Cartographic Poetry: Examining Historic Blackfoot and Gros Ventre Maps

“Poetry is language condensed; Blackfoot cartography is landscape distilled.”

Cartographic Poetry is the first book-length, multidisciplinary study of five maps drawn in 1801 and 1802 by several Blackfoot and Gros Ventre people for the Hudson’s Bay Company. Representing some of the oldest documents created by Indigenous people on the North American prairies and foothills, these maps preserve invaluable evidence about places on the landscape, and about historic Blackfoot views of their terri...