I know they didn't have a written language and most tribes were small and independant. But it must be hard running a large empire like the Mayans or being a nomad tribe without having any maps. If you have access to any pictures of pre-columbian native american maps.
hi! there are several examples in the FAQ section Pre-Columbian Trade and Contact, particularly in this post:
In addition to the informative thread that /u/Searocksandtrees points you to, you could also check out these maps that Shawnadithit/Nancy April, a Beothuk woman, drew in the 1820s.
I also know of some maps that Stó:lō chief K'HHalserten/William Sepass drew around the turn of the 20th century, but I can't find an image of them online. They're in the Stó:lō-Coast Salish Historical Atlas, if you can get ahold of a copy.
Unfortunately, these aren't pre-Columbian, but my sense is that at least on the west coast, Indigenous people spent a lot of time memorizing the geography.
First are foremost, there was no such thing as a Maya empire. While we can debate over the conflicting nature about the term, at its most basic an empire refers to a political organization in which a core area has a high level of influence over peripheral ones. No city in the Maya realm achieved such level of centrality, at least not in comparison to other Mesoamerican empires like the Aztec or Tarascan empires. While one can argue that Calakmul (or the K’an dynasty) and Tikal achieved high levels of political influence (Simon and Grube 2008) during the Classic Period, they never established a highly centralized government nor they control big geographical regions. Later on, Mayapan during the Postclassic period unified the upper part of the Yucatan peninsula, but even there their system is called a confederacy because it was a loosely grouped collection of polities headed by the Cocom families. Therefore, no ruling body was ever in need of maps in order to control their areas of influence.
However, this does not mean that Native Americans never used maps. At least for Mesoamerica, which is my study area, there are several pre-Columbian maps. But because of the different ontological perspectives when compared to western ones, those maps do not like anything we may imagine. For example, pages 46 to 53 of the Mixtec codex Zouche-Nuttall give us a glimpse into the political geography of the Mixtec area. It details several kingdoms that were either visited or conquered by the mythical figure of 8-Deer Jaguar Claw. It is a map because, while not all the named polities have been geographically pinpointed to an archaeological site, those that have are in geographical proximity as they are discussed in the codex. So in the codex the site of Tilantongo is shown in close proximity to the site of Jaltepec, just as they are geographically (Byland and Pohl 1994). Similar maps are shown in some of the pages of the Codex Vindovonensis.
Furthermore, there are several Colonial Lienzos done in pre-hispanic canons, or imagery. For example, El Lienzo the Teozacoalco (liminal for our reading of prehispanic codices) has been proven very useful as a map to understand the political geography around the Mixteca Alta in Oaxaca (Whittington 2003). Another example of these colonial maps is the Lienzo de Zacatepec that shows the limits of the Zacatepec polity and its neighbors in the Mixteca de la Costa area.
Byland, Bruce, and John Pohl 1994. In the Realm of 8 Deer: The Archaeology of the Mixtec Codices.
Simon, Martin and Nikolai Grube 2008. Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens: Deciphering The Dynasties of the Ancient Maya.
Whittington, Stephen 2003. El Mapa de Teozacoalco: Una Guía Temprana Colonial a las Transformaciones Culturales