Lake of the Woods and the Angle

[cleops]

I was reading Tim O’Brian’s Lake of the Woods several years ago and was interested by that little cartographic oddity know as the Angle, I think, which is a bit of US territory up there in Canada. Does anyone know how, as O’Brian put it, this “cartographer’s mistake” came about? I know there were many conferences and near wars concerning the boundary between the US and Canada/GB during the nineteenth century, but would like to know the specifics on this one.

[Oncle_Biere]

It was part of an Indian reservation.
The boundries are those of the tribe.

[Oncle_Biere]

There was a comment on one of the duplicates of this thread, that I thought I might comment on as well.

*Originally posted by Random *
**The story I heard was that they thought that the source of the Mississippi was there. **

The source of the Mississippi has been known from the French days, long before the border became an issue. It’s in Itasca MN.

Itasca State Park

[Colibri]

Oncle Biere, I believe you are wrong on both counts.

The original boundary was established by the Peace Treaty of 1783 between the U.S. and Great Britian. This specified that the boundary would extend west from the the northwest corner of the Lake of the Woods to the Mississippi.

From the treaty:

**to the said Lake of the Woods; thence through the said lake to the most northwesternmost point thereof, and from thence on a due west course to the river Mississippi;

**

Unfortunately the source of the Mississippi was south of this line. (The source of the Mississippi was not determined to be Lake Itasca until 1832, when the Anishinabe guide Ozawindib led explorer Henry Rowe Schoolcraft to it.)

The Convention of 1818 (same link as above) corrected this error:

**It is agreed that a Line drawn from the most North Western Point of the Lake of the Woods, along the forty Ninth Parallel of North Latitude, or, if the said Point shall not be in the Forty Ninth Parallel of North Latitude, then that a Line drawn from the said Point due North or South as the Case may be, until the said Line shall intersect the said Parallel of North Latitude, and from the Point of such Intersection due West along and with the said Parallel shall be the Line of Demarcation between the Territories of the United States, and those of His Britannic Majesty, and that the said Line shall form the Northern Boundary of the said Territories of the United States, and the Southern Boundary of the Territories of His Britannic Majesty, from the Lake of the Woods to the Stony Mountains.

**

Note that even then they didn’t know if the nortwestern point of the Lake of the Woods were north or south of the 49th parallel. Since as it turns out it is north, the boundary was run south through the Lake until it hit the parallell, and then west to the Rocky (Stony) Mountains.

[chique]

Colibri hit it on the head.

And, Oncle Bier? That reservation up on the Angle wasn’t established til WELL after the state boundaries were.

[cleops]

Very sorry about the duplicate threads. Thanks for info; I shall now take it to a map and see if I can make any sense out of it!

[Beruang]

There is information in this thread, as well as links to other threads.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=40009