kayshapero

The Map Of Native American Tribes You've Never Seen Before
by Hansi Lo Wang
NPR June 24, 2014 -4:03 PM ET

Finding an address on a map can be taken for granted in the age of GPS and smartphones. But centuries of forced relocation, disease and genocide have made it difficult to find where many Native American tribes once lived.

Aaron Carapella, a self-taught mapmaker in Warner, Okla., has pinpointed the locations and original names of hundreds of American Indian nations before their first contact with Europeans.

As a teenager, Carapella says he could never get his hands on a continental US map depicting more than 600 tribes — many now forgotten and lost to history. Now, the 34-year-old designs and sells maps as large as 3 by 4 feet with the names of tribes hovering over land they once occupied.
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Copies of the maps (one for Canada and the US, another for Mexico) in pdf form are linked to from the article, for easy downloading.  I've got them and have been having fun looking around.

I watched the remake of The Lion in Winter (not bad though I much prefer the Peter O'Toole/Katherine Hepburn version) which got me to wondering about a few things like what happened to Geoffrey, who succeeded John, and whether they did any better than their predecessors which led me into a quick run through the Encarta. My heavens, what a crew...

Henry II was the first Plantagenet king, the family name coming from his father, Geoffrey of Anjou. His mother was Matilda, daughter of Henry I aka the Empress Maud due to her first husband, Holy Roman Emperor Henry V. Henry left the throne to Matilda, his opportunist nephew Stephen made a grab for it as nearest male potential heir and the resultant 20 year tug of war between the two made rather a mess of the country (mind you, Henry I was the son of William the Conqueror so I suppose the country may have been used to it by then). Ultimately Stephen got the throne with the proviso that Matilda’s son, Henry be his heir, and so England got Henry II. His first two sons died before he did (one of them being the aforementioned Geoffrey), so as everybody knows, number three, Richard the Lion Heart succeeded him, and proved a pretty expensive king, what with crusades, getting captured and requiring a sizable ransom.

John succeeded Richard, got the short end of a war with France and raised taxes so much attempting to win the lost properties back that his barons got fed up and forced him to sign the Magna Carta. Then he went to war with the barons, promptly died, and the regents for his 9-year-old son finished it off. Eventually Henry III reached his majority, dismissed his advisors, and appears to have ticked off everybody in sight by appointing his own favorites to everything and throwing money around like it was going out of style. The barons revolted, Henry was imprisoned, to be rescued by his son Edward, who made an agreement with the barons, and ruled next as Edward I aka Edward Longshanks. THAT Edward...

His son was Edward II who seems to have done rather a bad job of ruling until he was captured by an army led by his wife, Isabella for complicated political reasons and forced by Parliament to resign in favor of his son, Edward III. Who started the Hundred Years War. He was succeeded by his 10-year-old grandson, Richard II. The country was in rather a mess by this time as you may imagine - he seems to have been rather more competent than his predecessors. At least until he tried to short change Henry, son of John of Gault (and another grandson of Edward III and the first Lancastrian) of his heritage, and lost the throne to Henry IV. Who got into the usual mess of wars, and ultimately died leaving the throne to Henry V.

Who won a couple of wars with France, took over Normandy, and died leaving both thrones to Henry VI. France pried itself loose, and England went straight into the Wars of the Roses as Richard Plantagenet made a try for the throne. His son Edward IV actually got the throne, tried to leave it to his son Edward V who was promptly imprisoned with his younger brother, and replaced by his uncle Richard III who died in battle, leaving no more Yorks to contend with. Next at bat was Henry Tudor aka Henry VIII and I think we can stop at this point. Sigh…

On a brighter note, saw Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Askiban at the local IMAX. If they bring out the next one in IMAX format I think I’ll see it there too – that was FUN. I do have a few nitpicks ( click here if you don’t mind vague spoilers )

but nothing major.

In other news I just restored my computer's operating system - the thing has been increasingly flaky over the last few months (which is one reason I haven't been posting). I'm still reinstalling things, but at least it's working better.