The Missouri River & Mandan Villages

his map was drawn in 1906 or 1907 by Sitting Rabbit, a Mandan, and is judged by authorities on traditional American mapping to be one of the finest examples of pictographic mapping. Although the map is a correct representation of the course of the Missouri and several tributaries near the Mandan villages, it is also a picture, using images to portray location and meaning: the earthen lodges of the Mandans, a herd of buffalo, a horse corral. Totemic symbols are used to identify villages. Example: the device in the upper center that looks like an airplane is actually a pair of crossed snowshoes.

--John Logan Allen