Like other 18th and 19th century expeditions in what is now the United States, the U.S. Pacific Railroad Survey mapped both the natural and human landscape. Ironically, the survey would become a major agent in changing or remapping that landscape.

As Washington’s first territorial governor, Isaac Stevens was given authority by the U.S. Government to conduct treaty talks with Native American tribes. The goal of these treaty councils was to persuade tribes to cede huge tracts of their homeland, opening up the land to railroad construction or other development.

In the tradition of European and early American colonial expeditions, Stevens’ group catalogued and collected hundreds of plants and animals for study at the Smithsonian Institution. There were also two artists on the trek. John Mix Stanley and Gustav Sohon captured on canvas the diverse beauty and wildlife of the northern frontier as well as the lives of native people.

In the end, according to Stevens’ biographer, the survey "remains as the record of an extraordinary exploration, scientific effort, and regional evaluation."1 The records of the survey also provide documentation of cultural encounter in an era of dramatic change.