Red River expedition: The Parker Map

Nicholas King’s map of the Freeman-Custis expedition of 1806, with the 1976 overlay by E.M. Parker. (LSU)

In 1806, President Thomas Jefferson instructed Peter Custis and Thomas Freeman  to find the source of the Red River as part of a Corps of Discovery for the Louisiana Purchase. Spanish troops stopped them in today’s Bowie County (TX)/ McCurtain County (OK) at the Spanish Bluffs.

That same year, Nicholas King drew a map of the expedition’s rather short journey, which was published, along with explorers’ journal, in 1806. In 1974, engineering professor E.M. Parker from Centenary College in Shreveport overlayed the 1806 map with important points from the Custis and Freeman journal. This map was used in the book, “Southern Counterpart to Lewis and Clark: the Freeman and Custis Expedition of 1806,” by renowned historian Dan Flores.

I was nosing around the digital collections listed at by the Louisiana State University (Shreveport) libraries and found the Parker map. It contains a plethora of information about the places and people the exploring party met. If you like to read maps, this is a good one to read!

Link to the “zoomable” map (http://louisianadigitallibrary.org/islandora/object/lsus-nwm%3A3)

Link to the 1806 journal (http://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=9108&context=annals-of-iowa)

#research #mapping #Exploring #Louisiana #maps