This is a historical cartographic analysis of Indian and Euro-American relations in the United States. We explore the threefold roles of government, academic, and tribal mapping, and bring them together with some findings. As can be seen, government and academia have shared cartographic data; both have learned from the tribes, and in turn, the tribes have learned from the others, not always to their well-being. All of these issues are involved in the affairs of Indians in our country and are discussed to analyze the ongoing spatial activities across the dynamic landscape of Native America.

Conflicts over reservation boundaries have a long and torrid history in the Mission Indian Agency of Southern California. Because the 1852 treaties of Santa Ysabel and Temecula were repudiated by the Senate, the federal government's oversight of Indian affairs in Southern California was weak. "Even when the government did attempt to aid the Indians, the efforts were ultimately undermined by political forces on the local, state, and national level," writes Glenn Farris (Hartnell 2004:14). Until the 1930s, only sporadic attempts to stabilize or defend executive order reservation boundaries were made. Rather, the political will was focused on the speedy dissolution of the reservations and the termination of federal responsibility. A detailed case study of the labyrinthine bureaucratic muddle over Capitan Grande reservation's boundaries is presented here as a microcosm of what was occurring on most of the Mission Indian Agency reservations in Southern California. This essay and its accompanying maps will document the numerous boundary changes from 1875 to 1934.