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Indians of the U.S.A.
New York, Friendship Press, 1944. Chromolithograph, 21 x 33” plus margins. CONDITION: Very good, old horizontal and vertical folds, pinholes at corner margins, light smudging along margins. A pictorial map highlighting various aspects of Native American history and culture, designed by pioneering African American cartographer Louise E. Jefferson. The names of several dozen Native American tribes appear in their “historic location” in this map of the continental United States, which includes Alaska. State borders have been eliminated, though the names of modern cities and rivers are shown for added context. Jefferson’s colorful map—intended as broadly educational rather than strictly authoritative—draws on several centuries of Native American history to create a compelling visual collage of scenes and figures, spanning the early colonial period through the eras of Indian removal, westward expansion, industrialization, and into the twentieth century. Busts of Native Americans in traditional dress populate the map, including well-known leaders like Massasoit, Tecumseh, Sequoyah, and others, shown in their respective homelands. A smaller number of white historical figures also appear, such as La Salle, Lewis & Clark, and Custer. The rest of the map is filled with examples of flora and fauna, geographic features, traditional architecture, and handicrafts, as well as visuals evoking more painful histories (though not indicated as such)—missions, Indian schools, wagon trails, U.S. Army forts, and dams. Native Americans shown participating in industrial activity (e.g. “airplane manufacture,” “construction work,” “factory worker”) portrays them as active participants in the economy and war effort, in line with the broader pro-Indigenous yet assimilationist conceit of the work. This depiction reflects the values of Friendship Press, the social justice-minded Christian publisher that hired Jefferson to create the map. Nonetheless, it remains an impressive early example of counter-mapping emphasizing the diversity of Native American cultures and reminding audiences of indigenous presence and history. Half a dozen historical-biographical notes appear on the map, noting the activities of missionaries (Eliot, Williams, Whitman), the founding of Jamestown, Sequoyah’s Cherokee alphabet, and the Iroquois unifier Hiawatha. The Trail of Tears is marked with teardrops, leading to the former Indian Territory, with an information box listing the many “tribes now located in Oklahoma.” Additional vignettes of pottery, beadwork, a totem pole, a travois, and canoers, fill the blank space. The map is decorated with a title cartouche and ornamental border that includes the names of thirty-three famous Native Americans from history. Born in Washington, D.C. to Louise and Paul Jefferson (the latter a calligrapher for the U.S. Treasury Department), Louise E. Jefferson (1908–2002) was an artist, photographer, illustrator, and cartographer. She studied fine and graphic art at Hunter College and Columbia University, was a close friend of Langston Hughes, and, with sculptor Augusta Savage and others, became a founding member of the Harlem Artists Guild in 1935. Over the course of her career she did a wide range of freelance work, including for Black and Civil Rights publications like Opportunity (1923–1949), which published early writings of Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Countee Cullen, and The Crisis, the official publication of the NAACP. In 1936 she published a children’s book titled We Sing America, which included illustrations of Black and white children playing together and was banned in Georgia. In 1942 she became the first African American director in publishing when she was hired as the Artistic Director for the Friendship Press, the publisher of the National Council of Churches. Founded in 1935, the Press “produced a variety of works that expressed its value commitments and support for the health and welfare of children, constructive race relations, church missions, vibrant culture, and peace among nations” (“Our Story”). Jefferson retired from the Friendship Press in 1960, but continued to work, and undertook five trips to Africa to research her 1974 Decorative Arts of Africa, illustrated with her own drawings and photographs of her research in fifteen African countries. Among Jefferson’s other pathbreaking pictorial maps are Makers of the U.S.A. (1943), Uprooted People of the U.S.A. (1945), and Americans of Negro Lineage (1946), which, like the map offered here, are important examples of “counter-mapping,” that is, using maps to account for the existence and rights of marginalized groups. Jefferson’s maps push back against racial exclusion in the historical record, affirm the presence and importance of a diverse array of people in American history, and manifest “an imaginary picture of a country that had yet to extend civil rights to all its people” (“Louise”). A scarce map by an important female member of the Harlem Renaissance and “counter-mapper” of marginalized peoples. REFERENCES: “Our Story” at Friendship Press online; Yessler, Reagan and Derek Hilton Alderman. “Art as ‘Talking Back’: Louise Jefferson’s Life and Legacy of Counter-Mapping,” Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic and Information Geovisualization, Vol. 56, No. 2 (2021); “Black History Month: Honoring Louise E. Jefferson” at University of Colorado Boulder online; “Louise E. Jefferson” at the Carnegie Museum of Art online.
Item #10060
On Hold
Price: $750.00
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