Sense of Place: The Shape of Minnesota

A tale of Minnesota's emergence on the map.

By Paul Purman

The shape of this lake is almost like that of a bow, the shores on the south side forming a great curve, and those of the north almost a straight line. The fishing is very plentiful in this lake, the fish excellent, and the water so clear and pure that one can see in as much as six fathoms of water what is at the bottom.

So wrote Jesuit Father Claude Allouez, in 1667, one of the first Europeans to travel on Lake Superior and one of the first to see any part of what is today Minnesota.

This is a story of how Minnesota emerged on the map over time. It begins with Allouez's account of Lake Superior for two reasons.

First, Minnesota is a land defined by its waters, beginning with Superior's cold shore, which was known for millennia to Indians and, beginning in the 1600s, to the European explorers, missionaries, and traders who traveled the lake to the interior of North America.

Second, Allouez's description and map of the Superior shore is one of the earliest representations of the lake and of Minnesota. Admittedly, Allouez's description of Superior is strangely confusing?the opposite of what we expect, used as we are to seeing, on the map, the lake's great whaleback north coast arching up from the Sault Sainte Marie, then plunging down again to Duluth, where it meets the comparatively straight south shore. In fact, his account contradicts the evidence not only of modern maps, but of one of the very earliest maps to capture any part of Minnesota?his own. Despite the confusion of Allouez's verbal description, his map remained the most accurate representation of Minnesota's Lake Superior shore for more than 100 years.

1672: Jesuit mission map of Lake Superior,
Allouez and Dablon

Father Allouez dove into missionary life at Chequamegon Bay near present-day Bayfield, Wis., in 1665. From here he spent four years proselytizing the region's Indians and exploring the Superior shoreline.

Through his attentive travels, he was able, in 1671, to produce a rough map of Superior's coast. He collaborated with fellow Jesuit Claude Dablon to publish another map in 1672.

Dablon said of Allouez and a companion, they "wished to set down nothing they had not seen with their own eyes. . . . because they do not have first-hand knowledge of some parts of these lakes, they prefer to leave the work partly imperfect rather than to issue it with inaccuracies, as always happens in such cases when the mere report of others is relied on."

This map, produced by men traveling through wilderness in canoes, is remarkable. Superior's North Shore emerged with accuracy and some detail, including the rivers we now know as the St. Louis, Pigeon, and Kaministiquia (at Thunder Bay).

Impressively, the Jesuits fairly accurately drew the lake's islands. The location and number of islands is a bedeviling problem on a lake as big as Superior. Their map was unlike many later North American maps on which nonexistent islands would materialize, most notably the Isle Philippeaux, often shown near the middle of the lake. A likely explanation for phantom islands like Philippeaux?whether in a lake or at sea?is that travelers' tales misreported the locations of actual islands. Isle Royale, about the same size as the phantom Isle Philippeaux, was probably reported at the wrong location.

Having left us this legacy, Allouez went on to further adventures in other parts of the Great Lakes. Wisconsin later named a town after him.

1730: La Vérendrye map, Auchagah et al.

On a late winter afternoon of 1729, a Frenchman pored over several pieces of birch bark at an outpost perched between Lake Superior and the wilderness beyond. He was soldier and explorer Pierre Gaultier de Varennes et de la Vérendrye, and the outpost was the French military station by the Kaministiquia River in present-day Ontario. On the bark were maps of rivers, lakes, and portages in the region west of the lake, made at his request by several Indian leaders, including a man named Auchagah. Using these maps, La Vérendrye hoped to find a way to the object of his dreams: the "River of the West" leading to the "Sea of the West" and, ultimately, to the Pacific Ocean.

The birch bark maps are long lost. But some of the information they contained was translated to several maps made by La Vérendrye and associates. They would accompany La Vérendrye (then in his 40s) and his sons during the next 15 years on long explorations for the freshwater Northwest Passage across the Great Plains to the Rocky Mountains.

La Vérendrye's 1730 map reveals in detail two main routes of ascent by water from the Superior shore into what is now Minnesota: the Grand Portage?Pigeon River?Rainy River route at the present international border; and the "Fond du Lac" River route, following the present-day St. Louis River. (A third route followed the Kaministiquia.)

La Vérendrye's 1730 map is the earliest to show in detail the important region of rivers and lakes that would carry so much of the western fur trade, and that later would become Minnesota's Boundary Waters region. It also offers us a glimpse into a gulf lying between Indian and European views of geography, best illustrated along the Pigeon?Rainy route. That stretch is drawn as a series of symmetrical lakes (Long Lake, Flat Lake) connected by rivers and portages. This representation probably came directly from Auchagah and other Indians. It was a traveler's explanation of important geographical relationships?of how one lake led to another, and whether the portage was short or long, for instance. But the Frenchman "translated" this Indian geographical knowledge onto his map as fairly precise locations, complete with compass and map scale.

Nonetheless, La Vérendrye's map preserved for us a bit of something rare?a native way of understanding and drawing the world. Between them, Auchagah and La Vérendrye had compiled important information about Minnesota's waters, lands, and people.

1755: Map of North America, Mitchell

In 1755 a map of North America was published in London. Made by a man who never visited Minnesota, it did not show the area's features particularly well. Yet John Mitchell's map of the continent was destined to become one of the most important in American?and Minnesota?history.

Mitchell, a Virginia-born physician with an interest in cartography, carefully produced his map from numerous sources over more than five years. A generally fine map for the period, it is noteworthy for one of the things it got wrong: the location of the headwaters of the Mississippi River. This mistake eventually led to international tensions and a 60-year border dispute.

The Mississippi had begun showing up on maps shortly after Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet visited the river in 1673. But by 1755 the headwaters of the great river still were not known to cartographers?and would not be until 1832 with the visit of Henry Schoolcraft to Lake Itasca.

Mitchell relied on contemporary French sources in constructing his map. This is apparent in the way the Pigeon River is shown as a series of symmetrical lakes called ?Long Lake' (from Auchagah?La Vérendrye) emptying into Lake Superior. This also resulted in the Mississippi's headwaters disappearing under what must be one of the most significant inset maps in history. The inset shows Hudson Bay and Labrador, but the significant thing is the text found just below: "The Head of the Missisipi is not yet known: It is supposed to arise about the 50th degree of Latitude"?that is, west of Lake of the Woods.

This might have remained no more than a jot in the history of maps but for a single circumstance. At the close of the American Revolution, British and American negotiators chose Mitchell's highly regarded map on which to mark the division of the new United States from what would later become Canada. Negotiators drew the boundary through the Great Lakes, including Lake Superior (where Isle Philippeaux was awarded to the Americans!), then to the Long Lake (the Pigeon River), and thence along the water route to Lake of the Woods. From this lake's northwest corner, they said, the border would strike west to the Mississippi.

Several problems arose from this. The Mississippi rose far to the south of Lake of the Woods, not west; and Lake of the Woods?Mitchell's depiction notwithstanding?had no obvious northwest corner. Only after 60 years of on-and-off negotiations did the American and British governments reach a solution?leaving a geographical oddity, the Northwest Angle, in American hands.

1843: Hydrographical basin of the upper Mississippi River, Nicollet

Joseph Nicollet's map breaks with everything that came before: It is the first really modern map of Minnesota. Centered on the wide region between the upper Mississippi and Missouri rivers, it shows lakes and rivers, trails and plateaus in a new way?three dimensionally. Nicollet's work changed mapping in the American West ever after.

French by birth, Nicollet traveled extensively in the United States after leaving France in 1832. By 1836 he had traveled up the Mississippi from St. Louis to Fort Snelling. Beckoned by the wide and largely unknown lands between the two great rivers, he was intent on exploring and mapping this region, which had only begun to be revealed in the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804?06, and Stephen Long's military expedition up the Red River in 1823. By 1838 Nicollet had convinced the U.S. government to fund his exploration, which allowed him to make the "mother map" of Minnesota.

The modernness of Nicollet's mapping comes from precisely locating features on the earth's surface in three dimensions: latitude (position north or south), longitude (position east or west), and altitude (elevation above or below sea level). Earlier explorers and mapmakers had tools to locate latitude and, with greater difficulty, longitude. Nicollet made use of a new invention, the barometer, to estimate rough elevations above sea level. He relentlessly dragged his precious barometers through the wilds, gathering thousands of observation points of altitude.

Nicollet's travels weakened his health; he died in 1843 while completing his map. But his meticulous mapping techniques made a great impression on his colleagues in the U.S. Corps of Topographical Engineers, who used them in creating detailed and accurate maps of the American West in later years.

1847-1907: Public Land Survey,
General Land Office

A year before Nicollet's birth in 1786, an invisible wave began to sweep westward from Pennsylvania. In 1847, it broke upon Minnesota.

The wave was called the Public Land Survey and, like Nicollet's work, it would forever change the map of Minnesota.

The Public Land Survey was conceived by, among others, Thomas Jefferson as a way to facilitate the sale and settlement of lands in "the West," everything west of the original 13 colonies. At its heart was the desire to mark western land into regular rectangular units for more efficient mapping and management.

The survey, run by the U.S. government's General Land Office, relied on regular beginning points from which survey crews moved westward. These beginning points were defined by baselines (east-west lines) and meridians (north-south lines). Survey crews moved across country, ahead of settlers, dividing the land into six-mile-square areas called townships. Each township was further divided into 36 one-square-mile areas called sections. At each section corner and, in Minnesota, at the halfway point between section corners, surveyors placed a marker or monument. Moreover, surveyors sometimes noted in their written records information about the terrain or vegetation. For example, an entry from an 1850s survey in Wright County reads: "gently rolling, 3rd rate b[u]r oak, aspen, etc. vines, briers and aspen brush."

The survey in Minnesota was completed in 1907. This untold amount of work provided a basis, through its plat maps, for the sale and ownership of property across the state, and the boundaries of local governments. And it helped to determine Minnesota's eastern, southern, and western borders.

More than 200 years separate Allouez's 17th-century paddle survey of Superior's shores from the placement of the final Public Land Survey monument in the early 20th century. By the time of Nicollet and the beginnings of the Public Land Survey in Minnesota, the old watery mysteries of freshwater Northwest Passages and unknown sources of the Mississippi had been laid to rest, replaced by the new scientific maps. A journey had been completed. Minnesota had finally emerged on the map.

Paul Purman is a geographer, a free-lance writer, and an information officer for the DNR Division of Lands and Minerals. His account of successful backpacking with small children appeared in the July?August 2000 Volunteer.