Emma Willard's map-drawing geographic pedagogy revolutionized early nineteenth-century American education, turning students into participants in the crafting of the new nation. This essay explores the conditions under which map drawing was transported to American missionary schools in South Asia and helped instigate a Tamil nation in British Ceylon. What did the missionaries intend the teaching method to impart? What were the consequences of this pedagogical form on dominant Tamil portrayals of space and identity in Ceylon? To answer these questions and to track the foreign career of American didactic mapmaking, this essay draws on print and manuscript archival materials, including two maps by a Tamil student at the American Ceylon Mission named Robert Breckenridge. The essay argues that the use of map-drawing pedagogy in Ceylon partially transmitted American ways of being in the world, which were consequential for local spatial knowledges and the crafting of a Tamil national identity on the island.