Remembering that Samuel Lewis was employed to reproduce a map conforming
to data and specifications furnished by Clark, what more could he do to
manifest his skepticism, if not displeasure, over the incorporation of
fictitious geography upon this super-important map of the West?
Remember, Lewis was a professional cartographer; he had seen, and had
already drawn, Colter’s sheet of real country. On the original draft the
southwest Arm and Thumb of Lake Yellowstone undoubtedly appeared. Now he
was asked to redraw it into counterfeit geography. Disturbed by the
substitution of Clark’s sheet of “Gulliver’s geography” for Colter’s
journey, he disguised a lake in a mountain range, drew a gargoylian lake
(Eustis), and raised the enigma of Biddle-Riddle.[363] After all,
cartography is simply a scientific refinement of pictography, or
storytelling. The message of Samuel Lewis, as revealed in the
Yellowstone segment of the Map of 1814, might reasonably be: “This
portion of the map is bogus. I do not know what the true conditions are.
Colter’s data appears all right; Clark’s later information says it
isn’t. It’s all a Riddle; I leave a clue.” Against this background, with
the fiction cut away, it may now be possible to explore the problem of
Colter’s route through the Yellowstone country.
Did Colter make a western loop trip beyond the Yep-pe Indian camp? Of
that there can be no doubt. Clark’s representation does not impugn
Colter’s word in respect to the reality of the journey itself but only
as to where he went and what he saw. If an approximation of his route
can be reproduced, the question of what he saw will automatically fall
into place like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The problem, then, is to
correctly reconstruct the west loop of the figure eight. This procedure
has become possible by reason of the proposition that has been
established in this discussion, particularly when it is remembered that
Colter knew his way around and could be relied upon to make a proper
orientation to the total environment. Now his course can be followed by
segregating another feature from what has been referred to as “Lewis’
Concealed Colter Map.”
[Illustration: J. N. Barry
A section of fictitious geography.
A larger section of the Map of 1814 showing Samuel Lewis’ ingenious
combination of Colter’s data, Clark’s guesses and the Cartographer’s
own obvious design to pose a gumption test for students of Western
geographic exploration.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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