Visualizing Negotiation, Diplomacy, and Culture on the Northern Plains, 1801-1853
View MapMapping the Upper Missouri is a geospatial history of the fur trade, intercultural exchange, and diplomacy in the upper Missouri River region from 1801 to 1853. This project emphasizes sources of visual culture— maps, art, and print— to illustrate differing perceptions and historical experiences in the Upper Missouri at its peak of the fur trade. Indigenous communities not only participated, but served as key leaders and benefactors to sustain the trade. This project further charts how the growth of U.S. fur companies in the first half of the nineteenth century transformed the trade from sites of exchange into sites of surveillance. To build out this administrative network, the U.S. government tapped into the system of trust traders had built with their Indigenous partners and recruited traders as Indian agents. As federal Indian policies engulfed the Upper Missouri in a process of land dispossession, Indigenous communities responded strategically to ensure their survival and cultural persistence.