Charting First Encounters maps twenty-three points where George Vancouver’s expedition encountered Indigenous peoples, communities, and constructions over two weeks in early May, 1792. Given the archival absence of textual Indigenous sources, Vancouver’s writings provide the first recorded account of Puget Sound’s native cultures. These writings were published in 1801 as A Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific Ocean, and Round the World: In Which the Coast of North-West America Has Been Carefully Examined and Accurately Surveyed. The multivolume work was posthumously published in London as an organized and edited iteration of the original logbooks Vancouver kept on his voyage. I used this work as my near-exclusive source of information because it alone contains Vancouver’s authentic, primary accounts of his Native encounters. And, at this time, I elected only to draw data from Chapter IV of the work, as these writings mark Vancouver’s initial visit to the sound.
The project originally took a very different, arguably less-analytical form than exists now. The original map, which can be viewed statically here, was a dynamic, interactive presentation of the primary source as written. Hosted as an ArcGIS StoryMap, linked here, users are led through the map in the form of a timeline, wherein they are able to click on each point, read Vancouver’s firsthand description of what was seen, and view associated illustrations when available. Lines mark the course HMS Discovery followed as it sailed through the sound, and each point is numbered chronologically. Beneath the timeline is a full view of the map, where users can explore, move around, and interact with it freely. As an alternative presentation of a primary source in a visual medium, the project was successful. However, beyond that end, it offered little. As such, Charting First Encounters needed to grow in its scope.
Directing this growth were three pillars:
- Using spatial analysis tools to gain insight into Indigenous culture, connectedness, and ways of living beyond the textual.
- Making a scholarly contribution to a comparatively understudied region in the field of Indigenous history.
- Harness mapping’s pedagogical potential as an instructional tool.
The process towards and realizations of these items are discussed further in the Methodology and Conclusions sections. But, in terms of planning what was to come, Dr. Antonio LoPiano and I brainstormed the trajectory of the project together on a whiteboard, seen below.
We hoped to use the same data points from my original project - the twenty-three sites described in Vancouver’s log - to create several map visualizations that used the geography of the region to explore the lived realities of Puget Sound’s natives. Different layers would use different tools and data, such as topographical data, proximity to regions of natural resource availability, or the easiest paths between two points. With clear goals and a vision set, we began work.