Mackay - Evans Trade route Maps 1795

[Gypsy Heart]

In 1795 Spanish merchants in St. Louis had sent James Mackay and John Evans on a trading expedition up the Missouri River with instructions to find a route to the Pacific Ocean. Between 1795 and their return in 1797 they produced a set of maps (Figs. 2, 3, 4) that charted the river from its mouth to the Mandan villages, and that gave names for all of its principal tributaries. French voyageurs almost certainly had given the explorers the names they’d attached to these streams — names that, for the most part, they still bear.
The maps laid out in detail the first full year of the Lewis and Clark expedition and were important planning documents for the Captains
This section of the Mackay/Evans map extends from the island at lower right called "au Vase" — now submerged beneath Lake Francis Case, the reservoir behind Fort Randall Dam in southeastern South Dakota — to "I au Biche," which the Corps of Disovery may have reached on about September 24, 1804.

 

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[Gypsy Heart]

The Missouri River from the modern North Dakota-South Dakota boundary and the Heart River, the "heart" of traditional Mandan country. The river at upper left is labeled "Chiss-chect R" in Clark's hand; the next southern tributary down the Missouri was also crossed out by Clark.

 

[Gypsy Heart]

The Missouri River from the Heart River to the Knife River, showing the location of the Mandan and Hidatsa villages at the terminus of the more than 200-mile-long "Mandan trail" to the Qu'Appelle River used by Canadian traders. The explanation of the "Track o the Catepoi river" — the Qu'Appelle ("who calls?") River — was written by James Mackay. "Village Chiss.chect" and "Wah hoo toon — Wind" are in Clark's hand

 

[Gypsy Heart]

Guillaume Delisle (1675-1726) was one of the foremost French cartographers of the early eighteenth century. His charts included the most thoroughly researched and meticulously drafted representation of North America available as of 1718.4 This excerpt from that map, for example, includes the overland route from Prairie du Chien to the Omaha and Iowa villages, which French and British Canadian traders had been using for some years.