There once was a man named Black Goose who lived on the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache (KCA) Reservation in Oklahoma Territory. In the 1890s a group of US attorneys approached him to create a map of the KCA area, for use in legal disputes over the Texas border and KCA Reservation boundaries. His product, a colorful depiction of plains topography, is a rich display of Kiowa experience and history across the landscape.

Geography Professor Dr. Mark Palmer presented Black Goose’s map to students Sarah Frost (senior/geography) and Grace Martinez (junior/biology), as part of a semester-long honors project. Their work has been to analyze and interpret the map, and to explore symbology as a means of storytelling. The original work is with the Smithsonian, but Palmer has a digital copy of it used by the project partners.

Geography Professor Dr. Mark Palmer presented Black Goose’s map to students Sarah Frost (senior/geography) and Grace Martinez (junior/biology), as part of a semester-long honors project.

Frost and Martinez did not know each other before working together on the project. Both approached Palmer for a contract agreement with the Honor’s College, designed for students who can’t fit an honors class into their schedules, but want to receive honors credit for a course.

“Our main focus has been on how the map communicates Kiowa history, stories, and culture,” says Frost. “We look at ways the map compares and differs from ‘official’ (western) maps, like atlas, road, or geologic maps.”

“Our main focus has been on how the map communicates Kiowa history, stories, and culture. We look at ways the map compares and differs from ‘official’ (western) maps, like atlas, road, or geologic maps.” - Sarah Frost

She says maps are tools used not only for navigation purposes, but also to communicate ideologies, values, and arguments. “The map presents common geologic features — like mountains and bodies of water — but also symbols of Kiowa experience throughout the landscape. In doing so, it countered dominant narratives of what Oklahoma territory represented by offering its own.”

Before this project, Martinez did not think much about maps. Her goal was to work in the environmental and biological sciences to help marginalized communities. “I don’t know what that is going to actually look like in my future,” she says, “But … the Native beliefs about land and Earth really resonate with me as a non-Native person. And so, learning more about that in order to see where I can go with it is what my passion is.”

Martinez says she loves to learn, and when she, Frost, and Palmer started talking about symbology in maps and how it related to the mapmaker, she was hooked. “It’s just really interesting,” she says. “You know the interconnectivity of everything. One thing Sarah told me when I first met her… I said ‘it’s cool having everything connected,’ and she said ‘yeah, that’s the first rule of geography. Everything is connected.’”

Martinez adds she likes the idea of maps as constantly changing. “The map is a world not meant to be set in stone on a piece of paper,” she says. “Everything changes. The idea of a map has really changed for me.”