information Systems to Integrate History, Archaeology and Landscape

Master's Thesis. In 1837 the Ioway Indians drew a map to bring to treaty talks with the United
States government. The 1837 Ioway Map project uses Geographic Information Systems
(GIS) to help extract cultural, archaeological, and historical information from this rare
document. Project goals include: documenting Ioway cartographic conventions;
georeferencing the Ioway map to a modern base map; extracting spatial, historical,
ecological and archaeological information from the georeferenced map; and designing a
variety of digital (CD, web site) and non-digital (museum exhibit) presentation formats
to broadly disseminate the project results.
Centered on what is now the state of Iowa, the 1837 map shows 51 rivers, nine
lakes, 23 villages, and over two dozen important Ioway Indian trails. Map features are
unlabeled, but historic records indicate that it was designed around two major rivers, the
Mississippi and the Missouri. GIS tools were helpful in evaluating the probable
identifications of a number of the other hydrographic features. The Ioway encoded
information about village size and population in their symbology, information that was
systematically documented using pan, zoom, measurement, and geostatistical tools,
with the results stored in attribute tables.