Master the skill-building mini-games, then embark on Chapter 1.
Charles Town, 1700. Outfit the expedition and choose your guide.
In 1700, maps were precious and often wildly wrong. Lawson's mission was partly to fix them. Before reading a map, you need to know what its parts mean.
Click one item from the left column, then its match on the right. Get all four to continue.
Latitude lines run east to west and measure how far north or south you are (0 degrees at the equator, 90 degrees at the poles). Longitude lines run north to south and measure east or west distance from Greenwich, England. Together they give every place on Earth a unique address.
John Lawson was Surveyor General of North Carolina. His surveys did not just measure land. They transferred ownership from Indigenous territories to colonial titles. Click each tool to reveal how it worked and what it meant.
Measured the direction (bearing) of each survey line in degrees from North. Surveyors "shot" a bearing by sighting to a ranging pole. Without this, no plat could be drawn.
66 feet long, 100 links. Dragged along the ground to measure distance. 80 chains equal 1 mile; 10 square chains equal 1 acre. The acre is still defined this way today.
Long striped poles held by an assistant. The surveyor sighted along the compass toward the pole to measure the bearing of a line. Required at least two people to survey.
Every bearing and distance was recorded here by hand. The field book was the legal foundation of a land grant, the document that converted Indigenous territory into English property on paper.
John Lawson was a real person. His journal, A New Voyage to Carolina (1709), is a real primary source, and you will read actual passages from it throughout this game. But Lawson's journal tells us almost nothing about who traveled with him. We know he had guides. We do not know their names, their stories, or their voices.
Two fictional companions will travel with Lawson throughout this game: Nora and Attamuskeet. They are composite characters, invented figures grounded in what we know about the kinds of people present in Lawson's world. Their purpose is to give voice to perspectives that Lawson's journal, written by an educated English man for an English audience, could not include. When you see their names, remember: the history is real. The voices are imagined to help us hear what the historical record cannot say.
Background: Nora is approximately 24 years old. Her father, Kondo, was born near the mouth of the Congo River in west-central Africa and was enslaved in Barbados before being sold to a Charles Town merchant. Her mother was a Gullah-speaking woman born in Carolina. Nora grew up in the merchant's household on the Charles Town waterfront, speaks English fluently, and understands fragments of her father's Kikongo and the Gullah language of the surrounding community.
Nora is not adventurous. She is shrewd. She has watched English men leave on expeditions and return changed. She does not trust Lawson's stated motives, but she recognizes that his journey could be useful information, and she has her own reasons for knowing what lies to the north and west of Charles Town.
Why she matters historically: Enslaved people were present throughout Lawson's world, in the households he stayed in, the towns he passed through, and the networks that kept the colonial economy running. Their perspectives on this landscape were entirely absent from English documents. Nora represents that silence.
Background: Attamuskeet is approximately 38 years old, an Occaneechi man who has traveled the Trading Path between the Piedmont and Charles Town many times. The Occaneechi were among the most important trading hub nations in the Carolina interior. Their town sat at the intersection of major trade routes near present-day Hillsborough, NC, and they served as middlemen between the coastal colonies and the nations of the interior.
Attamuskeet speaks English, his native Siouan dialect, and a trade pidgin used across multiple language groups. He is in Charles Town on his own business, trading deerskins for English cloth and metal goods. He is watching the colony carefully. He has seen what has happened to nations closer to the coast, and he is calculating how long the Occaneechi position as trading intermediary can hold.
Why he matters historically: Lawson's journey was only possible because Indigenous people showed him the way, fed him, and housed him at nearly every stop. Their knowledge, generosity, and diplomatic skill made the journal possible, but Lawson's account often reduces them to brief observations. Attamuskeet represents the fuller personhood behind those brief mentions.