Nathan Braccio

"Mapping New England” investigates the development of English and Algonquian spatial knowledge and cartography in the colonial period. In order to emphasize the often unrecognized importance of Indigenous spatial knowledge, it argues that colonists found themselves thrust into an unfamiliar Algonquian-shaped landscape and had to appropriate superior Indigenous knowledge and maps to understand the region. In turn, this gave Algonquians power with which to negotiate their fraught relationship with the colonists. Eventually, the English employed new mapping to eschew Algonquian influence over them, although to limited effect.