Aaron Carapella facts for kids

Aaron Carapella is an American mapmaker who teaches himself. He creates maps that show where Native American tribes lived around the year 1490, before Europeans arrived. These maps also use the original names of the tribes. When he was 19, he started researching for his maps. By 2014, he had made maps of Native American tribes with their original names for the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

About Aaron Carapella

Aaron Carapella grew up in Warner, Oklahoma. He has Cherokee family on his mother's side and lives in the Cherokee Nation area in Oklahoma. He speaks Spanish and has a degree in marketing.

His grandparents taught him a lot about Native American history. He said they would tell him, "You're part Native American and that's part of your history." They gave him books to read about different tribes. This made him very curious about Native American history from a young age.

When he was a teenager, Aaron wanted to find a map of the United States that showed all the Native American tribes. He went to many powwows, which are gatherings for Native American people. But he could never find a map that showed all the tribes. Most maps only showed about 50 to 100 tribes. He felt these maps were "incomplete" and had names that were "mostly inaccurate." He decided that one day he would create a better, more accurate map himself.

When he was younger, Aaron was very involved in Native American causes. He used to protest Columbus Day. He is also a member of the American Indian Movement. Now, he uses mapmaking as a way to share the true history of Native American tribes.

How He Makes Maps

Aaron Carapella creates maps of Native American tribal lands using their original names. He focuses on the time before Europeans came to the Americas, around 1490. He started this work when he was 19 and has been doing it for over 14 years. His goal is to show how North America looked before Columbus arrived. He was inspired by a book that explained some of the original tribal names and their meanings.

To make his maps, Aaron reads many books and visits library archives. He also calls tribal members and visits reservations to find out the original names of tribes and where they lived. He started his maps by drawing with pencils on poster boards in his bedroom.

Sometimes, when he called a tribe, they didn't know their original name at first. But someone from the tribe would usually ask an elder and find the information he needed. For example, he once needed to know what the name of the Waileptu or Cayuse people meant. He couldn't find it online or in books. But one of the last people who spoke their language was able to tell him the meaning.

Aaron found the Handbook of North American Indians very helpful. He also checked other old records, like those from missionaries and the army. This helped him figure out where European traders met certain tribes around 1490. Then, he would contact the tribes again to make sure the spelling of the original names and their locations were correct.

The biggest challenge for Aaron was finding all the original tribal names. Some tribes had only a few members left, and even fewer who spoke their native language. Other small tribes had disappeared, and the only information about them was found in the larger tribes that had taken them in.

Aaron believes that his research shows that even if some tribal names are no longer used, the people from those tribes were often absorbed into other larger tribes. He says that if you are a member of the Creek tribe today, you might have family connections to 15 to 20 other tribal nations that existed before.

He also noticed that tribes often kept their original names if they still lived near their traditional homelands. He thinks this is because many tribal names describe their location, like "we are the people at the mouth of the river." If a tribe was forced to move far away, like during the Trail of Tears or the Long Walk of the Navajo, they might no longer think of themselves by a name tied to a place they left behind. Moving away from their homeland can cause a "cultural rift" or a loss of identity.

In 2012, Aaron checked with the United States Copyright Office to see if anyone else had copyrighted a similar map idea. When they said no, he worked hard to finish his first map and copyrighted it.

His Maps

By 2014, Aaron had finished maps of the United States, Canada, and Mexico. His first map of the United States came out in November 2012. It was one of the first maps to show Native American nations in North America using their original languages.

Doug Herman, a geographer at the National Museum of the American Indian, says Aaron's maps are special. They show both the original names of Native American tribes and the names they are commonly known by today. Herman says that when you look at Aaron's map, "you can sort of get it immediately. This is Indian Country, and it's not the Indian Country that I thought it was because all these names are different."

Herman also pointed out that some common names for Native American tribes are actually insulting. Sometimes, one tribe would use a mean word in their language to describe another tribe, and that word became the common name. For example, the word "Comanche" comes from a word in the Ute language that means "anyone who wants to fight me all the time." Aaron's maps show the original names, like "Numinu" instead of "Comanche," and "Diné" instead of "Navajo." He also makes maps that show both names, with the original name on top.

Modern maps of Native American lands often show small areas called trust lands or reservations. These are surrounded by huge amounts of land that were taken from tribes over time. Aaron's maps show that before 1492, North America was full of many independent tribes.

Aaron also wanted his maps to show how many people were in each tribe and how much land they used. The maps were created with help from Overdrive Media and Printing. His maps include pictures or drawings of people, tools, homes, and clothes that fit each tribe. These images are placed in the correct locations on the map.

His map of the United States shows about 590 tribal nations with their original names. About 150 of these tribes no longer exist as separate groups. Because many tribes moved around, he placed their names where they were before Europeans pushed them out. He uses different font sizes for the tribal names to show how large their population was and how much land they lived on. Also, about 150 tribes have their current name listed under their original name, because many people don't know the original names.

Aaron didn't plan to make a Canadian map at first. He hoped someone else in Canada would make a similar map. But when that didn't happen, he decided to make one himself. The Canadian map shows 212 tribes by their original names. There were many smaller groups he couldn't include because there wasn't enough space on the map. Just like with his United States map, he plans to keep updating his maps as he finds new information.

Today's borders between Canada, the United States, and Mexico don't match where tribal areas used to be. For example, Aaron thinks about 24 tribes have people living on both sides of the Mexico-United States border. When he made his map of Mexico, he noticed that the language and culture of tribes in Mexico are often better preserved than those of the same tribes on the United States side. He thinks this might be because the American government tried harder to send Native American children to American Indian boarding schools.

By early 2015, Aaron had finished a map of Alaska. Later, he created a map of all the Native American tribes in North America without borders, which shows over 1000 tribes. By late 2015, he had also completed a map of tribes in South America without borders. In the future, he wants to make an "old-fashioned driving atlas" that would show different areas in much more detail.