Mapping And Imagination In The Great Basin: A Cartographic History

3. Maps and Early Spanish Exploration: 1700–1795

mapping, like exploration, does not proceed evenly over large areas. Although portions of what we would later call the Southwest, especially New Mexico, were rapidly explored, mapped, and even settled in the 1600s, the Great Basin was not. That discrepancy is attributable, for the most part, to two factors: the
io GrandeValley, which served as a corridor for Spanish infiltration, and the distribution of Indian peoples, who attracted the Spaniards like a magnet. In the Great Basin, native population density was light and total numbers small, especially compared with two rather densely populated (and hence attractive) areas—1) the irrigated pueblos along the upper
io Grande near Santa Fe, and 2) fish-rich and oak/acorn-endowed coastal California. As noted earlier, the native peoples in the Great Basin were either nomadic or lived in very small, seasonally occupied villages. As a consequence, much of their homeland remained out of the Spaniards’ reach. The stupendous physical geography bordering much of the Great Basin, with its deep canyons, tall mountains, and searing deserts, also helped keep this region a secret. Encountered only by a grueling overland trek through desert from the south or by crossing formidable mountains on its eastern or western margins,the Great Basin remained no-man’s-land,at least on paper. However, things were about to change. By the early 1700s, even before the Spaniards had actually explored the Great Basin, an important feature begins to appear on Spanish maps of western North America. Significant31 Maps and Early Spanish Exploration 1700–1795 3 32 mapping and imagination in the great basin ly, it bears an Indian name—Timpanogos or some derivation thereof— suggesting that Indian information about it preceded the Spaniards’ actual arrival. A large unnamed interior lake first appears on manuscript maps by the early eighteenth century, notably Francisco Barreiro’s beautiful Plano Corográphico e Hydrográphico de las Provincias . . . de la Nueva España (fig. 3.1). The words chorographic and hydrographic in the map’s title are significant.They suggest a developing scientific interest in the surface of the land and the configuration of its waterways. On this intriguing map, produced in 1728, streams seem to flow toward an interior lake, suggesting that this is a region of interior drainage. On other maps of this same time period, however, the rivers appear to flow away from this lake, which has several names (including Youla and Timpanogos).This ambiguity is revealing, for it suggests just how little was actually known about the hydrology of the Interior West. Several other lakes in the region, including Bear Lake and Pyramid Lake, may have served as the prototype for this striking cartographic feature. However, Utah lake is most likely Youla Lake, although the Great Salt Lake is also a strong candidate because it is the largest body of water in the Interior West. To those familiar with Spanish entradas, the appearance of any hydrologfigure 3.1. Francisco Barreiro, Plano Corográphico e Hydrográphico de las Provincias . . . de la Nueva España (1728). Courtesy Hispanic Society of America, NewYork ic features on these early-eighteenth-century Spanish maps is perplexing. There is no record of actual Spanish exploration into the Great Basin at this time, although entradas had reached the southern San Joaquin Valley of California—a semiarid, mountain-surrounded, low-lying area of interior drainage that gave them a foretaste of what would be encountered farther inland. There is, however, a distinct possibility that the Spaniards learned about the Great Basin from the natives in coastal California who traditionally traded with Indians living to the east of the Sierra Nevada. But what about those native inhabitants of the Great Basin? Did they map the region, or parts of it? It is here that we must further broaden our definition of a map. Until recently, it was thought that the native peoples here had no maps, and some even suggested that native peoples were too primitive to create maps. Although it is true that Native Americans did not have the kind of maps with which explorers were familiar—increasingly scientific charts on paper that depicted places using graticules and latitude and longitude—that does not mean they were unaware or incapable of mapping. Consider, instead, that Native American mapping was far more intuitive. The natives had little use of mapmaking in the form of charts, and the landscape was more likely integrated into a cognitive...