Reaching for my books I discover no trace of them in Angie Debo's "A History Of The Indians Of The United States," nor indeed in Dee Brown's "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee."
Turning to the interweb I find this, but it doesn't help much.
Anyhoo … They were there in 1763, just west of Robyn's house, in what's now Amish country.
And now they're gone.
Here's the map I was talking about yesterday. It's from the 1763 continuation volume of my 1756 Smollett, in the section regarding the Colonies.
I was delighted to discover the Twigtwees (they're in Ohio if you can't spot them), mostly because it's such a splendidly silly name, but also because I had never heard of them before and it's always nice to find something new to puzzle over.
The map is chock full of bizarre places that have since sunk without trace into the quagmire of history or mutated into something even stranger (hello, modern America).
Explore with me …
This is the original before I scanned it in.
You may be able to read a little about the Colonies (and that part of the Seven Years' War that became known locally as The French And Indian War) if you click on the photo.
And here's the whole thing scanned.
I had to scan it in sections, being careful not to damage the binding, and then assemble the pieces using Photoshop's spiffalicious "Auto-align layers" and "Auto-blend layers" tools (see my old Photoshop posts for more boring stuff on that).
To make things readable I've saved the map at a larger scale in several pieces.
They're pretty memory-hungry but find the piece where you live and see who was there in 1763.
Fun, huh?
We start, somewhat predictably, in the top left hand corner, where we find New South Wales.
Yup … Not only did we use North America as a penal colony before you guys got uppity and we had to dump our trash on Australia instead, but we also stored all our Australian names there, too.
Hey, recycling's good! Shit, New England's made up almost entirely of recycled town and village names from East Anglia. I'd be totally freaked trying to follow road signs there.
Next up comes more stuff that will only be of interest to Canadians.
I do like Lake Begon, though; I wonder if it influenced Garrison Keillor?
It's not that far from where he located Lake Wobegon.
It's not that far from where he located Lake Wobegon.
More bits of the frozen north.
Hey, if you want you can download all of these and stick your own big map together.
Better still, get your kids to do it for you.
Better still, get your kids to do it for you.
Cool, huh?
Okay, maybe not.
Now we're getting to the real stuff!
This is out Maria's way. Cornhusker Country.
I wonder if she knows about the appropriately named Lake Tinton?
I can't seem to find it on any modern map.
Nor can I find any trace of the River Moningona (even then labelled "little known").
Moving east we find ourselves in Prudence's neck of the woods.
Some pretty uppity folk out here in 1763.
Look out, England, Revolution's stirring in those woods!
Hokay, so this one's not much use unless you want the whole map.
Or maybe if you have an unnatural attraction to cod.
Back out west to the mighty Mississipi (spelled with only one 'p' back then).
If you know anyone from St.Louis, it didn't exist back in 1763.
I like the "French Fort. Ruined" note at the mouth of the Ohio.
I like the "French Fort. Ruined" note at the mouth of the Ohio.
And I must say I prefer the old spelling of Kansez.
It's also nice to see the Ohio River was once known as the Fair River.
And there on the right are the enigmatic Twigtwees.
What a weird place it must have been then … er … plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, as we say in Europe.
It's also nice to see the Ohio River was once known as the Fair River.
And there on the right are the enigmatic Twigtwees.
What a weird place it must have been then … er … plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, as we say in Europe.
Here's where we find Neetzy and Katherine, long before the battlefields of the Civil War and before even the fœtid village in a swamp that became your nation's capital was founded.
Out to the left hand side of the map we find Robyn's ancestors, recently arrived from England and scratching a living between the Confederate Indians (the good guys who fought on our side against Les Frogs) and the Miamis and the enigmatic Twigtwees.
And here's a big old compass, way out in the Atlantic.
I think it must have sunk as it's not in the Times Atlas these days.
Say hi to Shan ("Hi, Shan!"), up near the top of this map, somewhere near a place called Mentos (as close as I can guess it) that no longer turns up on Google Maps.
That Earl Granville must have been a greedy bastard. He's got a hundred mile wide band of land stretching the whole width of the map, labelled "Earl Granville's Property."
Well, it's somebody else's now, buddy!
That Earl Granville must have been a greedy bastard. He's got a hundred mile wide band of land stretching the whole width of the map, labelled "Earl Granville's Property."
Well, it's somebody else's now, buddy!
And of course, Savannah, now home to our own lovely Savannah, then still in all its antebellum finery (indeed its pre-Revolutionary finery).
It must have been quite a place back then.
It's quite a place now!
Last up is … er … The Bermudas, in case anyone's interested.
Apologies to Ms.M, who lives somewhere so far beyond the known world that it fell off the edge of this map (indeed you'll note from yesterday's later map that the Rocky Mountains around her home were then so young they were called the Stony Mountains), and also to Petrea, Vanda, Katie and the California Girls, whose homes were then occupied by various Nations and a few wandering Spaniards building Mission Houses and therefore of no interest whatsoever to English map makers.
Hey ho … What little we knew.
As I said in the last post, I'd love to hear any tales you might have of the history of where you live now.
Toodle pip from Ancient Albion!
29 comments:
Okay, how did you even come across the word "Twigwtees" in the first place? Or did I misunderstand something?
You are a riot--tracing the tribe via your blog friends! I have to ask this, though. Were you bored? LOL!
This was perfect, btw: "the fœtid village in a swamp that became your nation's capital was founded."
Hi, Katherine!
On the map the word "TWIGTWEES" is just south of "MIAMIS" below Lake Michigan, and just east of the "Chicagou" River (of course, back then Chicago was simply a tiny Miami fishing village on the lake shore).
I'm never bored when it comes to old maps. The house is full of them. However, it had never struck me before I found yesterday's map of America in the attic that you guys actually live in those weird places.
As for Washington, I'd dearly love to have seen the place in the first decades after it was founded, when nobody wanted to live there and the Capitol rose out of the swamp surrounded by shacks and sheds and tents. Fun!
I must confess, the more I stared at the map the more weird crap I found. The Colonies sure were strange back in the mid-1700s.
Hello from ye ol' map! I have been staring at the part that Arkansas is supposed to be in and I have only gotten more confused. I guess North and South Carolina were more expansive then because they are no where near us now of course. Since I'm from Oklahoma, I grew up learning bits about the Land Run and things like that but I have learned so little about Arkansas and how it became a state(though I've been here almost 11years not counting college. Oops). I am inspired to learn more from this post. I'm glad you found such cool maps! :)
Tell me again what we suspect that thing in the attic to be. And WHY does it live so long up there? Creepy.
Hi, Shan!
Back then, New England, Virginia, Louisiana and the Carolinas went right across to the Rockies (or at least they did on paper - none of the early settlers knew what was out there in reality, though of course they bear little or no relation to the shape or position of modern states. We have to follow the shapes of the rivers on the old map to figure out where things are today.
As for the Thing In The Attic, I have no idea what it might be but it must be there because the attic door is where the world of spiders ends and the world of "Hey, where are all the spiders?" begins.
Boy Howdy. I have never heard of a Lake Tinton. I must be psychic or something, though, because when I was naming Liv's father in my blog (I use pseudonyms for everyone except the dog), I just played around with his last name to come up with that. Odd. I will have to mention all of this to the psychic that I am seeing tomorrow. Any questions you want me to pass on? I'm just hoping that I am not Lizzie Borden reincarnated. I much prefer my old life as Cleopatra. Which would explain why I am terrified of snakes...:)
I grew up in Illinois, so I got to enjoy looking for familiar things in the Midwest. Some words remain (Chicagou's a good example). I thought Ft. Chartres was where St. Louis popped up; I was incorrect, but it's close. And look what I found:
http://www.ftdechartres.com/page/page/1396770.htm
Oh Dive you amaze me!
I'm so glad you found my proximity in the Middle Atlantic region thankfully east of the dreaded Twigtwees. We are close to those darned "Confederate" Indians. Were they the southern Iroquois?
Yes, Idaho has long been "off the map" :) Boise, the largest city (pop. around 205,000), began as Fort Boise. (The fur trade and later the gold and silver mines needed protection). Lewis & Clark came through Idaho during their famous expedition. The Native peoples included Shoshone, Bannock, and Nez Perce. (Unfortunately, they were killed or forced to live on reservations).
There's a story that Boise was named by French fur trappers. After struggling through the rocky desert and canyons of what is now southern Idaho, they saw trees in the distance and cried: "Les bois! Les bois!" The trees were along a river (later named the Boise River) and they decided it was a good place to settle for a bit.
Great post as always when you get your teacher hat on..
I still have your orignal map of old Beccles, how small we are compared to all the places on those maps...
And hi to you your lovely blog friends who live in the exciting places.
Maria, is that spooky or what? I can find no trace of Tinton or Tinton's Lake in any source other than this map (indeed a Google search brings up this post on the first page) so I can only assume it's something your psychic can explain.
You'd make a great Cleopatra. I wonder if Bing was Cæsar or Mark Anthony?
Petrea, thank you. That is an awesome link. I got happily lost in the history section over breakfast this morning. That is exactly the kind of stuff I love to learn about.
Over here we tend to think the US doesn't have much history but there is some amazing stuff there. I am particularly fascinated by that period in your history and the decades following independence, when all Jefferson's dreams of civilised Americans slowly moving west got hijacked in a massive and violent land grab. Not since Genghis Khan has a people swept over a nation and devastated it like the modern Americans did in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. There is so much history still there to be discovered.
Neetzy: What we called the Confederate Indians were the Iroquois and Cherokee, who fought with us against the French (who had their own allies among the tribes). Of course you had your own Confederate Indians too, though that was later, in the Civil War.
It seems the Twigtwees were a mis-heard Miami word for "band of men" and this is what the English map-makers put down on the map.
Ms.M: Thank you for filling me in on a little local history. Idaho is a strange and alien world to a lowland Englishman. For a start, there is SO MUCH of it! It's one of the first places I'd like to visit if ever I make it across the pond. I love mountains and we don't get them here.
Mum, I remember that old map. Fun! The place was so tiny back then.
We have thousands of years of history. Saying the US has no history discounts the native Americans and assumes that history began after the Europeans arrived. I get tired of hearing people say it.
You're right, Petrea. Native American history tends to get pretty much swamped by modern American history over here. I have to get what I can from books. I can only remember seeing one TV documentary on pre-Columbian North American culture in several decades of Brit TV (something about the Mound builders if I remember rightly, but it was a long time ago). We need better education.
Good point, Petrea! Most of know nothing about Native American history, save Thanksgiving and Custer. I recall learning the categories of the tribes when I was a kid, but nothing specific.
We do seem to know more about Central and South American Native Americans, however. I don't know why that s.
I'm just amazed to learn that my supposedly definitive books don't include peoples like the Tongva-Gabrielino from Petrea's area because they're not "officially recognised" by the Federal Government.
I mean WHAT? Is Andrew Jackson still in charge of Native American Affairs?
These people have been there ten thousand fricking years and they still don't get recognised?
Sheesh! I'm somewhat stunned.
Yeah. And they're not the only ones.
I think part of what complicates it is our way of thinking. When Europeans arrived here, Native Americans were not living by European societal rules. They had their own society. Anthropologists used to try categorizing them by language groups, but they likely wouldn't have categorized themselves that way if they categorized themselves at all. Some people moved around, went where the food was, where the seasons took them. Some of what we call tribes were very small groups--families, really. Others were huge, and covered giant territories. Many small groups have been completely lost, with no records of them, because the invaders never thought of them as valuable or even as human.
We're looking at it through a modern lens, of course. It's easy for us to say we would not have done the same. But everything those (Caucasian) people knew had taught them that the natives were not real people like themselves, and they believed it.
One small bit of Native American history: The Taos Pueblo (Tiwa tribe) community in New Mexico. Adobe buildings, some around 1,000 years old. They are believed to be descended from the Anasazi. The Tiwa people live in the pueblo and surrounding area. I visited the pueblo years ago -- it was a powerful experience.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taos_Pueblo
http://taospueblo.com/
Petrea: Yup, we Europeans have a long tradition of genocide, imperialism and raping countries and continents of their people and resources. Our usual excuse is that they're not Christians so it's our Manifest Destiny to slaughter them, enslave the survivors and steal their land.
Sometimes I think we should never have come down from the trees in the first place.
Thanks for those links, Ms.M. What a beautiful place. I was a little concerned to see "Christianity" under "Religion" on the Wiki link but further reading reassured me that the Spanish missionaries did not do too much lasting damage to their traditions (at least not that they have been unable to recover from).
When this map was made, my part of Ohio, and probably the rest of the state was 95% wooded and teaming with native tribes. And then a Moravian missionary moved in, Christianized a group of them, and lived with them in a settlement about 10 minutes from my house. In 1772, the entire group was massacred by the British, and that was the end of that. We put on an outdoor drama of the story every summer.
Yay for the British! Always ready to massacre folk at the drop of a hat. That outdoor drama must be great fun to reenact (though hopefully not too realistically).
If I apologise on behalf of my nation can we please have our Colonies back?
Thought not …
I don't think you want these colonies, Dive. And in this drama, the scene with the massacre is haunting. Soldiers line up the tribe of people—women and children included—hold them down, and smash their skulls with a giant mallet. I'm not sure if that's how it was done in the 1770s.
Yikes! That's a pretty intense piece of re-enactment, Robyn. I can just picture some chinless aristocratic general (we didn't promote soldiers on merit back then, the rich bought commands for their useless sons) thinking up a way to massacre a community without using up valuable shot and powder.
And you thought you Brits had the monopoly on "splendidly silly names."
I have to admit, Vanda, that the US of A has us beaten on that count.
A geography lesson and a history lesson. Thank you Professor Dive. I enjoyed it.
Amazing piece of historical work there Dive. Fascinating, all of it, including the comments. Genocide continues, in various places. It seems that civilised man has forgotten history.
My own village, has streets from the Monopoly Board. Early Europeans in our country did a good job of wiping the aborigines out completely in Tasmania and slaughtering as many on the mainland as they could catch. It's a sad, sad tale.
Tinton backwards is Notnit :)
Thank you, Mark. I'll be setting a pop quiz on the subject for the next lesson.
Mme: Yes, like the North American "Indians" the Australian indigenous peoples are still having a hard time of it after hundreds of years of genocide, neglect and abuse. It seems we Brits have a lot to answer for in having introduced our shameful race to two continents, slaughtering most of the people who lived there and disenfranchising the few survivors.
You made me laugh out loud at Notnit!
Ok, I'm late to the party, but here's a little link for you: http://www.millersofwashingtoncounty.org/Greene/Greene-Ch02.html
and the quote from that area:
PRIOR to the year 1767, the land embraced in Greene County, with a large portion of the State of Indiana, belonged to a tribe of Indians called the Piankeshews. This people was one of the Algonquin tribes, and was one of the Miami , confederacy. The Miami confed- eracy was formed early in the seventeenth century by the various tribes of Indians occupying Ohio, Indiana, a part of Illinois and a part of Michigan. The object of the confederacy was for the purpose of repelling the invasions of the Iroquois or Five Nations, a very powerful combination of warlike Indians, who being pressed toward the setting sun by the advance of civilization, in turn pressed westward the weaker tribes of Indians. Originally, so far as history or tradition gives any account, the whole of Indiana was owned and occupied by the Twigtwees or Miamis, the Weas and the Piankeshaws. At a later date, there were other tribes, called permitted tribes, viz. : Delawares, or Leno Lenape, as they were originally called, Pottawatomies, Shawnees, Kickapoos, with a few Wyandots and Senecas. The Wyandots and Senecas seem to have had so little claim upon the land that they were never required to sign any treaty. The Pottawatomies seem to have acquired their interest by conquest, or rather by pushing the Miamis back from the Northwest toward the interior of the State, but they never claimed any interest in Greene County.
I know some people descended from the Miamis and Pegans, so will ask them when I get a chance.
Speedway, better late than never; and you always bring something fabulous to the party so you're always more than welcome to pop by.
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