Mapping and Imaging Indigeneity: The Commemorative French Geodesic Mission to Ecuador, 1901-1906

In part to determine absolute global time, between 1901 and 1906 the French military outfitted a scientific mission to Ecuador to measure the curve of the equatorial meridian and commemorate the famous eighteenth-century Franco-Hispanic Geodesic Mission led by Charles Marie de la Condamine. The commemorative mission’s medical doctor, Paul Rivet, took advantage of the moment to develop a complex web of informants across the Andean and Amazonian sections of the country for a study of indigenous physiology and culture. This paper focuses on the interplay between the mission’s mapping project, its commemorative gestures and Rivet’s ethnology, with an emphasis upon the local sources of Rivet’s study.