‘’’Chikhansink’ : cartographie européenne et contre-cartographie amérindienne dans la vallée du Delaware au XVIIe siècle’’
Abstract
This essay examines the way William Penn’s settlement design for his province contributed to dispossessing the Lennape Indians in the Delaware Valley from the end of the 17th century. New European mapping techniques, by using property survey and relying on fixed geographical references and euclidian geometry, implied a division of space and territory at complete odds with indigenous conceptions and modes of representation. The Lennape were progressively erased from the map and consequently, from the territory. This essay uses counter-cartography to revisit colonial archives, in order to shed light on indigenous cartography and to reinstate the centrality of indigenous populations, their conceptions and practices in the history of the region.