Where Caciques and Mapmakers Met: Border Making in Eighteenth-Century South America by Jeffrey A. Erbig Jr.

Abstract

Reviewed by: Where Caciques and Mapmakers Met: Border Making in Eighteenth-Century South America by Jeffrey A. Erbig Jr. Timothy B. Norris Where Caciques and Mapmakers Met: Border Making in Eighteenth-Century South America. Jeffrey A. Erbig Jr. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020. Pp. xx+280, figures, maps, tables, notes, bibliography, index. $99.00, hardcover, ISBN 978-1-4696-5503-1. $34.95, paperback, ISBN 978-1-4696-5504-8. $19.99, eBook, ISBN 978-1-4696-5505-5. In Where Caciques and Mapmakers Met Jeffrey Erbig gives an account of the mid-eighteenth-century cartographic encounter between native peoples (under the ethnonyms Charrúas, Bohanes, Yaros, Guenoas, and Minuanes) of the Río de la Plata borderlands (now Uruguay, Brazil, and Argentina) and the Spanish and Portuguese empires. At first glance his work appears to align with prior studies on the history of cartography and the mapping of indigenous peoples. He reiterates the importance of indigenous collaborators and informants in the mapmaking process and how maps wield power not just as representations but also as actors in the transformation of geographical imaginaries of empire into physical features of the landscape. Indeed, at points the woven narrative reads like yet another tale of dispossession and genocide wrought by colonialism and empire building. But in his analysis of "the dynamic production of space and the interplay between territorial imaginings and spatial practices" (7) he makes apparent the underlying goal to reformulate "the historical memory—professional, political, and popular—of the boundary commissions in the Río de la Plata connecting the entrenched narratives of Native disappearance to colonial geographic imaginings that emerged in the eighteenth century" (11). It is this underlying goal and his success in showing not only indigenous agency in the historical account but also the contemporary persistence of indigenous presence that makes the monograph worth the read; in the end it is a story of resilience and victory. The story centers on two border-making efforts, the Treaty of Madrid (1750) and the Treaty of San Idelfonso (1777), through which Portugal and Spain sent joint cartographic expeditions to rectify conflict that emerged from the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) and subsequent imperial expansion in the New World. Erbig uses an array of primary sources to meticulously recount events leading up to, including, and after the boundary-making expeditions. While he acknowledges the lack of indigenous voice and the bias in the colonial sources he uses, [End Page 91] the vignettes he creates attempt to (mostly successfully) highlight how "Native peoples did not simply foil or adapt to Iberian efforts; they altered the very structure of imperial governance, making borders necessary and transforming the meaning and form of mapped lines" (7). His historiographic approach is meticulous, full of rich detail (almost biblical at points), and is a pleasure to read. But what makes this work stand out is the use of geographic information systems (GIS) and a digital humanities approach to geographically and temporally locate all mentions of indigenous individuals, encampments (referred to as tolderias), and movements from the seven-hundred-plus primary sources that span 1680 to 1834. Arguably the design of the resulting maps could be improved (the addition of scale bars, for example), but the content along with the historical narrative is remarkable and presents a unique approach to and perspective on this moment in history. The book is organized into five chapters. The first two explore the period from 1680 up until the first cartographic expedition in 1752. The discussion of movement and location of indigenous groups and the colonial settlements centers on how access to natural resources, wild cattle for the most part, and European ideas of natural law came together as a form of ad hoc governance in which indigenous people retained control of the hinterlands of the colonial settlements. Chapter 3 outlines the joint Portuguese/Spanish border-mapping expeditions. Erbig highlights the fact that the conflict between empires was set aside in a moment when European powers were fully aware that "maps were not simply representations of territorial possession but rather the preeminent determinants of it" (67). The expeditions were specifically designed to weaken indigenous groups' hold in the region...