My name is Molly Bearman and I am the summer
intern for the Scholl Center for American History and
Culture here at the Newberry. One of my jobs this summer
has been to redesign the brochures for the Scholl center by
turning them into one page online pamphlets. These will be
emailed, rather than printed. Another major part of my time
here at the Newberry is contributing to the NEH summer
institute, Making Modernism: Literature and Culture in
Twentieth-Century Chicago, 1893-1955. I have helped to
make sure that carrels and books are ready for the incoming
scholars and will continue to be an extra pair of eyes and
ears
when all hands are on deck starting Monday.
Gerhard Mercator. Septentrionalivm
A wonderful part of interning here at the Newberry is
Terrarum descriptio. 1595. Fitzgerald Polar
the fact that there is a series of show and tells and other
Map 22.
events planned especially for all of the interns. This way we
can get to know one another a little better and experience other parts of the library that we may not see in
our own departments. One of the events the interns were invited to was a show-and-tell given by Pete
Nekola (who in my head is “Pete. From maps.”) about the various types of maps the Newberry has in
their collection.
To start, the Newberry has a lot of maps – over 500,000. In fact, the collection is so extensive that
people come here to see our maps of their countries. According to Pete, this happens a lot with Italian
scholars. Pete showed us eight maps which spanned different countries, religions, and modes of
transportation. What I loved about Pete’s presentation, as an intern, was his absolute in-depth knowledge
about his field and how excited he was to show us about maps. I found myself wanting to learn more
about the history of the maps, which is a direct departure from my usual view of maps, which typically
involves admiring them for their aesthetic value or ability to get me from point A to point B while
avoiding toll-booths.
As a developing anthropologist, what struck me most about Pete’s presentation was when we got
to the Jesuit maps of the United States. One of the maps was of the Minnesota –Ontario border. From
what Pete said and what I could make out from the map, it was a series of lakes and portages. I learned
that the compass rose, tellingly Jesuit because of the fleur-de-lis marking North, was added by the French,
even though the map was dictated by someone from the Cree tribe. One of the reasons for this, Pete had
said, was that the map was supposed to function as an “experiential view” of the lakes, and “after all,”
Pete had continued “maps are just another vantage point. Like language, they are another way of
understanding, right? Who are we to say that looking down from above, like God, is the best view?”
I looked at the map again and noticed no key and no scale, and the simple numbering of the lakes
with the lone arrow pointing in the direction of the trade route reminded me of a complicated discussion
my class had this past semester about the Nuer concept of time and duration. Time is marked intervals
separating events and duration is how long something takes to happen. Time can be kept and duration
cannot – sort of like the difference between “fewer” and “less”, the former can be counted, but the latter
cannot. The Jesuits, and later on the American Geological Society, would create beautifully detailed maps
with elevation markers and scales so it was possible to discern how many hours it would take to cross
those lakes. But according to the Nuer, and probably the Cree Indian who was telling the Frenchman
about those portages and lakes, it did not matter how many miles wide across the lakes stretched – they
would arrive at the next lake whenever they happened to arrive.
Pete noted in his presentation that the map had come about most likely due to a struggle in
communication between different cultures. You can see, even on a map, the basic cultural differences in
the desire to name and label: the Western desire to put a compass rose, the fleur-de-lis to denote French
culture and the Jesuit religion, and the direct naming of a few of the lakes; versus another culture’s way of
denoting place and time: circles to indicate lakes and lines to represent land. In addition to receiving a
miniature anthropology lesson, I also learned about the history of Lake Michigan (was I the only person
who didn’t know that it was originally called Lac du Ilinois?). I also saw an original map of the Boston T
(as a Chicagoan who spends half her year in Massachusetts, I am glad they have the current rail system as
the original was nearly impossible to figure out). We also looked at a beautifully hand drawn map from
Italy, the importance of which Pete told us, was to illustrate the physical importance of the river and its
ability to connect countries and cities together. This is a great departure from current individual state and
country maps – but my favorite bit of information Pete relayed about the Italian map was that historians
and cartographers still debate the value of the artists’ decision to paint some of his work.