Themes & Sources (for teacher use):
- Close exploration of Maine maps and how they show change over time.
- Source 1: Plymouth Patent Map
- Source 2: Province of Maine Map
- Source 3: Map of Grants & Sales of Lands in the State of Maine
- How did early mapmakers travel over and learn about the land?
- Source 4: Surveyor’s Chain
- Source 5: Surveyor’s Compass
- Source 6: Canoe
Possible connections between the sources (for teacher use):
- Source 1, 2, and 3: Students will notice differences between the style of the maps and the kind of information included. Point out the changing borders over time.
- Source 4, 5, and 6: Surveyors at the time would need equipment for their journey through the Maine woods and waters. These tools would keep them from getting lost and enable them to measure and record information about the land.
- Source 3 and 4: Students may notice a common name between these sources. The mapmaker, Moses Greenleaf, used that exact chain when he was gathering information about Maine for his maps.
Vocab
Legend or Key— explains what the symbols on the map mean.
Compass Rose—a symbol that shows the directions (north, south, east and west).
Landmark—something that is easy to find, like a mountain or river.
Boundary—a line between one place and another, such as a border line between states.
Surveyor—someone whose job is to go out and look at the land to figure out how to map it.
Proprietor—someone who owns property. In early Maine history, large proprietors made money buying and selling huge amounts of land—usually far away from where they actually lived.
Deed—a legal document that declares ownership of property.
Introduction
Why do old maps matter?
Maps aren’t just for traveling! They also share important information about a place. Historians use maps a lot to learn what a place used to be like.
Think about where you are right now. If you drew a map of this place today, it would have the building you’re in, the road you used to get here, and all kinds of things. But what if you traveled back in time to 100 years ago? How about 500 years ago? Some things might be the same—the mountains and rivers probably haven’t changed too much. Other things, like roads and buildings, may not have existed. Looking at a map from 100 years ago shows you how things have changed over time.
Maps can also tell you who owns what! If you don’t know where the boundary line is between your property and your neighbor’s, you might accidentally cut down a tree on their land. They might build a fence on your land. It’s even more important when it comes to governments. You need to know exactly what the line is between one state and another state, or one country and another country. These lines have changed over time. Sometimes a single town is divided into two states or even two countries!
How Maps shaped Maine
The America Revolution ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1783. When the war ended, they did not agree on a boundary between the United States and British North America (Canada). No one knew exactly where the line was between the District of Maine from Canada. When Maine became a state in 1820, the northern border was still undecided! If you went far enough north, you couldn’t be sure if you were in America or Canada.
Mapping was a way to figure this out. Surveyors had the job of looking at the land to figure out how to map it. Think about what it would be like to make a new map! Today, we can just pull out our phone or computer to find a map. But what if there is no map? What if there is no GPS?
Surveyors used tools like chains and compasses to make maps. A compass tells you what direction you’re going. A chain helps you keep track of the distance between one thing and another—like a ruler, but longer. Some early maps had errors because they were not made with the technology that we have today.
Conflict Over Maine Maps and Land
Before Maine became a state, the English crown granted landowners (called proprietors) millions of acres of Wabanaki land. These grants were called Royal patents. All the decisions about the land were made in England without Wabanaki permission. The land boundaries often overlapped and were confusion because the land was not officially surveyed. To make it even more confusing, once a proprietor died their land was divided between their children and passed down to later generations. Years and years later, those owners tried to make money by buying and selling land. You didn’t always know who really owned what!
Wabanaki land deeds complicated matters. Some Wabanaki individuals and groups “sold” land to English colonists through the 1700s. The two cultures had very different legal understandings of owning land. The English believed their purchase meant that they owned the land outright. In the early years, the Wabanaki understood a land sale to be giving permission to individuals to live on their land, while they kept the right to do the same. As Wabanaki people became more familiar with English property law, they came up with ways to protect their ownership of their homeland.
Settlers in the District of Maine also had problems with proprietors (large landowners, usually living away). Sometimes even after famers bought deeds to their land from a proprietor, another landowner might come to them demanding payment. Proprietors sent surveyors in to back up their land claims and used law enforcement to force settlers off the land. Some settlers fought back. Many families had spent decades clearing land to plant, building homes, and making their property more valuable. They did not want proprietors to take it back.
*After the topic has been introduced to students, hand out the primary sources and complete the worksheet activity
Class Reflection Questions:
- If you had to make the first ever map of Maine, how would you start?
- What problems do you think you would have?
- What tools could you use today that people didn’t have when the first Maine maps were made?
- Why are maps important to people?
- Why do you think people might fight over where the boundaries are drawn on a map?
- How can map-making be a tool of power? Who gets to decide how maps are drawn, and who doesn’t?
Optional Extra Materials:
A Note on History and Maps from an Indigenous Perspective
“[Maps] must be used critically. Maps potentially function as colonial artifacts and represent a very particular way of seeing the world – a way primarily concerned with ownership, exclusivity, and power relations.”
Excerpt from a Historical Primer by Shauna Johnson, University of British Columbia. Borrowed with permission from Native Land Digital: https://native-land.ca
In Canada and the United States, there is a long, dire history of colonization that has impacted indigenous peoples in many ways. While history books highlight famous white explorers and celebrated major events such as the discovery of ‘New Lands’, keep in mind that narratives told in the text books tell one side of the story; the story that the Europeans, as the all ‘superior humans’ chose to put in the history books (King, 2012).
When we talk about history, we talk about stories of the past. These stories have been organized into agreed upon events and interpretations that tell how “we” got from here to there. The problem with this is that those who held the most power chose the stories that were to become a part of history. History is a tool to tell stories about how they became powerful and how the powerful use that power to remain in power. So when it comes to the oral histories of indigenous peoples, many of the narratives were discounted, ignored, and erased from history by altering or not acknowledging the accounts of indigenous peoples (Smith, 2012) (King, 2012).”
“The concept of mapping has had a tremendous impact upon indigenous peoples for centuries. Since it was first developed, the indigenous ways of orienting themselves on their lands were redefined. As soon as lines were drawn on maps by European hands, indigenous place names, which are intricately connected with indigenous history, stories, and teachings, were replaced with English names, erasing indigenous presence from the lands. Traditional homelands were divided and classified into different geographic features, properties and imperial nations states, dividing and separating indigenous families. Languages and cultural teachings were lost as children were forced to attend residential schools and learn western ways of knowing.”
Read the full text here: https://native-land.ca/teachers-guide/
