Hello everyone,
This map has been making its rounds on facebook, and I was wondering if anyone could evaluate it's accuracy.
Specifically, I think the map is intending for the viewers to look at it and think "Wow look at all these countries and nations destroyed by the Europeans". However, I think that it is misleading, because the outlined areas on the map were not so much nations as they were areas of influence.
Thanks.
Since this the second question we've got about this today, I'll leave it up this time (I had removed the previous post because I know the creator of the map doesn't like it being shared without his consent - though I didn't realize at the time how out of hand this had gotten). This map does not represent pre-Columbian North America, nor does it attempt to.
It was originally posted at /r/ImaginaryMaps a couple weeks ago as a rough draft a user there had made for a fictional setting they were working on. It's representing an alternate history, circa 2015.
Unfortunately, /r/MapPorn and /r/BadHistory got a hold of about ten days after the initial post and the original context was lost. Some people misinterpreted it as a representing North America prior to the arrival of Europeans and it seems that Facebook as run with that error. Seriously, how did this get over 100k shares?
Everything that I see, with regard to tribal/nation/linguistic group boundaries, on the west coast is wrong (with the exception perhaps of the Chumash - maybe). Some of it laughably so. Based just on what I know from the west, I would say it is unreliable if not misleading.
I dealt with this on Facebook also. Shared this map as an alternative. Not perfect by any means, but much closer to the intent of those sharing on Facebook. More or less represents the situation in North America in 1491 (though I have to contend that "Pueblo" on the map should really be a bit further south and east, and not sure why Zuni and Hopi were separated from the rest of the Pueblo groups, except geography in the case of Hopi).
