I've been following this quest for a while now, and not knowing a lot
about Indian reservations and regulations concerning these, I am
getting a bit curious about the principles you Americans (or should I
say Yanks - just not to mean native Americans) apply when defining
boundaries. Is it just a case of "there is a certain area of land,
and we get half, and you get half as well, and we don't want to split
up the area arbitrarily in a way that one people get the best half,
and the other people the less than best half, so we do it the
chequered way", or is there another principle applied here? Just
enlighten me, an ignorant inhabitant of the so-called "Old
Continent", of your unitedstatish ways.
Peter S.
--- In BoundaryPoint@y..., michael donner <m@d...> wrote:
> after further experimentation & checking against state topo index
maps
> & also against individual topo quads
> i can report that the zoomable indian reservation map
> representing some great fun & timely reinforcement from arif
> http://www.gdsc.bia.gov/districts
> may leave a bit to be desired in some respects
> & may even raise more questions than it answers
> but
> it does appear to be the best available map & plaything in this
whole field
> & it has proved to be entirely credible in some cases at least
> so i couldnt help but proceed to complete a first estimated indian
cross census
> despite my several misgivings about it
> & am just reduced to hoping that all the data are in fact correct
>
>
> the turning point in my experience of this site came when i was
pleasantly
> surprised to find it indicating an indian cross right here in
connecticut
> which i do very much want to believe is the truth
> despite the fact that the public land system grid
> which was the proximate cause of just about all the crosses
> was never used in connecticut
> & even tho this cross like many of the others is unsubstantiated
by topo
> evidence
> & moreover forces me to swallow so much else along with it
>
>
> before proceeding with the boundary cross census report tho
> it may be important to note that the staggering numbers i have
racked up
> here are not so much the result of the checkerboard or sectional
> alternation that is so plain to see at agua caliente & torres
martinez
> & which got me into this ridiculous business in the first place
> as they are the result of the much more widespread sort of random
> scattershot property ownership
> which however is curiously also called checkerboard
>
> while crosses were found to be rampant in the many scattershot areas
> precious little new evidence of true checkerboard patterning was
found anywhere
>
> in fact the only new such finds of any consequence
> are the arizona portion of the tristate mojave reservation
> & part of the laguna reservation in new mexico
>
> some navajo areas also seem almost to break into pure checkerboard
at times
> but they are nowhere very coherent or convincing
> so i have not counted them in this bunch
>
>
> all of which brings the updated cross counts of the true
checkerboard
> tribes to the following very probably final results
> agua caliente 57
> torres martinez 43
> laguna 40
> mojave 33
> hualapai 13
> morongo 12
> plus some minor cases involving a few dozen crosses in all at most
>
>
> several tribes have more crosses but none are so distinctly
checkered as these
>
>
> the single peneclave with the greatest known number of crosses
> 8 in all
> occurs at agua caliente
>
>
> another highlight
> many of the more complex boundaries cant even be drawn in a single
> continuous line
> a fact which presents the philosophical question of exactly what
they are
> if they are not lines
>
> presumably some fundamentally different kind of continuums
>
>
>
> & finally the piece of resistance
> the staggering indian cross totals
> of all types
> by state
> az 47
> ca 125
> co 1
> ct 1
> mi 5
> mn 57
> ms 11
> mt 73
> nv 25
> nm 280 approx
> nd 20
> or 24
> sd 160 approx
> ut 8
> wa 8
> wi 34
> total 880 approx
>
>
> the only remaining question is how to evaluate these in relation to
the
> bicountry crosses & the bicounty cross & the bimeridian cross
previously
> found
>
> m