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First issued in 1891 and updated for the Bureau of American Ethnology’s Handbook of American Indians (Bulletin 30, 1907), this influential thematic map summarizes John Wesley Powell’s grand classification of Native North American languages.
Thirty-eight “linguistic stocks” (Powell’s term) are distinguished by full wash color across the entire continent north of the Mexican border, from the Eskimo-Aleut rim of the Arctic to the Coahuiltecan and Piman bands of the Rio Grande. Major culture areas emerge at a glance: Algonquian green blankets the boreal East; Athapascan blue sweeps from Alaska to the Southwestern Apaches; vast Siouan, Shoshonean, and Uto-Aztecan domains sprawl across the Plains and Basin; while the Pacific slope appears as a patchwork of smaller coastal families—Tlingit, Salish, Chinookan, and many more. A keyed color list at lower left identifies every group.
Powell’s map is celebrated as the first comprehensive attempt to depict Native North America through language rather than political or tribal boundaries, prefiguring modern anthropological linguistics. It provided a cartographic foundation for Franz Boas, Edward Sapir, and subsequent scholars, and remained the Smithsonian’s standard reference well into the twentieth century.
A desirable copy of a landmark in ethnographic cartography—equally suited to collections focused on Native American studies, thematic mapping, or the history of American science.
![North America, Drawn from the most recent Authorities with the Tracks of Columbus & Cortez. Improved to 1813 . . . [and] South America, with the Conquests of Pizarro . . . 1813](https://storage.googleapis.com/raremaps/img/small/113441.jpg)
![A Map of North America, Constructed According To The Latest Information: by H.S. Tanner. Improved to 1825 [Case Map]](https://storage.googleapis.com/raremaps/img/small/68580.jpg)