Category: Weekly Blog Posts

Folded and tucked away on the last page, this pictographic map, created by Mr. Jacobs after being commissioned by McNally to be folded up and tucked away as a bonus on the last page of this publication.

Mr. Jacobs followed their commissioners requests well, following a provided template of the US, drawing the locations spoken of within the book, and on top of this, made a nice and interesting map to look at. Why did McNally have such peramaters? They had a vision that could only be conveyed through the display of certain components of the United States. This atlas by McNally explores the large swathes of land they called the United States, intentionally leaving territories unmentioned because they were “not an integral part of this country”. This vision is reinforced through their lack of mention, and who could argue with something they were never told? Through their publications and maps, McNally argued for what land ‘truly’ made up the United States through marking the territories under U.S. rule as ‘foreign’, a decision that has contributed to the alienation of citizens in the U.S.’s territories and a well founded sense of mistrust toward Their Own Country today.

An important question to ask when looking at any set of data is what the intention(s) behind its creation. McNally had beliefs on what the U.S. was and its nature that they wanted their readers to believe as well. The interpretations McNally held on the U.S. through a perspective is unavoidable and not what should be taken issues with. They start when certain information must be ignored to maintain this understanding. To create this explanation of an idea, territories that combined with the states to make up their country were cut, going unmentioned within the pages of this atlas, which had many negative consequences of people then and today.

In Daniel Immerwahr’s publication to The Guardian, How the U.S. Has Hidden its Empire, the consequences U.S. territories have suffered until now because of this unbalanced relationship is . Many important points are brought up in the span of this article; topics such as the intentional exclusion of U.S. territories in the Philippines from FDR’s final speech despite bombing comparable to Pearl Harbor being inflicted upon them. The betrayal many of those territories felt as they found out that the country they belonged to, the U.S., had chose not to dispatch any help. However, this main goal was to draw attention to the colonial presence the U.S. has held since long before FDR’s speech on the “Japanese Planes Bomb Honolulu, Island of Guam”. Revealing to his readers the complicated relationship the U.S. has with its own ideals; Freedom, Equality, and Independence.

“In 1941, the year Japan attacked, a more accurate picture would have been this:

Immerwahr 2019

This land, called the ‘greater United States’, includes all of the US territories and satellite states as their true size [except for the scattered islands in the bottom left corner]. McNally in their other publications listed the US territories like Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Alaska as ‘foreign’. When questioned about this decision by some school kids, they responded:

The intentional decision to argue that these U.S. territories were not ‘integral components of the U.S.’s identity’ has created a culture that disreguards these citizens humanity and existence. Attempts made by entities like McNally to create an American identity that unites and uplifts our populous has come at the cost of the disacknowledgement of these citizens rights and protections deserved of many who should fit into this definition. Today, this old argument has resulted in a widespread unawareness of the very existence of these territories and in those who are aware, a reluctance to address the unstable status of U.S. territories and the rights they hold. Their categorization itself is not harmful, but the treatment recieved based off their definition and restrictions applied can.

Leah R. Keith

Sources
Jacobs, Elmer. A Pictorial Map of the United States. - David Rumsey Historical Map Collection
Rankin, Bill. Territory of the United States
Immerwahr, Daniel. How the U.S. has Hidden its Empire, 2019

The Great Plains of the United States is a wide, open, and flat region located in the central United States. From pre-history to the early 19th century, the plains were filled herds of millions of buffalo and its only occupants were small populations of native tribes whose villages dotted the plains. This changed during the 19th century when the idea of “manifest destiny” promoted immigrants to travel westwards to reestablish themselves. Followed by in 1862, when Lincoln signed into law the “homestead act” which increased the amount of immigrants to the Midwest.

If I’m reading the map correctly… these sets of maps featured on David Ramsay, shows the removal of the prairie overtime. This map produced in the 1900s shows the production of wheat from land that has been plowed overly farmers. From the short time that westward expansion began to 1900, we can see that vast areas of the plains have been converted to farmland.

Moving forward to the 1960s and 70s, we notice an interesting pattern that arose during the plowing of the plains. In areas with high humidity, fertile soil, and access to ports, the grasslands have virtually disappeared by the 60s and 70s. Those fields had all been converted to farmland, roads paved over them, or became locations of large cities such as Dallas, Oklahoma City, San Antonio, etc. Yet, some untouched areas of grassland remain on the map and this is due largely to weather and geography. The areas with large grasslands ranging from >60 to 90%, were found to contain “bad soil’ an example of this can be found near Holton, Kansas. That small region of preserved grassland and prairie was found to contain soil that was too rocky for farming as such, this area was spared the devastation caused by plowing. Another example found on these maps is far Northern Texas and Western New Mexico. While this area does contain the cities of Amarillo and Lubbock, the climate is very dry with little to no rainfall throughout the year and rocky soil. Thus, this area was unable to support large population centers causing settlers to move away and settle in a more hospitable environment.

The Great Plains is an area that has long been associated with being the breadbasket of the United States as it produces wheat for the rest of the nation. However, it was not always like this. As settlers from Europe came over and with Westward Expansion, land west of the Mississippi River became more and more settled. This was also in part due to the Homestead Act of 1862 which allowed citizens to own and settle a parcel of land known as a homestead. As settlement increased, the introduction of farming technologies and colonization led to a decrease in grasslands in the area known as the Great Plains. 

As we can see in the maps found in Cunfer’s book, we can see that as time went on, the percentage of grassland decreased over time. The map depicting the percentage of grassland in 1880 shows there is an abundance of grasslands that have not been plowed yet. 

Comparing this same area but much later, we can see that by 1997, there were very few regions that still had 80-100% grassland and there were regions where there was no grassland.

While we see that the presence of grasslands in the Great Plains has decreased over time, it is important to look at why they may have decreased. As we can see in Henry Gannett’s map depicting Wheat production per square mile in 1903, wheat is becoming much more common in the Great Plains. If we compare Gannett’s map with Cunfer’s map in 1903, the maps are related. Where we see a decrease in grassland, there is an increase in wheat production. I am sure that if we were to look at wheat production per square mile during a different year, I would assume that it would match the decrease in grassland as presented in Cunfer’s maps.  

Cunfer, Geoff. 2005. On the great plains. Texas A&M University Press, pp. 16-37.

Gannett, Henry. 1903. “Production of Wheat per Square Mile at the Twelfth Census 1900.” DavidRumsey.com.

Cunfer argues that the “plowing of the Great Plains for crop agriculture did not happen quickly,” which is true- the Great Plains had existed for centuries before European settlement, however, the introduction of European technologies and the colonization of the American West greatly contributed to a significant loss of farmland and ecosystems.

Geoffe Cunfer, “Pasture and Plows,” On the Great Plains, 2005. P. 18.

Before the introduction of the plow, American grasslands were far more abundant.

Cunfer. P. 31.

Humans and the environment obviously have a relationship to one another- both can shape and change one another. One aspect of this is Westward Expansion. As more people spread out West and plows were brought, wheat production went up, but grasslands started to disappear.

Henry Gannett, Wheat/sq. Mile, 12th census of the US, 1903.

This map is from 1903, here’s Cunfer’s map of grassland, for reference:

The commercialization of land was also something that was spread throughout the Western territories. When Native land was divvied up and disseminated to white settlers without consent, the sacred grasslands of the Plains Natives were destroyed for commercial agriculture and desecrated by those who saw land as a commodity. Some grasslands were destroyed intentionally by white settlers to speed along the centuries-long genocide and forced assimilation of Natives. Over-grazing led to more grasslands depleting, as well as the scramble to California during the Gold Rush. Settlers looking for gold or families looking for religious freedom would travel together with their wagon trains and leave destruction in their wake.